Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
RACHEL
Iwoke up to an apartment that felt wrong in a way I couldn’t immediately name.
Not empty. Not quiet. Just… off.
The light was the same. The sounds were the same—David practicing somewhere below me, traffic murmuring through the open window—but something had shifted, and even though I’d slept wrapped around his pillow, his absence was suddenly unmistakable.
His mug was still in the sink.
Not washed. Not hidden. Just there, with a faint ring of coffee at the bottom serving as proof he’d existed in my kitchen. The negative space created by his absence.
His sweater was draped over the back of the chair. The one I’d let him keep after he accused me of trying to steal it. It still smelled faintly like his soap and my apartment, which felt unfair.
The guest room doors were both still closed.
Still empty.
I opened one, out of habit more than intention.
White walls. Bare floor. The unopened box labeled BED FRAME staring back at me like an accusation.
I stood there for a second, then closed the door again.
I didn’t delete anything. I didn’t unpack anything. I didn’t pack anything away.
I washed the mug, folded the sweater, and the photos of him I’d snagged with my phone stayed where they were, but I scrolled past them faster. When it came to the shots I’d taken with my camera, I printed a couple of those out and taped them to the wall.
It felt productive.
Which was, in retrospect, a lie.
I could’ve slept in.
I didn’t.
I woke up early with that jittery, over-caffeinated feeling that usually meant I was already behind even when I wasn’t. The week spread out in front of me like a grid I’d convinced myself I could conquer.
Two assignments for school.
A shoot with René.
Helping Noor prep for her portfolio review.
Three calls with Frankie about album concepts.
Plus the edits I’d ignored all week because I’d been pretending I was allowed to be a person.
I made coffee. Then more coffee.
I told myself it was fine.
That this was what I wanted.
That I liked being busy.
Which was true.
It was also the problem.
René gave me more responsibility Monday morning.
Not a promotion. Not praise. Just… more.
More decisions. More expectations. More quiet assumptions that I would handle it because I always had.
He didn’t ask how I was.
He never did.
He just handed me a list and said, “I need these by Thursday.”
No tone. No inflection. Just certainty.
My punishment was over.
He trusted my output.
I told myself that meant I was valued.
I didn’t examine what it meant that I felt relieved.
The nameless girl was already on set when I arrived.
It didn’t feel staged. It didn’t feel intentional. It didn’t feel like the universe was being cruel or poetic or anything remotely dramatic. I wasn’t that important.
She was just… there. Leaning against a wall, laughing with one of the stylists like she’d always belonged in the background of my day.
Like she’d never left.
She noticed me at the same time I caught sight of her.
And she smiled.
Not surprised. Not awkward.
Just warm.
Just easy.
“Hey,” she said, like we were picking up a conversation we’d only paused.
“Hey,” I replied — and was mildly unsettled by the fact that my body reacted before my brain caught up.
She didn’t mention the rain check. She didn’t tease. Didn’t flirt in any way that felt pointed or strategic.
No, she just stayed close while I adjusted my camera settings, watching my hands like she was genuinely curious how the whole thing worked.
“So,” she said, soft and bright, that lilting Australian accent making even the most mundane words sound like they belonged in a travel ad. “Big weekend? You’ve got very strong I run on coffee and poor decisions energy.”
I huffed a quiet laugh. “That bad?” I couldn’t even remember if I’d bothered with makeup that morning. I had showered — that much I was confident about — and I was pretty sure I’d brushed my hair before pulling it into a loose, messy ponytail that counted as effort in my current state.
“Bit,” she said cheerfully. “But in a heroic way. Like you’re about three deadlines away from a dramatic montage set to indie music.”
I smiled despite myself and glanced back at my camera, adjusting the strap like I needed something to do with my hands. “And you?”
She leaned her shoulder against the wall, crossing her ankles, entirely unbothered by time or expectations. “Oh, I had the most unhinged audition yesterday.”
“That already sounds promising.”
“They had me pretend I was madly in love with a man dressed as a cactus.”
I blinked, fingers still working the dials on my camera. “A… cactus.”
“Full costume,” she confirmed. “Green felt. Big googly eyes. The whole vibe was very low-budget desert rom-com.”
I adjusted the lens, checked the light, then looked back at her like my brain was still buffering. “What was the role?”
She grinned. “I think technically I was ‘Woman Who Finally Understands Love.’ Through cactus. Naturally.”
I laughed — actually laughed — the sound surprising me as much as her story. Something in my chest loosened, a tension I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying slipping just enough to let me breathe.
“And?” I asked, lifting the camera to frame the stylist and model across the room. “How’d it go?”
“I committed,” she said solemnly. “You can’t half-love a cactus, you know? You either go all in or you look insane for free.”
“That feels like life advice,” I said, snapping a test shot and checking the exposure.
She shrugged. “I try to be useful.”
There was no edge to it. No subtext heavy enough to analyze. Just two people talking while the crew adjusted lights around us, the world continuing at its usual chaotic pace.
She didn’t need anything from me.
Didn’t expect anything.
She was just… there. Telling a ridiculous story. Making me laugh. Existing in the same space without asking me to be anything other than present.
And I realized, with a faint jolt, how rare that had become in my life.
No expectations.
No history.
No future implied.
It was… easy.
Comparing her to Dominic, and discovering how much I appreciated the contrast, left a bruise. With him, everything had weight. Depth. History. Commitment. A story that kept unfolding whether I was ready for it or not.
With her, there was only now.
No before. No after. Just the present moment, self-contained and light enough that it didn’t ask anything of me.
