Chapter 15 Shattered Hearts #2
Ignoring him seemed reasonable.
The strategy failed instantly.
Mason leaned against a workbench.
Watching.
Waiting.
Annoying.
The usual.
"Are you sleeping?"
"Yes."
Lie.
"Are you eating?"
"Yes."
Another lie.
Mason crossed his arms.
"You know I'm not stupid."
I glanced up.
Briefly.
"Debatable."
Normally that would've started an argument.
Today it earned a sigh.
A genuinely worried sigh.
The reaction unsettled me more than shouting would've.
Because concern meant he could see the damage.
Even when I tried hiding it.
The silence stretched.
Eventually Mason spoke again.
"Call him."
The suggestion hit harder than expected.
My jaw tightened immediately.
"No."
The answer came automatically.
Predictably.
Pathetically.
Mason looked exactly as impressed as he should have.
Which wasn't very.
"You're miserable."
I turned back toward the motorcycle.
Focused on the engine.
The tools.
Anything except the conversation.
"He deserves better."
The familiar argument tasted bitter now.
Worn out.
Even I was getting tired of hearing it.
Mason laughed.
A short humorless sound.
"That's your defense?"
I didn't answer.
Mostly because there wasn't one.
The truth remained ugly.
Simple.
I missed him.
Every second.
Every minute.
Every day.
Yet somehow I still believed hurting him had been the right choice.
The contradiction exhausted me.
Eventually Mason left.
Probably because he realized I wasn't listening.
Or because he wanted to punch me.
Possibly both.
The following week wasn't any better.
If anything, things got worse.
The silence grew heavier.
The loneliness sharper.
The memories stronger.
One evening I found one of Elliot's pens in the apartment kitchen.
A cheap blue pen.
Nothing special.
Something most people would've thrown away.
Instead, I stood there staring at it for nearly five minutes.
Like an idiot.
Like a man losing his mind.
Because suddenly I could picture him perfectly.
Sitting at the table.
Writing notes.
Chewing the end of the pen while thinking.
Smiling whenever he got excited about a scene.
The memory arrived so vividly that I nearly expected him to walk into the room.
He didn't.
Of course.
The realization settled like concrete inside my chest.
Heavy.
Permanent.
Painful.
I placed the pen inside a drawer.
Then spent the next hour staring at the ceiling.
Unable to concentrate on anything.
The problem with heartbreak wasn't the dramatic moments.
Not really.
It was the ordinary ones.
The moments where life continued moving while someone important was missing from it.
Those moments accumulated.
Day after day.
Until the absence became impossible to ignore.
One Friday evening, I closed the garage early.
Not intentionally.
I'd simply run out of reasons to stay.
The apartment greeted me with silence.
As always.
I dropped my keys onto the counter.
Removed my jacket.
Then stopped.
Because something felt wrong.
Not different.
Wrong.
For several seconds, I stood motionless.
Trying to identify it.
Then I realized.
I didn't want to be here.
The apartment wasn't home anymore.
Not without Elliot.
The realization struck harder than any physical blow.
Because I'd spent years building this life.
This business.
This place.
And somehow a twenty-one-year-old literature student had become the heart of it.
Without him, everything felt hollow.
The understanding stole my breath.
I sank onto the couch.
The same couch where we'd watched movies.
Argued about books.
Shared lazy Sunday mornings.
The memories arrived relentlessly.
One after another.
Refusing to stop.
Refusing to fade.
I buried my face in my hands.
Exhaustion settled over me.
Deep.
Bone-deep.
The kind that had nothing to do with sleep.
For the first time since the breakup, I stopped pretending.
Stopped lying.
Stopped hiding from the truth.
The truth was brutally simple.
I loved him.
I had always loved him.
And losing him hurt.
God.
It hurt.
More than prison.
More than broken bones.
More than the fights and accidents and scars I'd collected over the years.
Physical pain eventually healed.
This didn't.
This lived inside you.
Followed you.
Waited in every quiet moment.
The realization finally broke through every defense I'd built.
Every excuse.
Every justification.
Every lie.
I hadn't protected Elliot.
I hadn't saved his future.
I hadn't done anything noble.
I'd simply broken both our hearts.
And now I had to live with it.
The apartment remained silent around me.
Darkness slowly gathering beyond the windows.
Somewhere out there, Elliot was living his life.
Writing.
Studying.
Breathing.
Without me.
The thought should have comforted me.
Instead, it destroyed what little remained of my resolve.
Because after weeks of isolation, endless work, and sleepless nights, I finally understood something I'd been trying desperately not to admit.
Losing Elliot Reed hurt more than any wound I had ever suffered.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn't sure how to survive it.
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