Chapter 2 The Quiet After Goodbye

The first thing I noticed was the quiet.

Not the kind that hums softly in the background, but the heavy kind  the kind that settles into your bones and refuses to leave. My apartment felt too still, too neat, like I had walked into a stranger’s life. Maybe I had. Maybe that’s what happens when everything you’ve built suddenly doesn’t belong to you anymore.

I stood in the middle of the living room, looking around at things that used to mean something. The framed photo on the wall. The candle I never lit because he said the scent was too strong. The throw blanket he always used to pull over my shoulders when I fell asleep on the couch. They were all still here, mocking me with their normality.

For a long time, I did nothing. Just stood there, hands hanging by my sides, breathing through the ache that kept threatening to spill over.

When I finally moved, it was toward the kitchen. I poured myself coffee  black, bitter, strong. He used to add cream and sugar for me, said I didn’t have to like things that hurt to prove I was strong. Maybe he was wrong about that. Some things, you just have to taste raw.

My phone buzzed. Messages, missed calls, congratulations from people who had no idea what losing something quietly does to a person.

I didn’t answer any of them.

Instead, I scrolled down to his name still there, still familiar. I stared at it until the letters blurred, until I realized I was holding my breath. Then I pressed delete.

It wasn’t closure, but it was a start.

The hours stretched into the kind of day that doesn’t really exist  not yesterday, not today, just a long, gray in-between. I went through motions: washing dishes, opening curtains, answering work emails as if nothing inside me had shifted. But it had. Everything had.

In the evening, I found myself on the balcony. The city was alive  cars rushing, voices echoing from the street below, the smell of roasted peanuts and diesel. Life was happening, loud and unapologetic. And there I was, quietly trying to remember how to breathe in it.

That’s when my best friend, Aisha, called.

She didn’t start with small talk. “You finally did it,” she said.

Her voice was warm, steady, the kind of voice that fills cracks without trying.

“I did.”

“And how do you feel?”

I looked out over the city lights. “Like I just learned how to stand on my own legs again. They’re shaking, but they’re holding.”

She was silent for a beat. “That’s good. Let them shake. They’ll get stronger.”

We talked for a while  about work, about her new obsession with pilates, about nothing and everything. She didn’t ask about him, and I was grateful. I wasn’t ready to say his name out loud yet. Saying it would make it real, and I needed one more night of pretending it wasn’t.

After we hung up, I stood outside for a long time, watching the stars. They looked faint, almost shy behind the city haze. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d looked up long enough to notice them.

Maybe that’s what being married to him did made me look straight ahead, never up.

When I finally went inside, the apartment felt less like a tomb and more like a blank page. Still quiet, still strange, but not unbearable. I lit the candle he hated. The scent filled the room  vanilla and smoke. It smelled like something new.

Later that night, I opened the drawer where I’d kept our wedding photos. I didn’t cry when I saw them. Not this time. I just studied our faces two people who had no idea where they were heading. There was one photo where he was looking at me, not smiling, just watching. At the time, I thought it meant something deep. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

I tore the photo in half. Not out of anger out of mercy. For myself. For the woman who kept trying to find meaning in someone else’s reflection.

By morning, the sky was pale and quiet. I made tea, dressed simply, and left the apartment without a plan. I walked for blocks, past cafés and bookshops, through streets that smelled like wet dust and new beginnings.

Everywhere I looked, there were people living laughing, arguing, running late, falling in love. And somewhere between the noise and the movement, I realized how small my world had become.

For three years, I had measured time in his habits. His breakfast, his meetings, his moods. I had forgotten what it was like to have a day that was entirely mine.

So I bought myself flowers. Lilies. He once said they were too dramatic. I liked that about them.

I carried them home, their fragrance spilling softly through the apartment. For the first time in days, I smiled. Not a big one  just enough to feel it stretch against the ache.

When I set the flowers in water, my phone buzzed again. Unknown number. I almost ignored it, but something made me swipe.

“Hello?”

Silence. Then a breath. Familiar. Careful.

“…You left your ring,” he said. His voice was low, steady  the same voice that once told me forever didn’t have to be loud.

I closed my eyes. The weight of his words pressed against me, heavy, dangerous.

“Keep it,” I said softly. “It fits your story better than mine.”

There was a pause. Then the faint sound of an exhale, like he’d been holding his breath for years.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because of the absurdity of it. He’d signed away our marriage and now wanted to check if I was okay.

“I will be,” I said finally. “Just not today.”

And I ended the call.

For a long time, I stared at the phone. My reflection blinked back at me from the screen  tired eyes, but steady.

I placed it down, turned off the lights, and stood by the window. The rain had stopped, leaving the city washed and glowing.

He hadn’t chased me. Not yet. But that call  that one small crack in his calm  told me the silence between us wasn’t done echoing.

Maybe one day he’d come back with apologies or regrets. Maybe not.

But tonight, I wasn’t waiting.

For the first time in a long time, the quiet didn’t scare me.

It felt like peace.

And peace, I was starting to learn, was a kind of love too.