Chapter 2: Her Side of the Closet

Roman woke up to the smell of burned coffee.

He lay still for a moment, eyes on the ceiling. Isabella was moving around downstairs. Cabinets opening. Closing. Opening again.

He checked his phone. 6:51 AM. He got up.

She was standing at the kitchen counter in his dress shirt, hair loose, frowning at the cabinet above the coffee machine. It was the wrong cabinet. Glasses lived there.

"Where do you keep the coffee?" she asked.

Roman walked to the counter and stood next to her. He looked at the cabinet she had open, then the one beside it, then the one across. He realized, standing there in his own kitchen, that he did not actually know.

For three years, the coffee had simply been there when he came downstairs. Already made. Already the right temperature. He had picked it up and walked away without once thinking about where it came from or who had figured it out.

"Try the one by the window," he said. He was guessing.

Isabella tried two more cabinets before she found it. A shelf near the refrigerator, organized by type, each section marked with a small strip of masking tape in neat handwriting. *Regular. Decaf. Guests.*

Isabella laughed a little. "Who labels their coffee cabinet?"

"Apparently we do," Roman said.

He poured himself a glass of water and went upstairs.

…

He stood in the closet doorway for longer than he meant to.

His side was the same. Dark suits, dress shirts arranged by color, everything exactly where he'd left it. Her side was empty. He had known it would be. She had told him before she walked out yesterday. He had nodded and said nothing and thought he understood what empty meant.

He hadn't.

It wasn't the kind of empty that looked like someone had left in a hurry. Every hanger faced the same direction. The shelf paper was smooth and flat. The shoe rack at the bottom had been wiped clean, each compartment bare and dust-free. She had cleared out three years of her life and left the space better than she found it.

He stood there looking at it.

He was not sure what he had expected. Something messier, maybe. Something that looked more like leaving. This looked like she had simply decided, and then done it, and closed the door behind her without needing to make a scene out of it.

He stepped inside and ran his hand along the empty shelf. Cool wood. No dust.

That was when he saw it. Top shelf, pushed to the far back corner. A small notebook with a dark green cover, the spine worn soft from handling. He would have missed it completely if the shelf had been full.

He reached up and took it down.

It fit in one hand. Nothing written on the outside. No name, no label. The cover had that soft, almost velvety feel of something carried around for a long time.

He did not open it.

He stood holding it for a moment, thumb on the cover, then set it on his side of the shelf. He would deal with it later. Maybe.

"Roman?" Isabella's voice from the bedroom. "Do you want eggs? I found eggs."

"I'm fine," he called back.

He got dressed and went downstairs.

---

Isabella was at the kitchen table with her coffee and her phone, already deep in a conversation with someone, laughing at something he hadn't heard. She looked comfortable. Settled. She had kicked her feet up on the chair beside her the way she used to do years ago in her own apartment.

"The light in here is incredible," she said, when she saw him. She tilted her head toward the windows. "We should get rid of those curtains though. They're so heavy. This whole place could be so much more open."

"Those are custom," Roman said.

"I know, but still. When we redecorate, I want everything lighter. Airier." She sipped her coffee. "This is going to be so good, Roman. This place finally feeling like ours."

He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "I have to get to the office."

"You haven't eaten."

"I'll grab something there."

He went to his study to get his laptop. The room was quiet, the way the whole penthouse felt quiet now, a specific kind of stillness he couldn't name yet. He sat at the desk and reached for a pen.

He pulled the top drawer open.

It was reorganized.

His drawer had always been controlled chaos. Pens mixed in with paperclips, an old charging cable he never used, business cards he kept meaning to throw away. He had his own system inside the mess. He always knew where everything was.

Now it was sorted. Pens in a small ceramic cup on the left. Paperclips in a dish beside it. The charging cable coiled and held with a clip. Business cards rubber-banded together in the back corner.

He looked at it for a second. Then he noticed the yellow square of paper stuck to the inside top corner of the drawer. Small. The adhesive barely holding at the edges, the paper gone soft from time.

He leaned in and read it.

*Aspirin, top left. You always forget.*

Her handwriting. Small, even letters. The note was old. The paper had yellowed slightly at the corners. She had put it there a long time ago and said nothing about it. He had opened this drawer probably three hundred times and never once seen it.

He sat back in his chair.

He could hear Isabella in the kitchen, still on the phone, her laugh carrying easily through the apartment.

Roman looked at the note.

*You always forget.*

She had known that about him. She had done something about it without being asked, without mentioning it, without any expectation that he would notice. She had just quietly taken care of it.

He sat there for a long time without reaching for his pen.

…