Chapter 27 Coco
TWENTY-SEVEN
Coco
I trace along the windowsill, collecting dust. The afternoon sun cuts through the glass at a sharp angle, turning specks of dust into floating constellations.
Four days ago, I would have been cleaning. Now it seems pointless.
My phone sits face-up on the coffee table. Dark. Silent. I've stopped jumping every time it lights up with a notification. None of them were ever from Ridge.
Four days.
The house is emptier than it was before I met him, which makes no sense. He was never really here. He only slept in my bed once. Yet his absence fills every corner.
I move to the kitchen and pour coffee I don't want into a mug I don't particularly like. The routine of it is comforting, even if the coffee will go cold before I drink half.
When my phone finally rings, I cross the room in three steps and snatch it up without checking the caller ID.
"Hello?" It comes out as a question rather than a greeting.
"Hey," Delphine's voice comes through warm and careful.
"Hey," I echo, sinking onto the couch.
"You doing okay, friend? I'm worried about you."
The question is simple. My answer is simpler. "He's been gone four days."
I let the words hang between us. There's no embellishment or tears. Just the plain, unvarnished truth that's been settling into my bones hour by hour.
Delphine doesn't rush to fill the silence, nor does she try to offer tired platitudes about other fish in the sea. She just breathes on the other end of the line, sharing the weight of my heartbreak.
"I keep checking my phone." I watch dust motes swirl in the sunbeam. "Not because I think he'll call. Habit, I guess."
"Habits are hard to break," Delphine says finally. "It will get easier, I promise."
"He's not coming back." Saying it out loud doesn't hurt as much as it did yesterday. The pain stays at the top of my chest, constant and dull. "Not to explain or apologize, or even to get the shirt he forgot when he spent the night."
I haven't told her I've fallen asleep with his shirt the last three nights, wanting to smell him.
"Maybe you should reach out to him. Have you considered that?" Delphine asks.
I consider the question. Two weeks ago, I would have rushed to him immediately and raged. Or, I would have plotted some elaborate scheme to make him regret leaving.
Now I'm tired and resigned.
"I'm not going to do that," I say, and the word tastes like surrender. "There's nothing to say to him. If anyone needs to say anything, it would be him. And it's clear that isn't happening."
The truth is simple: I wasn't enough. Whatever Ridge is chasing, whether it be revenge, power, money, it matters more than I do. I've always known who he is. What he is. The mistake was thinking he was above it.
"Do you want me to come over?" Delphine asks.
"No." I close my eyes. "I think I need to sit with this a while longer."
The line goes quiet again. Outside, a car door slams and someone laughs in the distance. The world keeps turning while mine has stopped.
"He made his choice," I whisper, more to myself than to Delphine.
And now I need to make mine.
"I know you don't want to hear this, but..." She takes a breath. "This is probably for the best."
My throat tightens. The words should make me angry, but they don't. They just ring with a truth I've been avoiding.
"Your heart is split clean in two right now. I get that. But Ridge's world doesn't make room for softness or compromise." Her voice gentles. "You've always known you didn't want to be consumed by the life your father lives. Ridge helped you realize that. That was a gift.”
The sun shifts slightly, the beam of light inching across my floor like a slow-moving clock hand. I watch it touch the corner of the rug Ridge stood on when he walked away.
"You're not wrong." My voice comes out steady despite the pressure building behind my eyes. "I guess I thought, or hoped, that maybe we could rewrite the rules for us."
"Rules exist in his world for a reason, Coco. The same reason your father has his rules."
I curl my fingers around my phone, letting her words sink in instead of pushing them away. The truth doesn't need my permission to be true. Ridge made that clear enough.
The sunbeam catches a tear I didn't feel fall, turning it gold for just a moment before it disappears into the fabric of my shirt. I wipe my cheek quickly, as if Delphine could see me through the phone.
"I can't sit in this house anymore." The words tumble out suddenly. "It's starting to feel like a holding cell."
"Ironic, since you met Ridge when he was holding you in a cell."
"Del, stop."
Delphine's tone shifts immediately. "I'm sorry. You need to get out of there. I could use a latte. Want to meet at Rosie's Roost in fifteen?”
The offer lifts some invisible weight. "Yes. You're right. That's exactly what I need." I push myself up from the couch.
"Oh, I have a great idea, too. There's that temporary art installation nearby. It's the one with all the paper lanterns. Have you been by there?"
