21. Eliana
Eliana
The days that followed were painfully quiet.
I threw myself into work because it was easier than sitting alone with my thoughts.
I stayed longer at school, arrived earlier than necessary, and found reasons to remain after my last class had ended.
I graded papers that could have waited until the next morning, reorganized lesson plans that didn't need reorganizing, and answered emails simply because silence became unbearable whenever I had nothing left to do.
Writing was worse.
Every evening, I opened my laptop and stared at the blank document on my screen, waiting for the words to come.
They never did. I would type a sentence, read it twice, and delete it.
I tried writing a romantic scene between two fictional characters, but the moment the hero spoke, I heard Adrian's voice in my head.
I closed the document.
The next night, I tried again.
The hero was wealthy, confident, impossibly charming, and irritatingly good at making the heroine smile when she wanted to stay angry with him. I stared at the character description and immediately deleted it.
Even my fictional men had started sounding like Adrian.
I told myself it was temporary. I had spent weeks with him, after all. Of course my mind was still adjusting to his absence. Eventually, I would stop expecting his name to appear on my phone or his voice to greet me when I walked through my house door.
Eventually, I would move on.
At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
My heart refused to cooperate.
Adrian had been blocked for days, yet somehow he hadn't disappeared completely from my life.
Every morning, there was something waiting outside my house.
The first time, it was a bouquet of white roses with a small envelope tucked beneath the ribbon. I recognized his handwriting immediately, and I stood there staring at the envelope for several seconds before taking the flowers inside.
I didn't open the letter.
The next morning, there were lilies.
The morning after that, pink roses.
Some days he sent flowers I had never received from him before, as though he were trying to find new ways to remind me that he still remembered every little thing I liked.
The letters were always handwritten.
I never read them.
I told myself that was the strongest thing I could do.
Still, I couldn't throw them away.
I kept every envelope inside the drawer beside my desk, placing each one carefully on top of the last. I knew it was ridiculous. If I truly wanted to move on, I should have thrown everything into the trash and never looked back.
But I couldn't.
There was something about seeing his handwriting that made the past few weeks feel real again.
One morning, I stood outside my house with another bouquet in my hands and stared at the envelope.
I turned it over without opening it.
There were only a few lines written on the front.
I knew I shouldn't read them.
I put it in the drawer with the others instead.
A week passed.
Then another.
Adrian never came to my door.
He never demanded that I speak to him. He never appeared outside my school or tried to corner me somewhere I couldn't escape. He respected the distance I had asked for, even though I knew the flowers meant he hadn't given up.
His silence somehow hurt more than an argument would have.
The letters changed too.
Some contained only a few simple lines about missing me. Others were short poems about waiting, hope, and loving someone even when the person you loved no longer wanted you near them.
Not once did he ask me to forgive him.
Not once did he tell me I owed him another chance.
The closest he came to asking anything of me was a single sentence that appeared more than once in different forms.
One day, you will understand.
I hated that sentence.
Mostly because some part of me wanted it to be true.
I kept telling myself that Adrian was trying to manipulate me, that the flowers and letters were simply another way of keeping himself in my thoughts. Yet if that had been his intention, it was working.
I thought about him constantly.
At school.
At home.
While grocery shopping.
While writing.
Even during the quiet moments before sleep.
And then there was Ethan.
He began appearing in my life slowly enough that I didn't notice how much space he was taking up until he was already there.
He checked on me after work without making a big deal out of it. Sometimes he would text to ask whether I'd eaten, and other times he would simply wait outside the school when my last class ended.
One evening, I walked out to find him leaning against his car.
"You look exhausted," he said.
"I am exhausted."
"Then you're coming with me."
I raised an eyebrow. "Where?"
"Dinner."
"I didn't say yes."
"You didn't say no either."
Despite myself, I smiled.
That was what made Ethan easy.
I didn't have to explain every expression on my face to him. I didn't have to wonder whether he was hiding something every time he looked at me. There was a familiarity between us that existed long before Adrian had entered my life and turned everything upside down.
I got into the car.
Dinner became a regular occurrence.
