November 20, 2020—Tel-Aviv, Israel—The Same Day
The ocean surged within Logan as he fumbled with his thoughts, trying to anchor himself to the dull glow of his laptop screen while holding his phone to his ear. The faint voice on the other end of the call was nothing more than white noise, a distant hum beneath his own guilt and longing.
His mind floated aimlessly, like a castoff branch carried by indifferent surges, buoyed and battered by a current he couldn’t control.
Every thought was centered around Adrian.
The echo of their last encounter, fresh and unresolved, merged with the sight of him now, two years older, two years farther away.
And with every breath, his ache sharpened a reminder of what he had shattered with his own fear.
Logan’s chest tightened as the reality of Adrian’s illness gnawed at him.
Cancer.
The word was slicing through his thoughts over and over again, each time gutting him and twisting him as if it were the first time he’d learned about it.
It was a slow thief, stealing pieces of Adrian with every passing day.
He felt paralyzed, drowning in a sea of his own helplessness.
What could he do? How could he fight a war inside Adrian’s body when he had already lost the battle within his own heart?
The room felt too small, the walls pressing in with the weight of his mistakes. He needed to do something, to break free from the inertia that held him.
A sharp knock at the door rattled Logan out of his fragile reverie.
“Ada Mae, I’ll have to call you back,” he said, his voice tight as he snapped the laptop shut with a decisive click.
“Alright,” came her brisk reply, but Logan barely heard her. “I’m emailing you the calls to make and the meetings to reschedule. The ASAPs are going to your dad.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he muttered, already halfway to the door. “Good night.”
The phone landed carelessly on the couch, a forgotten artifact in the rising swell of anticipation.
His breath came shallow and quick as he crossed the room, each step weighed down by the gravity of what could be on the other side of the door.
His hand trembled slightly as it hovered over the handle, the seconds stretching like the horizon at dusk, infinite and unknowable.
When he opened the door, it was as though the world tipped over and spilled into the room.
Adrian stood there, a storm on the threshold, his face carved with the weariness of streams that had battered him too long.
His eyes, the whisky-colored hue Logan adored, appeared darker under the hotel lighting, conveying pain that reverberated within the narrowed space.
They were an immeasurable sea of yearning, heartache, and whispered secrets yet to be unveiled.
Logan’s breath caught, a ragged sound torn from the depths of his chest. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Adrian’s presence was like the scent of rain after a long drought—sharp, fresh, and overwhelming, filling the air with something electric, something alive.
They didn’t speak at first. Their gazes met, a fragile bridge between them, carrying the weight of years in a silence that buzzed with all the words left unspoken.
Logan couldn’t tell if the intensity and hardness he saw in Adrian’s eyes was edged with anger, layered with hurt, or if a softer, more hesitant warmth lingered just beneath the surface.
Logan stepped aside. A ghost of a smile flickered on his lips, unsteady, a flame in the wind.
He couldn’t help it—beneath all the uncertainty, a fragile thread of happiness coiled through his chest, tugging at the corners of his heart.
Seeing Adrian here, standing in front of him, felt surreal.
He held on to the hope that this wasn’t just a fleeting echo of the past but the first step toward something real, something mended.
Adrian moved into the room, his presence a quiet thunder, filling the space with a gravity that seemed to pull the air taut.
His eyes swept over the room—a polished expanse of muted tones, sharp lines, and gleaming surfaces.
It was perfect in the way hotel rooms often were: clean, curated, and empty.
When Adrian’s gaze returned to Logan, there was a stillness in the air, thick and suffocating.
Logan closed the door, his back resting against it as if bracing himself against the weight of what came next.
“You wanted to talk,” Adrian said, his voice steady but distant. “Let’s talk.”
“Yeah, do you—” Logan began making his way to the middle of the room, but the words faltered when Adrian raised a hand, shaking his head.
“I waited,” Adrian’s voice cracked with the rawness of the memory.
He stayed near the door, his posture tense, as though he might bolt at any moment.
