Chapter 17 #2
The lecture is again perfect, timed to the second. Brilliant, efficient, and utterly useless. My assistants take notes. One student even asks a semi-decent question.
But every time my brain forgets for a brief second that she’s not here, the empty seat stares back at me from the other side of the room and the sensation hits me like a tsunami, ten times worse than before.
Nothing.
It almost feels like she’s doing it on purpose, to teach me a lesson. Like she’s erasing herself from my life just so I can beg her to return.
And I hate how this idea sounds less pathetic by the minute.
Because for the first time in a very long time, I have something to lose.
Five days turn into six, then into seven days of silence, and every one of them is louder than the previous one.
There is no more structure in my life now—only the illusion of a human being with an empty core.
The emails and the days blur into each other, the lectures deliver themselves and the food I force myself to eat tastes like chalk.
I stopped counting the days on the calendar, and started counting the days since she went missing.
But on the seventh day, the desperation turns into obsession and the obsession into the need to see her.
She has rituals, my little ember. Even her chaos craves my sort of structure.
Every Saturday, like clockwork, she picks up wine.
Same corner store. Same relative hour. I noticed it before, when I was studying her.
A meaningless tick that seemed useless to remember—until now.
Now it is a thread I could pull, something I could use.
I stand across the street from her apartment, waiting for her.
I observe every person who enters the building, every set of eyes that could potentially watch me from her window, every move inside that I could detect. Nothing moves.
Every woman I see with a similar walk twists my stomach into knots before I get close enough to see it’s not her. Wrong height. Wrong hair. Wrong shoes. Wrong everything.
I planned to stay ten minutes. Since I’ve already been here for twenty-eight, there’s nothing wrong with staying forty. All I do is wait and wait until the possibility of her not showing up becomes reality and I finally embrace the idea of giving up on sanity.
She is gone, truly gone. Not just missing for a few days, not just retreating.
Gone like a shadow burned off the surface of the earth.
And I did that. I pushed her so far, she no longer wishes to be herself.
I’d destroyed her edge by edge, fracture by fracture—and now there’s nothing left for me to hold.
I pointlessly hoped she would claw her way back to curse me, to perform a final act, but it seemed she’d outgrown me.
It feels like I’ve been dismissed.
I always thought breakdowns were noisy and violent. The shattering of glass, the screaming into mirrors, collapsing to the ground under your own weight.
Turns out, mine is quiet.
It feels like every morning I’m not actually waking up, just resurfacing from something dark and still and restless.
The light in the apartment is the wrong kind of white, the bedsheets have the wrong texture of silk, and all the sounds around are too noisy. I haven’t left my room in days, and all my classes have been canceled until further notice.
My body stinks of unwashed skin and sour clothes, but I don’t care. I stopped caring days ago, right around the moment I stopped wasting energy moving and just sat, staring at the empty ceiling, letting the silence scream louder than I ever could.
I try to open the messages again, but there is nothing. Her profile has vanished. But I still have the number, which I promised myself I would never use after my drunk text.
I’m only keeping it for emergencies, since I’ll never contact her again.
I told myself this tens of thousands of times.
So, of course, the first message I type is just as miserable as I am.
Azrael: Victoria!
No answer, so I double down.
Azrael: This isn’t over.
I wait for a reply, but it doesn’t show up.
I feel something inside me breaking.
Calling her would be too desperate, so I don’t do it once or twice, but nineteen fucking times, just to prove that point. And every single time, I’m met by the disconnected signal. No callback. No acknowledgment. Not even the courtesy of a decline.
I continue pacing for two hours, and when waiting becomes unbearable, I start tearing the apartment apart, destroying every object that is still intact. I punch the walls and slash the furniture until regardless of the way you’re looking at it, there is a visual proof of my mental state.
She’s mocking me. That’s how I can explain it. She is mocking me and seeing how far I will go. I can basically visualize her, in her apartment, with a full glass of wine, laughing at my stupid attempts.
“Oh, love. You want to play? Let me show you the hell you’ve created in your absence.”
I take a shower and put on clean clothes, then grab my keys along with my obsession and rush out of the house.
After breaking two or forty traffic laws and almost destroying my car from jumping out of it without fully stopping, I’m finally in front of her building. But unlike last time, I’m not waiting.
I just take a moment to check her apartment window, but there’s still no light, no movement in sight. Yet something tells me she’s inside. I can feel her.
I go straight to the top floor, pacing in the elevator like a lunatic. The elevator doors barely open, and I’m already ringing her bell.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Nothing.
“Open the fucking door,” I shout, knowing she won’t. Knowing she couldn’t. And still—
I say it again.
I try the handle, but it’s locked. Like a fucking lock would ever stop me. I step back, forcing all my strength and balance on one leg, then kicking the door with all the force I’m capable of.
Once.
Twice.
CRACK. The door gives.
I don’t wait for an invitation to step inside. I’m fully prepared to see everything and nothing at all. My eyes are still adjusting to the lack of light when I see it.
“Missed me, love?”