I spin on my heel.
The movement is pure ballet—chaînéturn, perfectly controlled, ending with my mismatched eyes locked on his mismatched eyes—and I let my lips curve into something that's half smile, half warning.
"No," I say. "You're supposed to do it together with others."
His head tilts again.
That predatory curiosity.
"More fun that way." I back toward the door, refusing to look away even as my hand finds the handle behind me. "Smoking alone is lonely as fuck, don't you think?"
I don't wait for him to answer.
The door swings open behind me, and I slip through it like water through fingers—there one moment, gone the next.
The morning light hits me like a slap.
Bright.
Harsh.
Real.
I stand on the concrete steps of the post office, blinking against the sun that's now fully risen, trying to remember how to breathe through lungs that feel too tight for air.
The door closes behind me with a softclick.
Final.
Definitive.
The end of... something.
The letter is gone now.
Sent off into the void by Maria's kind hands, the last message I'll ever be allowed to send to S.W.—assuming he's even still alive to receive it.
Forty-seven days of silence.
Maybe he's dead.
Maybe he forgot about me.
Maybe he never really cared at all, and I've been pouring my heart into a void that was never going to answer back.
The thoughts spiral, dark and suffocating, and I feel the familiar tickle of panic starting to build in my chest.
One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
I count my breaths.
Count my heartbeats.
Count the cracks in the concrete beneath my bloodstained ballet shoes.
The counting helps.
It always helps.
