The Collar Button

The Collar Button

POV: Bash

"Third time you've retied those laces, Bash."

I didn't look up from the edge of the mattress. My fingers frozen on the black cord. Rhys was leaning against the doorframe, his shoulder blocking half the light from the hallway, his voice entirely devoid of inflexion.

"They keep coming loose," I said, which wasn't true, not really. I just needed something to do with my hands that wasn't checking the clock for the fourth time in two minutes.

I stood up, smoothed down the front of my shirt, and caught myself doing the collar button thing again — undo, redo, undo, redo, three times exactly, because three felt safe and two felt unfinished and four felt like I was drawing attention to the fact that I was doing it at all. I checked my sleeves next, cuffs even, cuffs even, a habit that had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with needing my hands to land on something solid before my brain could spiral any further.

The shirt was new. Well, not new, just unworn, still faintly stiff at the seams, the way fabric gets when it's spent too long folded in a drawer waiting for an occasion that never came.

I'd put on cologne, too. A few drops, the bottle Marion had gotten me for my birthday two years ago that I'd never once used, because there had never been a version of my life before now that felt worth smelling nice for.

I checked myself in the mirror one more time, turning my collar down, then up, then down again, my reflection giving nothing back except the same tired uncertainty I always saw there. I didn't know why tonight felt different from every other time. I'd told myself something ordinary was about to happen. Maybe because, for once, it actually might.

"Where are you going," Rhys said. Not a question. It never was with him.

"Just somewhere casual, okay? Nothing crazy." I grabbed my jacket off the hook, waved a hand like the whole thing weighed nothing, like my heart wasn't currently trying to climb out through my throat.

"You don't wear that jacket for casual."

He pushed off the doorframe and closed the distance between us in two unhurried steps, close enough that I had to tip my head back slightly to hold his eyes. His gaze moved over me the way it always did — methodical, unblinking, cataloguing details I hadn't meant to give away. "Who is she," he said. "Or he."

"Does it matter?"

"It does to me."

I didn't answer that either. There wasn't a version of the truth that would make this doorway shorter, and lying outright had never worked, not with him standing this close, reading every flicker across my face like weather. I just adjusted my jacket collar again and hoped he'd let it go.

I didn't have an answer for that because he was right, and we both knew it. I'd picked the jacket for exactly the reason he'd clocked in under two seconds — because it made my shoulders look like they belonged to someone with his life together, someone worth taking out on a Friday.

Rhys didn't move from the doorway. He just watched me finish getting ready with that same razor-flat attention he gave everything, like my whole body was a report he was reading line by line, cross-referencing it against some version of me he'd already decided was correct. He noted the cologne, the ironed collar, the new lace loops, filing each detail away like it was evidence in a case only he was building.

"You smell different," he said.

"It's cologne, Rhys. People wear it."

"You don't."

I stepped past him or tried to. He didn't grab me, didn't block me outright — he just didn't move his shoulder quite enough, so I had to angle sideways to get through the doorway, close enough that I caught the low, steady sound of his breathing, close enough that some old, stupid part of me leaned toward it instead of away.

Downstairs, the house was too quiet. I stood by the front door with my shoes tied and my jacket zipped, checking my phone every thirty seconds like that would make the numbers move faster. Seven o'clock came and went. I told myself Julian was probably just running late, that traffic existed, that not every silence had to mean something was wrong.

The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen behind me, a low mechanical drone that seemed louder than it had any right to be in a house this still. Rhys hadn't followed me down. I could hear him somewhere back there, a cabinet opening, a mug set down, going about his evening like my whole nervous system wasn't currently stretched tissue-thin by the front door.

Seven-ten. Seven-fifteen.

I counted the tiles in the entryway floor without deciding to — six, seven, eight — the old rhythm kicking in the second my hands ran out of things to fidget with. I told myself I wasn't panicking. I told myself people were late sometimes, and it didn't mean anything.

I checked the time again. Seven-twenty now, and the number sat wrong in my stomach, heavier than a few stray minutes should have felt. I thought about texting him first, asking if he was okay, but some old instinct told me not to reach first, not to be the one who looked too eager, too desperate for this to be real. So I just stood there instead, jacket zipped to my throat, listening to the house breathe around me.

Seven-thirty came next, and then the strange, hollow quiet that follows waiting too long for something you've already started to suspect isn't coming. I thought about all the ways the night could still be salvaged — maybe his shift ran late, maybe his phone died, maybe none of this meant what the sinking feeling in my chest was already telling me it meant.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

My thumb brushed the glass screen, reading the three short lines over and over until the words lost their shape.

Julian: Hey, I am so sorry. Work called in a massive venue emergency — I'm locked into a mandatory double. Can't make it tonight.

Something cold moved through my chest, fast, and underneath the disappointment, there was another feeling I didn't have a name for yet — small, sharp, gone almost as soon as it arrived. A question I didn't let myself finish asking. How convenient. I shoved it down before it could take shape because looking at that thought too closely meant looking at Rhys too closely, and I wasn't ready for whatever I might find there.

I sat down on the bottom stair instead of taking my jacket off right away because taking it off felt like admitting something I wasn't ready to name. My hands found the hem of my sleeve and started counting the stitches instead, one line at a time, the way I always did when the panic needed somewhere quiet to go.

Across the counter, the quiet clink of Rhys setting down his mug echoed like a gunshot in the silent kitchen.

"He cancelled?" Rhys asked smoothly, stepping into my space. "That's a shame. I told you people aren't reliable, Bash."