Chapter 19 #3
The days shortened. The cold crept in through the seams of the house, settling into my bones. I noticed it only because my joints ached more than usual, because the bed felt colder when I shifted at night, because my hands shook even when I wasn’t crying.
They didn’t let me disappear completely.
Someone knocked every day. Sometimes it was Mia.
Sometimes the guys. Sometimes all of them, loud and mismatched and stubborn, bringing soup I didn’t eat and blankets I pretended not to need.
They opened curtains without asking. Sat on the floor when I wouldn’t make it to the couch.
Talked around me when talking to me felt like too much.
Christmas lights started appearing in other people’s windows.
I saw them once when Mia forced me outside for air—tiny, defiant points of color strung against the dark. They hurt to look at. Proof the world was still insisting on joy without my consent. I turned my face away and went back inside before she could say anything.
She didn’t argue. She just followed me in and shut the door gently behind us, like she understood that sometimes surviving meant choosing the warmest place and staying there until your body remembered how.
On Christmas morning, my phone buzzed. Just once. I stared at it for a long time before picking it up, fingers stiff, pulse ticking too loud in my ears.
DAD
Season’s greetings. Wishing you peace and prosperity in the year ahead.
That was it.
No name. No question. No acknowledgment of absence or silence or the fact that I had nearly died and he hadn’t noticed. A message copied and pasted, sent down a list without pause.
I imagined him standing somewhere warm, efficient. Sending it between meetings. Not thinking about me at all.
The realization didn’t hurt the way it used to. I set the phone face down and lay back, staring at the ceiling. The day passed without shape. Without food. Without sound. Christmas dissolved into just another square on the calendar I didn’t interact with.
The world kept moving.
I didn’t.
By the time New Year’s Eve arrived, I had been empty for so long it felt like my natural state.
The house didn’t feel abandoned anymore.
It felt neutral. Like it had accepted I wasn’t living in it so much as occupying space that hadn’t yet noticed I was fading.
The air was cold enough to sting when I inhaled, but I didn’t bother turning the heat up.
I stayed wrapped in an old hoodie, knees drawn to my chest on the couch, staring at nothing.
My phone buzzed once on the cushion beside me. I didn’t reach for it right away. Let it vibrate itself quiet, like everything else that wanted something from me.
When I finally looked, it was a text from Mia.
Mia
NYE at ours tonight. As you didn’t want to do xmas. No pressure. No noise if you don’t want it. Just food, blankets, and idiots you already know.
Mia
We’ll come get you if you want. Or you can just… exist here with us.
My throat tightened in that dull, familiar way. Not sharp enough to cry. Just heavy.
I didn’t answer just set the phone face down again and pulled my sleeves over my hands, pressing my forehead to my knees. Midnight crept closer without announcement. No music. No laughter drifting in from neighbors. No countdown bleeding through the walls.
Just the refrigerator humming and the faint creak of the house settling, like it was breathing around me.
I stood up without deciding to. My body moved on autopilot, carrying me into the kitchen. I opened cupboards one by one, not looking for anything in particular.
That’s when I saw it, shoved in the back corner of a base unit. A bottle of whisky. Anthony’s whisky.
The bottle sat pushed so far into the back of the cabinet, like it had been forgotten on purpose. Like it didn’t belong there anymore. My breath caught so hard it hurt. I stared at it for a long time, pulse thudding in my ears.
I’d tried to erase him. Or at least, I’d tried to survive him being gone.
He’d packed his things and taken them away months ago. He’d removed every trace of himself from the house like he’d been cleaning a crime scene. But the house told a different story.
The spaces where he should have been were louder than anything he’d left behind.
I reached for the bottle. The glass was cool against my palm, solid and real in a way nothing else had been lately. I twisted the cap off and brought it to my nose before I could stop myself.
Oak. Smoke. Something warm and grounding and unmistakably him.
My stomach twisted violently.
Blindly I poured it into the first thing I could grab. The sound of liquid hitting glass echoed too loudly in the quiet kitchen. My hand shook just enough for a few drops to spill over the edge, darkening the counter like a stain.
The first swallow burned all the way down. It hurt. I welcomed it. Surrendered to it. The second didn’t burn as much.
By the third, something inside my chest loosened. The tight band around my ribs eased just enough for a breath to slip through without catching. My head felt fuzzy, distant—like I was finally floating above myself instead of being crushed inside my own body.
I sank down onto the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets, bottle beside me like a companion.
My phone sat heavy in my hand. I didn’t want to call him. I needed to. Not to beg. Not to plead. I just needed him to hear me breathe. To know I was still here. That I hadn’t disappeared completely like he seemed to want. Like I couldn’t erase him like he had me.
I stared at his name. My thumb hovered before I pressed call.
Just answer, I thought. You don’t even have to say anything.
The phone rang once. Twice. Then stopped. Confusion flickered through the haze. I tried again, frowning this time.
Straight to voicemail.
No. Not voicemail. Blocked. The word registered slowly, like my brain refused to accept it.
Blocked.
A thin, broken sound tore out of my chest before I could stop it. My hands started to shake violently, phone slipping from my grip and clattering onto the floor. I pressed my palm to my mouth, but it didn’t help. The sound kept coming—fractured, wrong.
He hadn’t just left.
He’d finally erased me.
Something inside me collapsed inward, like a structure finally giving way after months of silent strain. I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because there was nothing left to hold the sound in.
I stood up on unsteady legs and grabbed my keys without thinking. The bottle came with me. I didn’t put shoes on. I didn’t grab a jacket. Just moved without knowing why.
The cold slapped me hard the moment I stepped outside, sharp enough to steal my breath. Stars littered the sky, bright and indifferent. The world looked exactly the same as it always had.
I drove without direction.
The road stretched out ahead of me, dark and endless, headlights carving tunnels through the night. The whisky burned in my throat. Tears blurred my vision until everything smeared into streaks of light and shadow.
My heart pounded so hard it felt like it might crack my ribs. If he won’t answer, maybe this will be enough. The thought didn’t scare me.
It felt inevitable.
The tree came out of nowhere. Metal screamed. Glass exploded. Pain detonated through my chest and shoulder in a flash of white-hot agony.
Then—
Nothing.