34. Jack
JACK
T he morning starts like any other, with purpose, with clarity, with the idea of her.
I wake before my alarm, the faint pre-dawn light pressing at the edges of the curtains.
Manhattan is still half-asleep, the hum of the city not yet at full volume.
For a moment, I just lie there, letting the softness settle in my chest. Ivy is next door in Graham’s apartment, where she’s been staying since everything went sideways.
She’s close, but not close enough. This morning, I wish she were waking up beside me.
I consider adding something more, something personal, but delete the second sentence before it sends. She’s not the kind of woman who needs chasing. She’s the kind of woman you make space for, and pray she keeps choosing to stay.
I get dressed slowly, picking a navy wool coat and a charcoal sweater she once said made me look "less terrifying." The comment had been half-teasing, half-truth, tossed out over takeout and architectural drafts.
By the time I step into the elevator, my phone still hasn’t buzzed. She’s probably still asleep. Or showering. Or sketching something in that battered notebook of hers, the one with the fraying edges and ink-stained corners. I tell myself not to read into it, but the silence pricks at me anyway.
At the warehouse, the air is sharp with cold and possibility.
Pilar’s team is already setting up renderings on the old drafting table we moved near the rear staircase.
I walk the space slowly, my boots echoing off the concrete.
It still smells like sawdust and old steel, but today there’s something new, a faint trace of her perfume lingering near the mezzanine steps.
Warm, clean, a little citrus. She was here yesterday, laughing about skylight placement and arguing for reclaimed oak over polished concrete. She made the space feel alive.
Pilar approaches with the updated sketches.
Her hands are confident, her voice calm as she walks me through load-bearing adjustments and sustainable lighting options.
I nod, listening, but only halfway. I keep glancing toward the door, waiting for it to open.
For her to walk through. For her boots to tap across the floor and her voice to settle everything around us.
She doesn’t come. At ten-thirty, I text again: Still on for today? I’m holding your oat latte hostage.
No reply. I pace the length of the warehouse once, then again.
Pilar watches me closely, but doesn’t comment.
She’s smart enough to know when a client’s distracted.
I thank her for the updates, promise to review everything tonight, and send her team off early.
The warehouse empties out in minutes, leaving me alone with silence and a sense of something I can’t name.
On the way back, I stop at the corner coffee shop and buy her usual, oat milk latte, no foam.
The barista knows the order now, smiles like we’re regulars.
I leave with the cup in my hand, unsure what I’ll do with it.
Next, I walk to the art supply store on 3rd where she once spent twenty minutes debating between two identical shades of charcoal.
I circle the block twice, pretending I’m browsing. She’s not there.
When I finally get back to the building, I ride the elevator to our floor with one hand in my pocket, gripping the ring box I haven’t let go of all morning.
I haven’t opened it since the night I picked it up, but just having it with me has become a ritual.
A reminder of what’s coming. Of what I’m building toward.
I pause outside Graham’s apartment. Her door.
I knock once. No answer. I knock again. Nothing.
No footsteps. No music. No movement at all.
Graham is likely at the office, and Ivy…
she could be anywhere. With anyone. A thought I don’t want to entertain wedges itself into my chest. I shake it off.
I turn back toward my own apartment, half-hoping to find a note slipped under the door. There’s nothing.
I pour a glass of whiskey I don’t drink and set it down next to her favorite tea tin on the counter.
The amber liquid catches the light, and for a second, I think about throwing it.
Letting the glass shatter against the wall, just to feel something break that isn’t inside me.
My hand trembles slightly, the heat of restraint humming just beneath my skin.
But I don’t move. I don’t lash out. I just sit there and stare at it, still, aching.
It’s the little things, the way she reorganized my spice rack without asking, the sketch she left on a napkin by the toaster.
They’ve been anchors, proof she was still tethered here.
To me. But today… today the thread feels loose.