I told myself, logically, that of course it felt different. Dominic and I had years behind us. A shared language. A thousand tiny memories stitched together into something that mattered.
This girl and I hadn’t even exchanged names.
But my body didn’t seem especially interested in logic.
It just noticed how simple it felt to breathe around her.
And that scared me more than wanting her ever could.
The shoot itself was simple — lifestyle editorial, all soft neutrals and controlled chaos.
Natural light through tall windows. A model curled into a linen chair, pretending to laugh at something off-camera.
Stylists fussing with sleeves and loose hair like they were sculpting moments instead of people.
I kept catching her in the edges of my frame.
Not centered. She wasn’t the focus of the shoot, but an accessory. Still, my eye kept finding her.
In reflections. In the glass of a mirror behind the set. Leaning against the wall with her arms folded, watching like she wasn’t performing for anyone.
I reminded myself more than once that I wasn’t photographing her, just the room.
But when I checked the back of my camera later, there she was again and again — blurred in the background, half in shadow, never quite the subject and never quite invisible.
It worked. It worked far better than I could have imagined.
By mid-afternoon, I was buzzing on coffee and momentum and the illusion that I was doing great.
I uploaded the files, renamed them, adjusted contrast like I always did — technically correct, emotionally distant.
Then, alone at my desk, I opened one frame I didn’t remember taking.
The model was perfect.
The light was perfect.
And in the far corner of the image, out of focus and completely unposed, she was smiling at something I’d said.
Not at the camera.
At me.
I stared at it longer than I meant to.
Not because it was beautiful.
But because it felt like the most honest thing I’d shot in weeks.
And I didn’t know what to do with that.
I helped Noor rearrange her portfolio, talked Frankie through three different visual concepts, sent René the first round of edits. One of those edits included nameless girl on the fringes, slightly blurred but reflected in the mirror. A feeling more than a person.
Probably not quite right for the assignment, but the others were bang on. So I didn’t feel guilty about it. I liked the contrast of light and shadow on her.
I was useful.
I was productive.
I was fine.
Good, I thought. I can breathe again.
That night, I sat on my couch with my laptop open and my phone face-down beside me.
I told myself I didn’t need it.
I told myself I didn’t miss him.
I told myself this was exactly what I’d wanted—my life back in its proper shape, my schedule humming, my brain too full to ache.
Then my fingers reached for my phone anyway.
I unlocked it.
Opened his name.
Stared at the empty text field.
And instead of typing, I closed it.
Opened my calendar.
And added another reminder.
Tuesday blurred in without asking permission.
The light felt sharper. My head felt heavier. The coffee tasted weaker no matter how much I poured.
I wore Dominic’s sweater to bed by accident — not as a statement, not even consciously. It was just there, on the chair, and I grabbed it the way I grabbed everything else lately, on instinct, without thinking about what it meant.
I woke up tangled in it, warm and irritated with myself.
I didn’t change.
I told myself it was practical.
I told myself it smelled like home.
I told myself a lot of things.
At the studio, René was already pacing when I arrived. He handed me a flash drive and didn’t look up.
“Cyrus needs support on the afternoon shoot,” he said. “You’ll manage post.”
No question. No acknowledgment. Just an assumption that I would absorb the workload the way I always did — quietly and competently.
I nodded. Took the drive. Opened three new folders before I’d even put my bag down.
This was the version of myself everyone liked.
The one who didn’t need anything.
The one who made things easier.
The one who never asked where she fit — only how fast she could move.
The nameless girl wasn’t on that shoot.
And I noticed the absence immediately.
I checked the mirror more than once.
Checked my phone twice.
Didn’t tell myself why.
By the time I got home that night, it was already dark. The building was loud with life — laughter from Alix’s place, someone cooking something garlicky, music bleeding faintly through the walls like the world was still happening just fine without me.
I stepped into my apartment and felt that same wrongness again.
Not empty.
Just… unoccupied.
I kicked off my shoes, dropped my bag, opened my laptop on autopilot.
My calendar was still there. Waiting. Color-coded and relentless.
Green. Blue. Yellow. Purple, barely visible.
I added two more reminders.
Moved one thing from Thursday to Friday.
Solved three problems before they became emergencies. Then dove into my assignments for this week. I was ahead on images, and we had a guest lecturer coming in, so we needed to be ready to just submit our images for critique the following week.
I would be ahead of the game.
And for a while, it worked.
I felt useful again.
I felt in control.
I felt nothing at all.
Later, lying in bed with Dominic’s sweater pulled up around my shoulders, I thought about the girl on set. Her accent. The cactus. The way she’d smiled at me without asking me to explain myself.
I thought about how easy it would be to see her again.
No history. No expectations. No one waiting on the other side of an ocean.
Just a moment.
Just now.
My phone was on the nightstand.
I picked it up before I could talk myself out of it.
Opened Dominic’s name.
Hit record.
“Hey,” I said softly, keeping my voice low even though no one else was there. “I know it’s stupid, but it’s… kind of crazy here already. I keep thinking I hear you in the kitchen.” A small laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “I miss you.”
I stared at the waveform for a second after I finished. My own voice looked too exposed in that little blue line. Too honest. Too much.
I imagined him listening to it in some quiet hotel room or airport lounge, pausing his life because I couldn’t handle the echo of mine.
I hit delete.
Told myself it sounded needy.
Told myself he didn’t need that from me.
I set the phone back down, rolled onto my side, and stared at the wall. Sooner or later, the sweater would stop smelling like Dominic. Especially if I kept wearing it and laundering it.
So I hugged his pillow and closed my eyes. I needed to sleep and if that meant pretending, then I’d do that too.