4. Erik
Erik
I know her door is open before I’m even in the hall.
Ashley’s laugh first. Then Elara talking over her — the rhythm of two people who’ve been arguing long enough that it’s just how they talk now.
I know the difference between Elara’s real laugh and the one she does when she wants people to stop asking questions.
Took me about a year to learn it. I didn’t set out to.
You live across from someone long enough, you pick up things you were never trying to learn.
That one’s real.
The elevator fully opens. Ashley’s struggling with her arms full of something, already grinning about it. Elara stands there holding the door for her, leaning into it with her hip, talking with the hand that’s free.
She’s in the leggings.
Three years and I still haven’t worked out what to do with the leggings. She has absolutely no idea. That’s the part that gets me—she isn’t trying. She just wears what’s comfortable.
It steals my breath every damn time.
A man can’t live like this.
She’s mid-sentence, something about a dress, making the case with her hands the way she usually does.
She’s committing to whatever she’s saying before she’s sure she believes it.
Then somewhere in the middle she decides.
She’ll talk herself all the way to the wrong end of an argument with total confidence. I’ve watched her do it enough to know.
Then she sees me.
“Hey, Ella.” I nod at Ashley too. Can’t leave her out. “Ladies.”
“Hey.” She says it like she wasn’t braced for people yet. Caught between one thing and the next.
“Big night?”
She gestures with the free hand. It explains nothing. “Out. Going. It’s a Friday.”
“It is.”
There’s a list of things I could do here.
I could take whatever Ashley’s about to drop.
I could ask which bar, and whether it’s the kind of place where men are stupid, which is all of them.
I could stand here and let her keep talking, because she will, she’ll narrate the whole night if you give her thirty seconds and a reason.
Every version of it ends with me in this hall longer than a neighbor has any business being.
So I shift the bags, find my key, and let myself in.
I don’t look back at her door.
That’s a lie. I don’t look back while she can see me. Different thing.
I drop the groceries inside and leave them where they land. Pull my jacket back on. I have somewhere to be.
The bike’s in the garage where I left it. I swing on. Sit there a second without starting it.
I wonder if she’ll wear the—
For fuck’s sake.
I start the bike.
The city blurs as I pick up speed. The bike clears my head; it always has. Somewhere past the river it all drops down to one thing, and the one thing is her.
Every time.
She’s the one who got me the apartment. Three years ago.
Barely knew me — we’d crossed paths a couple of times, the coffee shop, the sidewalk as we were both moving between places — and I mentioned I was looking for a place.
She lit right up and told me there was one open across from hers and walked me to the manager’s office herself.
Vouched for a man she’d spoken forty words to.
She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask who I was or why I was moving or whether I had references. She just heard somebody needed help and decided that was enough.
She forgot about it by the next week.
I didn’t.
She set the whole rest of my life in motion that afternoon and didn’t think to put herself anywhere in it.
Like she’d done nothing.
Like she wasn’t the entire reason.
Kyle lived there then. With her. He was fine. That’s the worst thing I’ve got on him, and I went looking for worse, because a man wants a reason and fine isn’t one. He was fine, and then one day I came down to the garage and watched him carry box after box out to his car.
After the third trip, I knew he wasn’t coming back.
She stayed.
I can’t count the times I almost knocked on her door that first week. Just to check. See if she needed anything. See if she wanted to talk, just to get it out, to have someone else understand.
I didn’t. It wasn’t mine to knock on.
She never asked.
And after — every time I saw her, she was a little less. She wasn’t crying, this was worse than crying. She just got quieter and smaller and stayed that way. Like she didn’t deserve good things anymore.
There’s a second parking spot down there that came with her unit. Hers now, both of them. She’s never once moved her car to the better one. Three years, and she still parks crooked in the same half she always had, like the other half belongs to someone who might come back.
Like Kyle leaving made her look bad.
Like it gave her proof.
It shouldn’t have.
She’s over him. Kyle’s a closed door; I don’t waste worry there. It’s what she kept from it that I can’t get past. She decided she’s not someone a person stays for, and she’s been right about it for so long it looks like the truth to her now.
She’s wrong.
So wrong.
There’s nothing I can do about that yet.
Priya’s already pulling my order when I walk into the coffee shop across town. She sets the cup down. Doesn’t quite let go of it.
“Hey, Erik. Would you maybe want to get dinner sometime?”
“I’m sorry.” I mean it. “I’ve already found the girl for me.”
“Oh.” She blinks. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone.”
“I’m not.”
“I don’t—”
“She doesn’t know yet.”
She’s quiet a second. Then she nods, slow, and lets go of the cup. “I hope she figures it out.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
I leave the bike and cross to the park on foot. Marcus is on his bench, same jacket, same paper he’s been reading for as long as I’ve been doing this.
“Nice night for a walk.”
“It is.”
That’s the whole conversation. It’s the same one every night. It’s a good one.
I keep going until the trees close in behind me.
It’s the path I always take. I could walk it with my eyes shut and most nights I half do. My feet find the roots on their own while the rest of me stays back at a door three miles behind me. I like to think it becomes a little more mine every time I walk it.
The trees give out and there it is. Same as last night. Same as every night.
Black stone. Dead grass. The marks reaching out of the rock in long arms toward a tree line that keeps its distance. Like the woods know better than to come closer. Nothing grows here. Three years and I’m not sure anything’s tried.
I set the coffee on the rock and sit down on the same patch of dirt I always sit on. I’ve worn it smooth.
I’ve been coming here every night for three years and I couldn’t tell you what I’m waiting for at this point. Nothing happens. Nothing has ever happened. And I still can’t make myself stop coming, like tonight’s the night it’s different.
Hasn’t stopped me yet.
A squirrel comes out of the trees and stops dead right at the line where the grass goes black. Won’t cross it. I sit up a little. Nothing comes here. Three years and the only thing that’s ever stood on this dirt is me.
“She showed me a note,” I tell the squirrel. Out loud. I’m talking to forest animals now, but at least it’s somebody. “Shoved it at me four seconds after she opened the door. Already sure it was nothing. Already sure it wasn’t for her, not really.”
The squirrel flicks its tail.
“She kept it anyway.”
Which is good. She deserves that much. She deserves a lot more than that, and a handwritten line about her own light is the smallest possible start, and she nearly handed it to me twice.
The squirrel decides it’s heard enough and bolts.
Nobody made me come here. There’s no one waiting on a report. No one left who’d have the standing to send me, even if there were. I come because I decided to, and I keep coming because some part of me still needs to, and those aren’t the same as being told.
The coffee goes cold. I finish it anyway.
I stand, knowing it’s useless. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m always back tomorrow.
I’m almost at the tree line when I hear it.
So quiet I should have missed it.
Humming.
Low, tuneless, close. Threaded through the dead air like it’s been there all along and I’m only now being let in on it.
I go still. I don’t breathe. I make myself part of the quiet so it’ll keep doing whatever it’s doing.
Three years. No footsteps. No voices. Nothing.
And now this.
It’s about fucking time.