One Date

The apartment had finally learned how to be quiet again.

After a week at Jessy’s, the walls didn’t feel so sharp when I came back. She refused to leave me alone for the first few days—set up her laptop beside mine, cooked enough food for an army, filled the silence with random stories until the ache in my chest began to soften.

Now we both worked here, side by side. Two writers, two screens, one long stretch of healing disguised as productivity.

I occasionally helped Joaquin but I was politely honest with him through work email that I need space and he acknowledged it with “Noted with thanks.”

It had been months since I’d last touched the draft of my new manuscript, but my hands remembered the rhythm. Letters turned into words, words into something like purpose. Jessy said work was the best kind of therapy.

Maybe she was right.

The afternoon light poured through the window, warm against the scattered pages on my desk. My phone buzzed every now and then—emails, messages, deadlines—but