Chapter Nine | Morning
'Somehow, in some small, quiet way, I managed to sleep through the night.
Restless, yeah—I kept waking up, checking my phone like muscle memory, half-expecting a message. He said he might text after going out with a few friends in town. But of course, he didn’t.
He never really does.
Not when he says he will.
I don’t hold my breath anymore. I’ve learned.
Maybe he only wanted to see me long enough to fill that strange space between arrival and settling in. Maybe the airport was just a bridge between places. Maybe I wasn’t the reason at all.
I tried to believe that.
Tried to let it be enough.
Maybe.
I rolled over, my hand brushing across the cool, empty space beside me. I didn’t expect him to be there—not really. But for one foolish second, some buried part of me wished he was. Not to prove anything. Just to exist beside me. Quietly. Completely.
But of course, he wasn’t.
Because he doesn’t show up like that.
He’s not the kind of man who taps on windows in the middle of the night just to be close. That would take something bold. Something brave. Something he doesn't care to be. That only happens in the movies.
I sat up.
Part of me still clung to the hope that today might be different—that maybe I’d see him again, spend time with him. The other part, the louder one, whispered that I’d wasted a perfectly good PTO day waiting on a ghost.
The ache in my chest hadn’t faded. If anything, it had deepened overnight. Like a bruise just now settling into its color.
I reached for my phone again.
Still nothing.
So I got up. Went through the motions. Same shower. Same makeup. Same practiced expression that says I’m fine, even when I’m nowhere close.
I tried to push him out of my head. I really did. Because if he let me down again—if he vanished the way he always does—I knew I’d still answer if he texted. I hated that about myself. That waiting part. That hopeful part that hadn’t fully died.
I told myself it didn’t matter. That last night was what it needed to be—contained, quiet, restrained. Clean.
But it didn’t feel clean.
It felt unfinished.
My thumb hovered over his name. I could send something casual. Light. Slide back into our old rhythm, pretend nothing had shifted. We were good at that. At never naming it. At pretending almost didn’t mean something.
But I didn’t hit send.
Because this time felt different.
Or maybe… finally… I was different.
I stepped back into my life, but it didn’t fit the same. Everything felt off. My routine felt hollow. The silence, heavier. Still no message. Still no sign of him.
And it hurt more than I wanted to admit.
Not because I needed his attention.
But because I needed to know I hadn’t imagined it all.
That the gravity between us wasn’t just some trick of light and loneliness.
But his silence was its own kind of answer.
Maybe this is what closure really looks like.
Maybe nothing happening… is still something.
I sat on the edge of my bed, legs tucked underneath me, phone face-down beside me, and whispered it—soft, almost like a secret:
“He’s never going to choose this.”
Not because he doesn’t feel it.
But because feeling it would mean changing something.
Risking something.
Choosing me.
And he never has.
I exhaled, long and low, and let my head fall into my hands.
I wasn’t just tired today.
I was tired in the way that sinks into your bones—tired of waiting, of wondering, of paying full price for something that only ever existed in the in-between.