I open the ring box. Slowly. Just once. It’s a simple velvet box, kind jewelers hand over with reverence and just enough weight to make the moment feel real.
Inside, the diamond catches the light like it knows what it means.
I picture her hand, her eyes when I ask.
I picture saying the words not in a ballroom, not in front of cameras, but here.
In the warehouse. While she’s arguing over skylights and gallery walls.
Then I close the box. Because the longer I stare at it, the farther away the moment feels.
I sit at the kitchen table, try to draft something on my phone. A note. A message. A speech. Anything: You once said legacy doesn’t matter if it hurts. I want to build one that heals.
I delete it. Too much. Too soon.
I think about calling Julian. He’s not just a fixer.
He’s one of the few people Ivy still trusts.
If something was wrong, truly wrong, he’d know.
He’d tell me. I scroll to his name in my contacts.
My thumb hovers. Then I press call. It rings.
Once. Twice. Three times. No answer. I leave a message anyway, keeping my voice calm even as my pulse quickens.
"Julian, it’s Jack. Look, I know this isn’t urgent on paper, but... have you heard from Ivy? She didn’t show today. Didn’t text. It’s not like her. I’m not panicking, just... call me back when you can. Please."
I hang up, but the unease doesn’t. I head back out. I need to move. I need something to anchor me.
***
I am back at the warehouse. I unlock the side entrance and step inside. Late afternoon light filters in through the high windows. Her voice isn’t echoing today. Her laughter isn’t filling the space.
I set the ring box down on the table beside Pilar’s revised blueprint.
I don’t open it again. I don’t need to. I already know what’s inside.
But right now, I don’t know what’s outside this room, outside my reach, outside the carefully built plans I’ve been piecing together like a future.
She should’ve been here by now. She never misses walkthroughs.
She doesn’t forget to text. Ivy’s many things, scattered sometimes, spontaneous, but she doesn’t disappear. Not without a word. And yet… nothing.
The buzz of the city fades behind the walls.
A siren wails far in the distance. I sit on the edge of the mezzanine stairs and rub my palms together, trying to chase the chill that’s settled into my bones.
I scroll through our old texts, rereading them like they might explain what today is missing.
Photos from site visits. Half-formed dinner plans.
Bad puns about construction materials. Her last message from last night is still there, just a simple: Later.
And now, it feels like a question instead of a promise. Later when? Later… if? I grab my phone again and type something.
Jack: Where are you? Just want to make sure you’re okay.
I don’t send it. I delete it. Because if she’s just overwhelmed, the last thing she needs is me pushing. But if she’s not, if something happened, then I’m sitting here like a fool, waiting for a door that isn’t going to open.
I catch a glimpse of my reflection in one of the framed beams and barely recognize myself.
Tense. Distracted. Still wearing the coat I never took off.
I loosen the collar, set the ring box back into my pocket, and lean against the frame she once traced with her fingers while explaining her vision for the gallery walls.
It’s just one day, I tell myself. Maybe she’s offline.
Maybe she needed space. Maybe she’s sketching somewhere with her phone turned off and her mind on something brighter than this foundation, this city, this weight we’ve both been carrying.
But maybe she’s not. Maybe I forgot to tell her something that mattered.
Or maybe, worst of all, I waited too long to say something I should’ve said sooner.
My phone buzzes. It startles me more than it should. The sound ricochets off the steel rafters and slices through the quiet like a warning. I reach for it quickly, the device suddenly heavy in my hand, like it knows it carries more than just words. I look down. One new message. From Julian.
For a second, I don’t open it. My thumb hovers over the screen, my heart beating harder than it should for a simple notification.
It could be nothing. Or it could be everything.
The silence from Ivy today, the message I left, the ache that’s been growing louder with each passing hour, it all presses against the edges of this moment.
Outside, the city moves on without me. Inside, I stand completely still. I tap the screen. The message loads. Whatever it says, I already know it’s going to change everything.