"No. I'm completely clueless about what's happening in the real world. It'll be good for me."
"Perfect. We'll grab our coffees, or chais, whatever, and wander through it." I hear the smile in her voice.
"Thanks, Del." The gratitude is for more than just coffee plans, and we both know it.
"Fifteen minutes. Get moving."
I end the call and grab my bag from the hook by the door. My keys jingle in my hand, the sound oddly cheerful against the quiet of the house. The simple decision to leave, to move, to do something besides wait by a silent phone already has me feeling just a tiny bit better.
I step outside and lock the door behind me. The November midafternoon is cool and refreshing. I take a deep breath and head down the steps.
It's a short walk to Rosie's from my house. When I arrive, I grab the handle, and the door whooshes open when the wind catches it. I have to catch it so it doesn't slam against the side of the wood siding.
Delphine waves at me from a corner table, sunlight catching in her dark braid. The café buzzes with quiet conversation and the hiss of steam wands. I slide into the wooden chair across from her, grateful she arrived early to claim this spot.
"I already put your order in," Delphine says, nodding toward the counter. "Chai latte, extra cinnamon, coming up."
“You're a lifesaver.” I tuck my bag under the chair. “Seriously.”
“I know.” She smiles, but her gaze lingers, steady in that way of hers.
When my drink arrives, I wrap my hands around the warm paper mug. The spicy-sweet aroma rises in soft curls of steam, but when I take a sip, I might as well be drinking air. Nothing lands.
“How’s your dad taking all this?” Delphine asks.
I trace my finger around the rim of my mug. “We haven’t spoken.”
“How do you feel about that?”
I stare into my chai, watching the thin layer of foam slowly disappear.
“I think I’m okay with it. At least for now.” The words come out quieter than I expect. “I don’t want to replace one kind of control with another. Plus, I don't want to hear the smugness when he realizes Ridge did exactly what he warned me he would.”
Delphine nods, like she’s filing that away, then lifts her cup for another sip.
After a few minutes, she sets it down. “Ready to check out those lanterns?”
I nod, grateful for the chance to move. Sitting still feels impossible today.
Outside, the air is cool and clean, the kind that makes me pull my jacket closer without thinking. We walk side by side down the uneven sidewalk, navigating around tourists and locals alike.
The paper lantern installation starts at the edge of the square. Dozens of colorful orbs are suspended from thin wires, creating a canopy overhead.
"They're beautiful," I murmur, tilting my head back to look up at them.
"They are."
We move slowly beneath them, the sunlight filtering through the colored paper and casting rainbow shadows on the ground. A group of children runs past, laughing and pointing upward.
“The worst part isn’t even that he left,” I say out of nowhere as we pause beside a mixed-media sculpture of the Mississippi River. “It’s that I believed in a version of him that could only exist when we were alone.”
Delphine turns to me, her expression open, steady. She lets me get it out.
“I thought I was choosing something dangerous but honest,” I add. “Now I know he was never any different than what I wanted to escape.”
Saying it out loud makes the truth more solid, more bearable somehow. The ache is still there, but it's no longer choking me.
She keeps walking and doesn’t try to soften any of it, which I appreciate.
We pause beneath a particularly beautiful lantern. The deep blue hues are so vibrant, especially against the delicate silver patterns that cast intricate shadows.
"Look up," Delphine says gently, touching my elbow. "The artist made these to represent resilience. See how the light finds every opening?"
I tilt my head back, watching how the sunlight penetrates the paper, creating patterns I hadn't noticed before.
“It’s really cool,” I whisper, my chest expanding with a full breath for the first time in days.
Delphine smiles. “Art always helps, doesn’t it? Even when it can’t fix everything.”
I peek inside a pale yellow paper lantern, drawn to the way the sunlight thickens the paper from the inside out, turning it warmer, almost luminous. It looks fragile until you’re this close.
Moving deeper into the installation, where sheer fabric panels create narrow paths between the pieces. The colors shift from blue to violet as we walk, tinting skin and shadows until everything feels slightly unreal.
“I feel…” I stop, then say it. “Untethered.”
Delphine looks at me, waiting. She never fills the silence for me.
“I’m not even talking about Ridge,” I add. “I mean everything.”
I gesture past the art, toward the square and the city beyond it. “My father isn’t speaking to me, Ridge walked out, and I’m still here, with nothing that’s actually mine.”
“Then we find something that is yours.”