Sometimes we went somewhere casual after work. Other times, Ethan picked up food and we ate at my place while I complained about my students and he listened with the patience of someone who had heard the same stories before.
He never pushed me to talk about Adrian.
When I brought him up, Ethan listened.
When I didn't, he didn't ask.
One evening, I found myself telling him about my writing problems.
"I can't write anymore," I admitted, staring at the untouched food on my plate.
Ethan leaned back in his chair. "You will."
"You sound very confident."
"I've known you long enough to know when you're actually finished with something."
I looked at him.
"And am I?"
He studied me for a moment before answering.
"No."
The simplicity of his response caught me off guard.
I looked down.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"You don't have to do anything right now."
"What if I made the wrong decision?"
Ethan's expression softened. "Then you'll figure that out too."
I appreciated that he didn't tell me what I wanted to hear.
He didn't tell me Adrian was dangerous.
He didn't tell me I had to forget him.
He simply stayed.
And slowly, without realizing it, I began depending on that presence.
With Ethan, life felt familiar.
Safe.
There were no locked doors, no mysterious paintings, no unanswered questions waiting behind every conversation. There was only the man I had known for years, sitting across from me and making an ordinary evening feel uncomplicated.
I knew I should have been grateful for that.
Yet sometimes, when Ethan was talking and I caught myself smiling, another face would appear in my mind.
Adrian.
I would remember the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching. The way his voice softened whenever he said my name. The way he had stood on the road and let me walk away because I had asked him not to follow.
Then I would remember the paintings.
The diary.
The locked room.
And I would remind myself why I had left.
So I kept moving forward.
Or at least, I tried.
Adrian waited somewhere beyond the distance I had created, sending flowers and letters I refused to open.
Ethan stayed close, patiently filling the silence Adrian had left behind.
And somewhere between them, I was beginning to wonder whether moving on meant forgetting Adrian or simply learning how to live without him.
* * *
The rain had been falling for nearly an hour when someone knocked on my door.
I wasn't expecting anyone, so when I opened it, Ethan stood on the other side, completely drenched, his dark hair plastered against his forehead and rainwater dripping from his jacket.
He held a paper bag in one hand and looked at me with a sheepish expression that made me laugh despite myself.
"You look terrible," I said.
"So do you," he replied, stepping inside. "I brought dinner."
He lifted the bag, revealing two containers of spicy ramen and a bottle of alcohol. "I figured you could use something stronger than coffee tonight."
"You got soaked just to bring me ramen?"
"I underestimated the rain."
He shrugged out of his jacket, but his shirt was soaked through as well. I stared at him for a moment before grabbing a towel from the bathroom and tossing it at him. "You're going to get sick. Take that off."
He caught the towel and raised an eyebrow. "You're ordering me to undress now?"
"Don't make it weird."
He laughed, then pulled his wet shirt over his head and wiped his hair with the towel. I turned toward my bedroom, retrieved one of my father's old shirts that I had kept tucked away in a drawer, and handed it to him.
"Here. Put this on."
"Your father's?"
"Yes. Unless you'd prefer pneumonia."
He took the shirt with an amused smile. "Your concern is touching."
I rolled my eyes and turned away while he changed. When I looked back, I noticed the tattoos covering parts of his arms and shoulders. I had never really seen them before, and there was something strangely disarming about seeing this side of him that I had never paid much attention to.
"You have tattoos?"
Ethan glanced down at himself. "A few."
"A few?" I stepped closer, studying the ink with curiosity. "You have more than a few."
He smiled and explained some of them, telling me where he had gotten them and what they meant. One represented something from his childhood, another was connected to a person he had once lost, and there were smaller ones that seemed to carry stories he wasn't particularly interested in sharing.
Then I noticed the tattoo over his heart. Three numbers were written there in Roman numerals.
"What's that?"
His expression changed slightly as he looked down. "That one?"
I nodded. "555."
He was quiet for a moment before giving me a small smile. "It has a hidden meaning. It's a date when life gave me a chance again to gain back something which is meant to be mine."
"What does that mean?"
"Maybe someday I'll tell you."
I stared at him. "Seriously?"