“When I woke up that morning and you weren’t there, I thought…
I thought maybe you’d gone to get coffee or something.
You know? I didn’t panic. The room looked the same.
Your clothes were still scattered on the chairs, your board was leaning against the wall, just where you’d left it.
” He paused, exhaling a shaky breath. “So, I waited. I stayed in bed and waited for you to come back.”
Logan lowered himself onto the back of the couch, his knees feeling weak under the weight of Adrian’s words. He couldn’t look away from him, couldn’t do anything but listen.
“But you didn’t show up,” Adrian continued, his voice laced with hurt that seemed to ring in the room.
“So, I called. Over and over. And there was no answer. But even then, I didn’t think you’d left, maybe your phone was silenced, and you were on your way back, right?
I couldn’t believe it. Because…” Adrian’s voice faltered, and he swallowed hard.
“Because the memory book I gave you was still there, on the nightstand. And you wouldn’t have left it behind.
Not something that meant so much to both of us. Right?”
Logan closed his eyes briefly, the sting of tears burning behind his lids. He couldn’t speak. When he opened his eyes, Adrian was still standing by the door, his arms crossed over his chest, as if holding himself together.
“Adrian,” Logan started, his voice rough. “I—”
“No,” Adrian cut him off, his tone sharp but trembling. “Let me finish.”
The air between them was heavy, thick with the kind of tension that blooms from wounds left too long to fester.
It was a quiet ache, raw and unhealed, the edges of their shared past still sharp and exposed.
These weren’t scars—scars were the marks of healing, of skin knit back together stronger than before.
No, these were open wounds, tender and vulnerable, left to catch the sting of every passing breeze, to risk infection and rot.
Always exposed, always on the verge of breaking open.
Logan hovered in a space that was neither standing nor sitting, his body half-perched on the back of the couch, as if suspended between the instinct to flee and the desperate need to stay.
His hands were clasped tightly together, knuckles pale and straining, as though holding them so would keep the fragile pieces of him from scattering around the room.
His breath came shallow, uneven, the kind of breathing that accompanies a drowning man seconds before surrendering to the deep.
Adrian remained still, his knuckles turning white from gripping himself tightly.
“And I called again,” Adrian continued, his voice trembling but firm, the emotion clawing its way to the surface.
“Still no answer. So I got out of bed, and I started noticing things—things that were different. Your board shorts and wetsuit were still in the bathroom, Logan. Your toothbrush, too. But your bag? Your computer? Gone.”
Adrian laughed bitterly, the sound sharp and hollow.
“I kept calling. I kept texting. I became quite anxious when I saw our mugs still on the table, which clearly showed that you didn’t go to get coffee.
So I called again and again. And then you replied.
Finally! You told me you were leaving. Just like that.
Out of nowhere. And I thought—no, I hoped, I prayed—that it was some kind of joke.
Because how could it not be? It didn’t make sense. Nothing about it made sense.”
Logan’s breath caught as Adrian’s vivid recounting drew him back to the past, plunging him into the chaos he had sparked. In his mind’s eye, he visualized everything—the confusion, disbelief, and growing panic.
“When I got your text,” Adrian went on, his voice breaking, “telling me you’d suddenly decided to go home, I panicked.
I kept texting, kept calling, because I thought maybe…
maybe something was wrong. Something must have happened to you.
And then I tried again.” Adrian’s voice cracked, his shoulders slumping as tears slipped down his face.
“And again. Until finally, I realized I couldn’t get through to you because you had blocked me.
You blocked me.” Adrian closed his eyes, his breathing uneven as he tried to steady himself.
Logan felt the sting of tears at the corners of his own eyes, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“And you know what?” Adrian said, his voice rising slightly, a sharp edge to his tone.
“I couldn’t believe it. It took me twenty-seven messages—twenty-seven!
—and at least fifteen phone calls before it even registered that you’d done it.
Because I couldn’t believe that you would block me, Logan.
Not after everything. I thought, ‘No, there’s no way. ’ Not after what we shared, not after—”