This place doesn’t feel like home without him. Too big, too empty. It doesn’t smell like him anymore. I’ve spent so many nights on his side of the bed, even his pillow has turned dull. Every time I hear a car pass outside or park at the curb, I rush to the door and look outside. But it isn’t him. For two weeks, it hasn’t been him.
So I bury myself in work. I’ve accepted C.J.’s offer to move into her old job in the Features section once I’ve wrapped up this Phelps article. Alone now on the story, I work fifteen hours a day pulling it together. It’s almost there, and I guess I should be proud of myself, but it’s a hollow victory when the one person I want most to share it with isn’t here. After the first week, I was certain he’d be back by Monday. Now closing out the second, I’m starting to wonder if he’s ever coming back.
It’s the nights, though, that are the hardest. Alone in bed, in the dark and restless. I feel adrift on the water with no wind and no stars to navigate by. Loneliness is my new normal. I’ve started leaving messes around the house, just to make it feel like someone else has been here. Dishes in the sink and laundry on the floor. Sometimes I leave the TV on all night just to hear the voices. Leave it on when I go to work so I come home to someone.
I hate this. Hate that he won’t at least tell me he’s okay. Hate that he’s capable of ignoring me this long when I’m crumbling inside. It isn’t fair that every day I pack my bags and put them by the door, tell myself it’s been long enough and I’m not doing it anymore. Then I hate myself some more for putting my clothes back in the dresser and kicking the bag under the bed.
His father says he hasn’t heard from him, but I don’t think he’d tell me if he had. Six times a day I consider showing up at their townhouse in the city, taking the bus out to their home in Greenwich, or hopping the train to Montauk. Then I think about his mother, and I remember that the last thing that poor woman needs is the crazy girlfriend showing up to rain drama and unholy hellfire down on her dying days. That woman’s been through enough. The least she deserves is some privacy. Every day I check the obituaries, dreading the day Mrs. Ash’s name shows up and uncertain what it will mean when it does.
Carter’s no help. He must know where Ethan is, or at least that he’s alive, because his only answer is that an adult isn’t missing if they left on their own. Clearly not concerned that Ethan’s lying facedown in a ditch or floating in the East River. If there’s something Carter doesn’t want to tell me, there’s no dragging it out of him. Anything more would require a car battery and methods prohibited by the Geneva convention.
So I wait.
And I work.
Trapped in a cycle of doubt and fear.
If I knew how to get in touch with Vivian, I’d try, but no one at the magazine has a working number for her, and online searches for an address only bring up the old apartment she had in Brooklyn before she took off to New Hampshire. She’s a ghost, dropped off the map.
By the third week, Ethan’s phone goes straight to voicemail, telling me the mailbox is full. So I text him. Every morning and every night. A few lines to say I miss him, I love him, please come home.
My mom calls every day now. To make sure I’m alive. She begs me to move in with her. Leave the city and all traces of Ethan behind. But I can’t. Because I know, deep in my bones like I know my hair is red, the minute I leave, he’ll walk through the door and wonder how long ago I left him. He’ll see the first day I packed a bag and set it by the door, and he’ll watch me walk out, think I’m gone for good. I can’t do that to him. Not until I know. I just want to hear it from his lips. That we’re over, have been for weeks, and I should have taken the hint by now. Then at least I’ll know I tried. Did everything I could to stick it out, be strong. He’d do the same for me.
That sounds stupid, I know. The level of pathetic to which I have sunk doesn’t escape me. One week I put on five pounds, the next I drop ten. My meds do nothing for me anymore. My brain chemistry is too disrupted to use them like it should. I can’t explain it other than to say that I know, in my soul, that if our positions were reversed, Ethan would be waiting.
No, that’s not true.
If our places were reversed, Ethan would have found me by now. He’d have searched every building and basement in the city. He’d have scoured every tunnel and sewer. Because though it was brief, our love was real. I felt it. In his touch, in his kiss, in the sound of his voice and the beating of his heart. It was real. And right now, I’d do anything to get it back.