22. Enzo
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Enzo
The apartment is too quiet.
I’ve lived here for years. Thousands of nights in these rooms, alone, perfectly fine with my own company. I never needed anyone here. This was my space. My proof that I didn’t need the family that threw me out or the world that expected me to fail.
Now it just feels empty.
Her coffee cup is still in the sink. I should wash it. I don’t.
***
The first night is the worst.
I keep reaching for her in my sleep. My hand finds cold sheets and I wake up, disoriented, heart pounding, before I remember.
She’s gone. She’s supposed to be gone. I told her to go.
I stare at the ceiling until morning.
I could call her.
I pick up my phone a hundred times. Put it down a hundred times. She said she’d call when she was ready. She didn’t say when that would be.
I’m not going to be the one who breaks first. I’m not going to be the man who can’t give her space, who crowds her, who proves she was right to leave.
I put the phone in a drawer, and an hour later I take it back out, and then I put it down again, and that’s the whole shape of my evening.
***
Work helps, a little. I go into the office I usually avoid. I find things that need doing and then I do them slowly, badly, just to fill the hours with noise so I don’t have to sit in the silence she left behind.
The man who runs my office for me asks if I’m all right. I tell him I’m fine. He’s worked for me long enough to know that’s a lie, and long enough to know better than to push it.
***
Three days in, I break.
Not by calling her. I’m not that weak. But I drive past her building once, just to see that it’s real, that she’s somewhere out there, that she exists in the world even if she’s not in mine.
The light in her window is on.
I sit in the car for twenty minutes, watching it, and then I drive home. I don’t do it again. I want to every night after, but I don’t.
***
She texts on day four.
I’m okay. The room is small but it’s mine. I hope you’re okay too.
I read it six times. I type a response and delete it, type another and delete that one too, because everything I want to say is some version of the same thing I promised her I wouldn’t say.
Finally I send two words, because two words are all I can manage that aren’t begging. I’m here.
She sends back a single red heart, and I stare at it for an hour like it might tell me something more if I look hard enough.
The thing about letting go is that it doesn’t feel noble.
In books, in movies, the man who releases the woman he loves gets to feel righteous and selfless about it. He makes the sacrifice, there’s swelling music, everyone knows he did the hard thing.
In real life, it just feels like shit.
I miss her. Every minute of every day, I miss her. The way she hums when she’s reading. The way she steals all the blankets. The way she looks at me like I’m worth something, like I’m not just the family disappointment wearing a nice suit.
I could go get her. I could show up at that apartment and tell her I was wrong, that the waiting is killing me, that I need her here.
I don’t.
Because that’s not love. That’s just need wearing love’s clothes.
If she comes back, it has to be her choice. Not because I convinced her or guilted her or made it too hard to stay away. It has to be real. She has to be sure.
Even if the waiting breaks me, even if it takes forever.
***
Day seven.
I’m sitting on the couch where we used to sit together, drinking whiskey I’m not tasting, when my phone rings.
Her name on the screen.
I answer before the second ring.
“Hey,” she says. Her voice is soft. A little tired.
“Hey.”
“I just wanted to hear your voice. Is that okay?”
“That’s okay.”
We don’t say anything for a minute. Just breathe on the line together, miles apart.
“I miss you,” she says finally.
My chest cracks open.
“I miss you too.”
“I’m not ready to come back yet. I need you to know that. But I miss you. And I wanted you to know that too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” She laughs a little, and it’s the best sound I’ve heard all week. “You’re not very talkative tonight.”
“I’m trying not to say the wrong thing.”
“What’s the wrong thing?”
Come home. Please come home. I can’t do this without you.
“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s why I’m being careful.”
“You don’t have to be careful with me.”
“I know. Old habits.”
Another silence. Comfortable this time. Almost like she’s here.
“I should go,” she says. “Early class tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Enzo?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For not chasing me. For letting me do this.”
I close my eyes. “I told you I would.”
“I know. But saying it and doing it are different things.” A pause. “This is you doing it. And I notice. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Goodnight, Enzo.”
“Goodnight, Ana.”
The line goes dead. I sit there with the phone in my hand, her voice still echoing in my ear.
She misses me. She’s not ready to come back, but she misses me.
It’s not enough. It’s also everything.
I don’t know how long this will take. Days, weeks, months, maybe, however long she needs to figure out who she is when no one’s holding her up, however long it takes for her to be sure of it.
I’ll wait.
Not because I’m noble. Not because I’m selfless. But because she’s worth it. Because the version of her that comes back, if she comes back, will be someone who actually chose me, not someone who was drowning and grabbed the nearest thing that floated.
Because she wanted to.
That’s worth waiting for.
That’s worth anything.
***
The apartment is still too quiet.
But I’m learning to live with it.