Chapter Twelve
Jack, We’ve been writing to each other for so long it feels less like letters and more like proof that I’m still here. I meant to tell you something important tonight, but the words keep slipping away. I think I’ll rest for a moment and come back to it—
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It had been a week since Ellis and Issaky first had sex, and somehow that single week had rearranged the shape of his days.
There were no grand declarations or sudden clarity about the future.
Instead, it had been quiet and domestic and deeply, startlingly consistent.
One night turned into two. Two turned into most. And before Ellis had realized he was doing it, he’d stopped packing an overnight bag and started leaving his toothbrush in Issaky’s bathroom, next to the black one with the frayed bristles Issaky refused to replace.
Everything was consistent and perfect. Until Monday morning.
Ellis woke up tucked into the narrow space between Issaky and the bedroom wall, his back pressed lightly against the cool paint, Issaky’s arm draped over his waist like it had always belonged there.
Issaky ran warm, especially when he slept—radiating heat in a way that made Ellis feel held even when he wasn’t being actively touched.
The room smelled faintly of laundry detergent and coffee grounds from the kitchen down the hall. Outside, the city was already awake, traffic humming distantly, life continuing in that relentless way it always did.
Ellis catalogued it automatically. Wall. Warmth. Breath at the back of his neck. Safe.
He lay there for a while, eyes closed, letting the sensation settle his nervous system the way Issaky had learned to do instinctively—no pressure to move, no sudden shifts, just presence.
If this was what people meant when they talked about peace, Ellis thought, it was smaller than he’d expected.
Not a feeling so much as an absence of sharp edges.
Issaky stirred beside him, murmuring something unintelligible, fingers flexing once at Ellis's hip before relaxing again. Ellis smiled faintly, the kind of smile that happened without him meaning to.
Then his phone rang.
The sound cut through the room like a blade.
Ellis startled so hard his shoulder slammed into the wall, heart instantly hammering.
His phone was on the nightstand, screen lighting up insistently, the vibration rattling faintly against the wood.
Calls this early were wrong. Calls were almost always wrong.
His body knew it before his brain could catch up.
Issaky woke immediately, blinking, sitting up halfway. “Ellis?” His voice was thick with sleep but already alert, eyes searching Ellis's face. “You okay?”
Ellis didn’t answer. Instead he flung himself over Issaky and reached for the phone with hands that suddenly felt too large and too disconnected from the rest of him. The caller ID made his stomach drop.
Clyde.
That didn’t make sense. Clyde didn’t call.
Clyde wrote. Clyde left notes folded carefully into envelopes, tucked behind the register.
Clyde called exactly no one. The only reason Ellis had Clyde’s number at all was for emergencies.
Like when the rain fell so hard last spring that Clyde had to call and tell Ellis not to come in to work.
Ellis's thumb hovered over the screen and Issaky leaned closer, careful not to crowd him. “Do you want me to—”
Ellis answered. “Hello?” His voice sounded distant to his own ears.
There was a pause. Static. Breathing that wasn’t Clyde’s. “This is Ellis Carter?”
“Yes,” Ellis said. His brain was already beginning to detach, sliding into a strange, hollow calm. The room sharpened. Issaky’s bedsheets. The crack in the ceiling paint. The way his own knees were pulled up too tight.
“I’m calling from Mercy Hospital,” the voice said gently. Too gently. “I’m calling about Clyde Harper.”
Ellis waited for the rest. He was very good at waiting. He’d spent most of his life doing it.
“There was an incident this morning with Mr. Harper’s heart,” the voice continued. “I’m very sorry. Clyde passed away a short while ago.”
The words landed without impact.
Passed away. A phrase Ellis had always hated. Too soft. Too slippery. It didn’t tell you anything useful. It didn’t give you instructions.
“Oh,” Ellis said.
There was a pause, the voice on the other end adjusting, recalibrating. “Are you somewhere safe right now?”
“Yes,” Ellis said again, because it was technically true.
Issaky was watching him closely now, concern etched into his features. Ellis lifted a finger automatically, a silent wait, and Issaky froze, respecting it without question.
The voice said more things—about paperwork, about next of kin, about calling back later—but Ellis didn’t absorb any of it. His mind had gone strangely, eerily quiet. Like someone had turned down the volume on the world.
“Okay,” Ellis said at the appropriate intervals. He wrote nothing down. He asked no questions.
When the call ended, Ellis set the phone back on the nightstand with careful precision. His hands were steady. His breathing was even.
Issaky reached out slowly, palm open. “Ellis?”
Ellis stared at the wall. “Clyde died,” he said, flatly.
The words hung in the air, meaningless syllables strung together.
Issaky inhaled sharply. “Oh,” he said, echoing Ellis's earlier response. Then, softly, “Oh, Ellis.”
Ellis waited for something to happen inside him, but nothing did. He sat up, disentangling himself from Issaky’s arm with the same care he might use to move a sleeping animal. The bed felt suddenly too soft, too unreal. His feet hit the floor, grounding him in the cold.
“I need to get dressed,” Ellis said. “I have work today.”
