Chapter 24 #2
“That’s because,” she said softly, “it felt like there wasn’t.”
I looked at her.
“We were living the dream,” she continued. “Best jobs we’d ever had. Friends. Boats. Weekends that never ended. It felt like the future was wide open. Like anything was possible.”
She kicked at a pile of leaves. They scattered.
“And then,” she said, “we all got slapped with the truth. That everything can be taken. Anyone. Anytime. In ways you could never see coming.”
I swallowed.
“I get it,” she said, meeting my eyes. “Go. Clear your head. Figure yourself out.”
She hesitated, then added, “Honestly? I might not be here when you get back.”
My chest tightened. “What do you mean?”
“I think I need to leave too,” she admitted. “Find something… lighter. This place feels like a tomb.”
I nodded. “You don’t have to explain.”
We stopped walking.
“Listen,” I said. “Whatever you do—use me as a reference. Anytime. I won’t say a word to Jim. Put my name down. For anything.”
Her eyes shined, just a little. “Thank you.”
“Seriously,” I said. “They’d be lucky to have you.”
She smiled then, small but real.
We stood there a moment longer, two people trying to memorize something that was already slipping away.
“Take care of yourself, Ethan,” she said.
“You too, Beth.”
We hugged—quick, awkward, sincere.
Then she turned back toward the building.
I went the other way.
And as the leaves scraped along the sidewalk behind me, I realized something simple and terrifying and true:
Walking away felt like relief.
And also like grief.
Both at once.
I didn’t go straight to bed.
I went home and started packing like it was a job—something physical I could complete without thinking too hard.
Flannel first. Heavy ones. The kind that smelled faintly like sawdust even when they were clean.
Jeans. Old work boots I hadn’t worn in years, scuffed and honest and broken in the right places.
They felt like armor compared to the dress shoes lined up neatly by the door.
The condo felt hollow without her, which made no sense at all. I finally had peace—no shouting, no tension humming under my skin—but every room still held the outline of something that had burned hot and fast and left its mark anyway.
I reached into the back of the closet, shoving aside coats I never wore anymore, and that’s when I saw it.
The guitar.
Way in the back. Leaning like it had been waiting.
My mom bought it for me when I was seventeen—off some guy she worked with at the sub shop who needed cash fast. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t even that good. But it was mine. The first thing that ever felt like it belonged to me and not the life I’d been handed.
My throat closed.
Fresh tears blurred my vision before I could stop them.
It was like touching a version of myself I’d misplaced. The kid who fixed things. The kid who hid inside music because the world was loud and unpredictable and cruel. The kid who hadn’t known how to want more yet.
I pulled it free and set it carefully beside my bags.
That was coming with me too.
There was no point grocery shopping. I wouldn’t be here long enough to matter. I thumbed through takeout menus instead, half-listening to the quiet, half-expecting—still—some knock at the door. Some sound. Some sign.
Nothing.
Then my phone buzzed.
Email.
My stomach dropped.
Sage.
My fingers went cold, started shaking like they’d forgotten how to work.
“How did you—” I muttered out loud, pacing the length of the apartment. “How did you even know?”
I hadn’t heard from her. Not really. And yet I’d been looking for her everywhere—in reflections, in doorways, in the silence between breaths. Half-expecting her to show up. Half-dreading it.
But she hadn’t.
Which somehow made this worse.
“I can’t do this,” I said to the empty room. “Not right now.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, heart pounding.
“I have a plan,” I told myself. “A good one. Tony. The mountains. Fresh air. Real work.”
I grabbed my jacket and left on foot before I could overthink it, walking until the city noise dulled and my chest loosened enough to breathe. Ordered Chinese. Carried it home in the cold. Ate straight from the carton at the counter.
Alone.
The apartment stayed quiet. Empty.
I finished packing.
Tomorrow: the gym. HR signatures. Clearance. Freedom.
But late that night, when the lights were off and the city hummed outside my windows, I did the one thing I told myself I wouldn’t.
Eventually, curiosity—or maybe loneliness—won.
I clicked the email.
She’d written pages.
About love.
About regret.
About the way the world had cracked open and made her realize how fragile everything was.
If tomorrow isn’t promised, she wrote, then maybe we were wrong to walk away. Maybe love is supposed to survive mistakes. Maybe it’s supposed to hurt a little. Maybe we should try again.
She wrote about 9/11 like it was a sign. A reminder. Proof that holding back was foolish.
I read it once.
Then again.
I read it once.
Then again.
Slowly this time, like if I went too fast I’d miss the part where she stopped owning me.
My laptop glowed in the dark, her words stacked in neat paragraphs that felt anything but neat inside my chest. Love. Regret. Fate. God. The towers. The dead. The living. How everything could vanish in an instant.
If tomorrow isn’t promised…
If love doesn’t survive mistakes…
If we let fear win…
By the time I closed it, my hands were shaking again.
I lay down anyway.
Told myself I was tired enough to sleep.
I wasn’t.
I drifted in fits and starts, my mind snagging on her sentences, on the way she’d written my name like it still belonged to her.
And then the dreams came.
I was back on the boat.
Moonlight poured through the porthole, silvering her skin, turning her into something unreal. The harbor rocked us slow and gentle, like the world itself was breathing with us.
She was warm.
Salt on her mouth. Damp hair against my cheek. Her skin tasted like the ocean and summer and everything I’d ever wanted to hold onto too tightly.
Her nails traced my ribs, my stomach, my chest—slow, claiming, burning.
Our kiss was frantic, desperate, like we were making love against the end of the world.
Like if we stopped, everything would fall apart.
“Ethan,” she whispered.
And then—
The boat was gone.
The moon was gone.
The air turned black.
Not night-black.
Heavy black.
Smoke so thick it pressed against my face, filled my mouth, my lungs, burned with every breath I dragged in. Sirens screamed somewhere close and nowhere at all. Shadows ran past me, faceless, screaming names I couldn’t answer.
I pushed forward, choking, reaching, trying to pull someone free—
And woke up gasping.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Sheets twisted around my legs. Sweat slicked my chest and back, cold already in the night air. For a second I didn’t know where I was.
Then I saw them.
The bags.
The boots.
The guitar.
Reality rushed back in.
I sat up slowly, breathing through the pounding in my ears.
The city glowed faintly through the window—streetlights, traffic, life still moving whether I was ready or not.
I reached for the guitar without thinking.
My hands remembered it before my mind did.
I sat on the edge of the bed, shirtless, barefoot, the wood cool against my skin, the weight of it grounding in a way nothing else had been in weeks.
I found the pick.
Let my fingers settle on the strings.
The first chord came out rough. Uncertain.
The second steadier.
Then something else followed—something I didn’t know how to name.
Not a song I’d learned.
Not a tune I’d practiced.
Just sound pulled straight out of the place where grief and love and fear had tangled themselves together.
Low notes that ached.
High ones that trembled.
A melody that didn’t try to be pretty.
It just told the truth.
I played until my hands hurt.
Until the city outside shifted from deep night to that faint, uncertain gray that comes before morning.
And for the first time since everything had fallen apart, I didn’t feel like I was running.
I felt like I was finally listening.