32. Liv
Chapter thirty-two
Liv
The Boss Babes group chat wakes before my alarm.
Sam
Donut. Usual time. No objections.
Priya
I object to “no objections” on principle.
Nadia
Liv?
My name sits there with the cursor blinking under it.
I have been awake for twenty-three minutes. The quiet of my apartment should feel familiar.
It doesn’t.
I type, Coming, and get out of bed.
By eight fifteen, I’m dressed for coffee with my friends, the brass pen in my bag. At the door, I stop with my hand on the lock.
Across the hall, Josh’s door is closed.
Six steps is not far enough to explain why the morning with Iris felt like a beginning, and now whatever Josh and I started feels like something I am already losing.
I lock my door and cross to the elevator.
The Donut is already workday loud when I arrive. Sam has our table, Priya has a pastry she does not trust, and Nadia has the chair with her back to the wall.
“There she is,” Sam says, lifting her head. “You survived.”
I put my bag on the empty chair. “Good morning to you too.”
“That was the soft version.”
“It really wasn’t.”
Sam slides my coffee toward me. “Oat flat white.”
Priya points at her pastry. “This is supposed to be pistachio. It is green in a way I don’t trust.”
“Most pistachio things are green,” Sam says.
“That does not make them innocent.”
“So,” Sam says, with fake casualness. “How is Iris withdrawal?”
“It’s quieter than I expected,” I say.
Sam’s face softens.
“Different quiet.”
Nadia studies me over her coffee. “And Josh?”
There it is.
I set my cup down. “He’s fine.”
Nadia just looks at me.
“What?” I ask.
“That was the answer you give when you do not want to answer.”
“I answered. With two words.”
“Exactly.”
Sam reaches across the table and pats the air near my wrist, not quite touching. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
I take another sip of coffee, mostly to avoid answering.
Nadia waits.
She is very good at waiting.
She can hold a silence until I start filling it just to make her stop.
“He brought me coffee the other morning,” I say.
Sam smiles. “That sounds promising.”
“It was. I think.” I turn the cup slightly on the table. “He made two before he remembered I wasn’t there.”
Nadia’s gaze sharpens, but she says nothing.
“And then he brought over my lucky suit later,” I add. “I forgot it was still in his guest room.”
Sam’s smile goes softer. “Liv.”
“I know. He remembers everything. He brings coffee. He brings the suit. He makes me laugh.”
“And?” Nadia asks.
I lower my eyes to my coffee. “And now that I moved back to my place, he stays in the hall.”
No one says anything.
“He stays in the hall,” Sam repeats, quiet.
“He has come over twice, but only up to the doorway.”
Priya’s face has lost the pastry argument. “Did he come in?”
“No.”
“Did you ask him to?”
I keep my eyes on my coffee. “I told him he wasn’t interrupting.”
Nadia's eyebrows lift.
“That is not the same thing,” Nadia says. “It means he had to translate.”
“He is a surgeon, not a golden retriever. He can interpret a simple sentence.”
Sam makes a small sound. “I’m not sure men in love are strong translators.”
I look at her.
She looks back with great innocence. “Generally speaking.”
“I did not say love.”
“No,” Priya says. “You said coffee, dry cleaning, lucky suit, hallway, and felony joke. We are all doing our best with the evidence.”
That should make me laugh.
It almost does.
Nadia’s eyes drop to my hand. I am turning the brass pen between my fingers.
“Did you tell him moving your things back didn’t mean you were leaving?”
I stare at her. “I live across the hall.”
“That’s geography. I asked what you told him.”
My fingers tighten around the pen. “There wasn’t anything to tell. Iris went home. I had work.”
“Sure.”
“That is not an argument.”
“It was not meant to be.”
“It sounds like one.”
“No,” Nadia says. “This is the argument.”
Sam shifts in her chair. Priya’s hand settles around her coffee.
Nadia ignores both of them. She looks at me.
“The day Iris went home," she says " you moved your laptop, your mug, your shoes, your suitcase, and your clothes out of his apartment while he was at work.”
“Because they belonged in mine.”
“I know.”
“Then what are we talking about?”
“I’m talking about what he came home to.”
I look away first.
Heat climbs under my sweater. Not shame. Shame makes people plead guilty to charges no one filed.
