December 13, 2018—Seattle, Washington—Five Months Later
Logan gripped the wheel as if holding on to the last remnants of himself, though he felt like a shadow, an empty vessel going through the motions.
The Thursday traffic crawled along, red taillights blinking in sync with the ache pulsing in his chest. His father sat beside him, absorbed in a phone call, oblivious to Logan’s turmoil, his voice a faint hum against the chaos Logan carried inside.
Four days ago, he had proposed to Sandy.
Four days, but it already felt like a lifetime, a weight pressing on his spirit, suffocating him.
He remembered the night with a detached clarity, as if watching it all from a distance.
There was no ceremony, no momentous kneeling, no grand declaration.
Just a small box, containing a ring of his father’s choosing, was placed on a restaurant table in a room where the colors had already faded to dull grays.
The world around him had blurred; faces lost definition, voices melted into static.
All he could hear was the beat of his own heart, trembling with dread, with regret he couldn’t name but felt in every bone.
When Sandy said yes, he forced a smile that fit his face like a mask, rigid and unnatural. Her joy should have been infectious, a spark to ignite his own, but instead, it smothered every unspoken hope he’d harbored, slamming shut a door he had never been brave enough to walk through.
He dropped her off with practiced ease, exchanging a soft, hollow “goodnight” as she lingered by the car, her invitation hanging in the air.
“Come inside,” she had said, her voice warm, hopeful.
But he deflected with a careful lie—something about wanting to take things slow—words that felt foreign in his mouth.
He drove home in suffocating silence, the hum of the engine his only company.
His face remained still, betraying nothing to the world outside, but inside, he was crumbling, breaking piece by piece.
The weight of his own duplicity pressed down on him, and he wondered how long he could keep pretending, how long before the mask cracked and the truth he had buried so deeply finally came spilling out.
Once alone in his room, Logan let the mask slip, feeling it fall like shattered glass around him.
He sank to the floor, and a flood broke free, unstoppable, a relentless tide of sorrow he’d tried so hard to hold back.
It was a grief without edges, boundless, like an endless sea, and it rolled through him in waves that left him breathless, aching.
His hand trembled as he reached for his phone, the familiar ritual too strong to resist. Adrian’s Facebook page glowed faintly in the darkness, a pale lighthouse guiding him toward a shore he could never reach.
It had become a ritual now, this quiet haunting.
Each day, he found himself drifting back to Adrian’s page, drawn there like a sailor to the rocks, knowing the hurt it would bring but helpless to stay away.
His fingers moved slowly, tracing through photos like he was sifting through sand, holding each memory up to the light.
There were no new posts, no updates, only the same familiar fragments: Adrian laughing beside him on a beach or in the water, eyes bright with that spark that seemed to catch every ray of sun.
Logan’s heart clenched painfully, his chest tightening as he scrolled, his screen a window into a world that had slipped through his hands.
He opened his laptop and clicked on the secret folder, watching as the screen filled with images from their trip.
Each one hit like a wave. There was Adrian, a flash of sun in his eyes, a smile that seemed made of open skies and salt air.
Logan clicked on a video, and suddenly the silence of the room was filled with the sound of Adrian’s laughter—clear, bright, like sunlight spilling over the water.
It filled the room, filled his empty and aching heart, until it became too much, and he slammed the laptop shut, the sound echoing in the emptiness.
The darkness returned, pressing in, deep and endless.
He lay back on his bed, fingers fumbling for the old, worn lifesaver bracelet Adrian had given him, the fibers rough yet comforting in his hand.
He clutched it as though it could tether him, as though it could keep him from drifting further into the depths.
He held it close, feeling the texture press into his palm, like holding onto a sliver of the past, a piece of something he could never let go.
Closing his eyes, he imagined himself submerging in the seawater, letting it soak him, cover him, shallow breath and cold water, and the haunting memory of Adrian.
And now, here he was, in front of a high-end suit store with his father, who had already stepped out, more excited than Logan had seen him in years.
Inside, his father took charge, speaking eagerly with the sales staff, barely sparing Logan a glance. “It’s going to be a small wedding,” his father explained, rolling his eyes, “but we still need something that makes a statement.”
Logan looked around at the walls lined with suits, endless rows of dark fabric under harsh fluorescent lights. The whole place smelled of starch and polished leather, like a theater of empty pretense. When the tailor asked what he wanted, Logan’s voice came out low and flat.
“That one,” he said, pointing to a mannequin in the far left corner.
“Sir, we have thousands of options, if you’d like to look around,” the tailor replied.
“No,” Logan said, barely looking at the suit.
He could feel his father’s hand on his shoulder, his proud smile, the way his eyes gleamed with the illusion that this was a rite of passage, that his son was taking his place among men.
But Logan felt hollow, his mind lost at sea, adrift on a current pulling him somewhere he did not want to go.
They took his measurements, lifting his arms, adjusting him here and there, and he complied mechanically, like a mannequin himself.
His father chuckled with a proud gleam in his eye, murmuring about how it was “a man’s choice” to pick the first suit, never knowing the truth.
Logan didn’t care about the suit. He didn’t care if it fit or if it looked good or even if he showed up at the altar in it.
All he could think of was how much he wished this were different, how much he wished he were anywhere else, with anyone else.
With him.
He could almost feel Adrian beside him as they finished up, could almost hear the echo of Adrian’s easy laughter in the cold, sterile light of the dressing room.
For a fleeting moment—a mere second, a fraction of time—he dared to envision, to ponder, to wish… what it might be like if he were present now, selecting a tailored suit for a wedding ceremony alongside Adrian.
The tug in his chest sharpened, a twisting pain that seemed to tear something loose inside him, something he barely had the strength to hold onto anymore.
That feeling swallowed him whole, vast and merciless, like staring into the bottomless pit of the ocean itself.
It was like sinking past the last fingers of light, past the reach of the living world.
Like opening his eyes underwater and seeing nothing but black—no ground, no sky, only the crushing weight of salt and sorrow pressing in on all sides.
No breath.
No direction.
Just endless darkness, and the cold, and the slow, terrible knowing that he was too deep to ever find his way back.
In the enveloping darkness, he could still sense Adrian’s hand reaching out to him.
He could almost hear his voice, so faint it teetered on the edge of imagination, beckoning him home, whispering his name, uttering words Logan dared not revisit, for fear they would shatter the fragile remnants of his wrecked spirit.
“Shoes?” his father’s voice cut through, bright and oblivious, slicing Logan back into the room like a knife through cloth.
Logan blinked, the world slamming back into place around him; the bright, soulless lights, the polite murmur of the tailor, the heavy pressure of the suit against his skin. His lungs felt raw, as if he had been holding his breath without realizing it. Like he hadn’t breathed for far too long.
“Whatever’s on the mannequin,” he mumbled, voice thick, unfamiliar.
He forced a smile, the kind of smile that left a metallic taste on his tongue, sharp and wrong, and nodded toward the man waiting with a tape measure and patient hands.
As he stepped back outside, the world around him seemed vast, empty, and unsteady, as if he were adrift on an endless sea with no land in sight.
The sky above was pale and dull, and the buildings around him felt foreign, like towering rocks rising from a dark, turbulent ocean.
He wanted to run, to escape to some distant shore where he could breathe again, where the weight pressing on him would dissolve into mist. But all he had was this suit, this role, this cage that felt tighter with each passing moment.
He knew now that he could keep moving forward, keep pressing through this hollow existence, even as his heart remained stranded, lost, unmoored, and forever tangled somewhere beyond the edges of this world, adrift in the waves and tethered to the only soul who had ever made him feel truly alive.