Issaky blinked. “Ellis—”
“I’m fine,” Ellis said quickly. Too quickly. “I just need—time. Or coffee. Or something.”
Issaky stood as well, careful not to block him. “You don’t have to go in. I can call—”
“No,” Ellis said, sharper than he meant to. He took a breath, recalibrated. “I mean. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
That was true. Talking required shape and sequence and meaning, and he didn’t have any of those yet.
Issaky nodded slowly. “Okay. That’s okay.”
Ellis moved through the apartment like a ghost, pulling on yesterday’s clothes, tying his shoes with hands that still didn’t shake. Issaky hovered nearby in his green boxers, not touching, but present—offering a glass of water, asking once if Ellis wanted him to come with him.
“No,” Ellis said again, gently this time. “I need to be alone.” The words tasted strange. Wrong, somehow. But necessary.
Issaky hesitated, then nodded. “I can drive you home,” he said. “If that’s okay.”
Ellis considered. The idea of navigating the subway felt overwhelming in an abstract way, like imagining a long staircase without being able to see the top.
“Okay,” he said.
The drive was quiet. Issaky didn’t put on music. He didn’t ask questions. He kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting lightly on the console between them, a silent offer Ellis didn’t take but appreciated all the same.
When they reached Ellis's building, Issaky parked and turned to face him fully. “I’m here,” he said simply. “However you need.”
Ellis nodded. His chest felt tight now, like something was pressing inward, but still—no tears. No panic. Just pressure.
Issaky leaned in and kissed him gently, a soft press of lips that lingered for half a second longer than usual. “Call me,” he said. “Even if you don’t talk.”
Ellis nodded again, then climbed out of the car. He didn’t look back.
Upstairs, the apartment was too bright. The overhead light in the kitchen was on, casting harsh yellow angles across the linoleum.
Ellis's mother was standing at the counter in her robe, coffee mug in hand.
She looked up as he came in, her expression immediately sharpening like it usually did when she looked at him.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “It’s ten in the morning.”
Ellis froze. “I’ve been out,” he said.
“All week?” She gestured vaguely, irritation already blooming. “You think you can just disappear without saying anything?”
Ellis's chest tightened further. Words were stacking up inside him with nowhere to go.
“I told you I was staying with a friend,” he said, ignoring the guilt of calling Issaky a ‘friend.’
“A friend,” she repeated. “You don’t even sleep here anymore. What is going on with you?”
Ellis's skin began to buzz, the air in the room thickening, every sound suddenly too loud—the hum of the fridge, the clink of her mug against the counter.
“Clyde died,” Ellis said. The words finally had weight. They landed and stayed.
His mother frowned. “Who?”
Ellis stared at her in disbelief. He had spoken of Clyde several times throughout the years. Clyde had come over a few winters back to fix their sink and when Ellis's mother offered to pay him, Clyde had said he was happy to help. She had hugged the older man.
“Who is Clyde?” she repeated, impatient now.
She popped her hip and crossed her arms, the typical pose for her irritation when Ellis wasn't answering soon enough.
Something inside Ellis fractured. The pressure in his chest exploded outward, panic surging up his spine, heat flooding his limbs. The room tilted. The light was too bright. Her voice was too sharp. Everything was wrong.
“He—” Ellis started, then couldn’t finish. His hands were shaking now. “He—he was—”
“Well?” she snapped. She was always so impatient with him.
Ellis stumbled backward, breath coming too fast, too shallow. “He’s dead,” he shouted. “He’s dead and I didn’t even get to say goodbye and you’re asking me who he is—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “Are you talking about your boss? You’re acting like this over some old man? You barely reacted when your father—”
That was it. Ellis turned and ran to his room before he slammed the door shut with a force that rattled the walls. He locked it, chest heaving, ears ringing. His mother shouted something from the kitchen—something about disrespect, about running away—but the words blurred together, losing meaning.
Ellis's body moved without instruction, on impulse.
He punched the wall.
Once. Twice. Again.
The pain barely registered, drowned out by the roaring in his head. He knocked books off shelves, ripped his comforter off the bed, and sent his desk chair crashing to the floor. It felt like his body was trying to tear itself open just to let something out.
His mother screamed that she was leaving. That he was sick. That he cared more about some stranger than his own father. Things that weren't true but hurt Ellis all the same.
Then the apartment door slammed. Silence followed, heavy and absolute.
Ellis slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, knees pulled to his chest. The adrenaline drained out of him all at once, leaving him hollow, shaking, raw.
The sobs came then. Violent, gasping, uncontrollable.
He pressed his forehead to his knees and cried until his throat burned, until his body ached with it.
Images flickered through his mind—Clyde’s careful handwriting, the way he smelled like old paper and peppermint, the way he’d always waited for Ellis to finish speaking without interrupting.
He never got to say goodbye.
Never got to say thank you.
The grief finally found him, and it was unbearable.
Ellis curled in on himself on the floor and balled his hands into fists, hitting his head so hard that he knew he’d have a headache in the morning. He didn't care. Not about his head or the wreckage of his room. Ellis sobbed like the world had ended—because in one small, quiet way, it had.