“I went to my apartment,” I say, too cleanly. “The baby went home. The arrangement ended. Josh had work. I had work. We live across the hall from each other, not in different time zones.”
Nadia waits one beat. “From where he was standing, that may have looked like you ran.”
The word hits wrong.
“I didn’t.”
“I believe you.”
“I came back from Chicago.”
“I know.”
“I kissed him.”
“I know.”
“The next morning—” I stop.
The next morning belongs somewhere else. Somewhere with Iris’s warm weight and Josh’s arm behind me and the sound of his laugh against my hair.
Nadia’s voice stays even. “Does he know you didn’t run?”
The question does not land all at once.
I remember Josh in my doorway, holding two coffees and standing with one foot angled toward his own apartment.
Before I remembered you’d left.
My hand goes still.
Josh had said that the morning he brought coffee.
Before I remembered you’d left.
“I didn’t think—” I stop again, because that is not a defense I respect in other people.
Nadia’s face softens by one careful degree. “I know.”
Priya breaks a corner off her pastry and does not eat it. “He may be wrong too, you know.”
I meet her eyes.
“He is allowed to ask. He is allowed to come in without a prop. He is allowed to use adult words and not just deliver dry cleaning like a very attractive courier.”
Sam nods. “A very tired courier with a medical degree and a bad plan.”
Nadia gives her a look.
“What?” Sam says. “I’m helping.”
Despite everything, a laugh gets out of me.
Priya points the pastry corner at me. “There. Proof of life.”
“I’m fine.”
All three of them look at me.
“Okay, I am not fine,” I amend. “But for the record, I did not run.”
“I know.”
“He should know me better than that.”
“Maybe,” Nadia says. “But did you tell him?”
My phone buzzes.
I glance down.
Delivery arriving soon.
Right.
Groceries.
“I forgot today was delivery day,” I say, standing too fast. “I need to go.”
Sam’s face says she knows an exit when she sees one. She lets me have it.
Priya wraps the suspicious pastry in a napkin and pushes it toward me. “Take this. It’s either pistachio or evidence.”
“I don’t want it.”
“None of us does. That’s why you’re taking it.”
I put it in my bag because arguing would require more energy than surrender.
Nadia does not move. “Liv.”
I look at her.
“Priya may be wrong,” Nadia says. “Josh may be wrong. I may be wrong. But if he thinks you left, and you didn’t, you should tell him that before he gets better at believing it.”
I swallow. “Noted.”
I walk home with the pastry in my bag, my coffee half-finished, and Nadia’s question still in my head.
Does he know you didn’t run?
I did not run.
I came back.
I came back from Chicago when I did not have to. I crossed the hall. I kissed him. I sat on his couch with Iris tucked against me and Josh’s arm around my shoulders.
Then Iris went home.
And I took back my clothes.
My files.
My shoes.
The small pile of things by his guest-room dresser.
Everything he could see.
The lobby doors slide open. In the elevator mirror, I look put together.
That feels rude.
By the time I reach my floor, the grocery bags are already outside my door. Josh’s door is closed.
I unlock my door, bring the grocery bags inside two at a time and set them on the kitchen floor. The app sends a cheerful notification thanking me for my order, as if it was an order I chose today.
I did not.
This is the recurring order.
I set it up during the Iris weeks because leaving the building had become a project with straps and bottles and timing and weather and one small person who did not respect errands.
I adjusted it once, then again, then one more time, adding things without thinking too hard about who ate what.
I never changed it back.
The first bag is mine.
Oat milk. Spinach. Coffee filters. Greek yogurt. The apples I buy because they seem responsible in a bowl even when I forget to eat them.
The second bag has dish soap, pasta, a lemon I do not remember ordering, and the crackers Josh and I ate over the sink at eleven at night.
The third bag crinkles when I pull it closer.
Pretzels.
Not normal pretzels. Josh’s terrible pretzels. The square ones with too much salt.
I reach into the bag for the next item.
Baby wipes.
I set the wipes on the counter. They do not belong there.
They do not belong anywhere now.
The order never changed. I never changed it.
Iris is gone.
Before I remembered you’d left.
I took everything he could see.
Across the kitchen, Josh’s note is pinned where I can see it every time I make coffee.
I took my clothes, my files, my shoes, and every visible piece of myself back across the hall.
Back to my apartment.
I thought I was moving back.
What if he thinks I am moving on?