I came home to find his suitcase open on the floor, clothes folded with his usual meticulous care. He was kneeling beside it, holding up two sweaters like he was making a life-altering decision.
“You’re really doing it,” I said.
He glanced up and smiled. “Stealing my sweater back? I thought about sneaking out in the night with it and just leaving you a note.”
I crossed the room and immediately grabbed the heavier one — the one I’d claimed sometime around our second “date” and never returned. I hugged it to my chest like a hostage.
“I would’ve hunted you down,” I said. “Internationally.”
“I know,” he replied, and somehow looked almost pleased by that. “It was a risk I was willing to take.”
“I’m keeping this,” I added, already halfway defensive.
He raised an eyebrow. “I suspected.”
That tiny, ridiculous victory — the sweater — felt like proof I got to keep something. Not this past week, not the version of us that existed inside it. Just this soft, oversized piece of him that still smelled like his soap and my apartment.
We moved around each other carefully after that, like the air had become fragile. Like the apartment had shrunk. Too small. Too full of things we weren’t ready to say out loud.
We heated up leftovers but barely ate them.
We sat on the couch and watched half a movie without following the plot.
At some point he reached for my hand and held it, thumb brushing over my knuckles like he was committing them to memory.
“You’re quiet,” he said.
“So are you.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “But that’s because I’m trying not to say something annoying and sentimental.”
I smiled faintly. “You failing?”
“Spectacularly.”
That probably shouldn’t have made my chest ache the way it did. I rubbed my cheek against his shoulder anyway. “I’ll forgive you.”
He didn’t say anything after that. He just kissed me — not like he was trying to convince me of something, but like he was memorizing this moment and capturing it forever for both of us.
The taxi came too soon.
It always did.
We stood in the hallway with his bag between us like a third wheel, awkward and inevitable.
“So,” he said. “When am I seeing you again?”
The question wrapped me up almost too tightly.
I opened my mouth with a dozen answers lined up — after midterms, after this project, after I figure out my schedule, after things calm down — and realized none of them were real. The last thing I wanted to do waslieto Dominic.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
Not “soon.” Not “definitely.” Just the truth.
He searched my face, not accusing. Not disappointed. Just… absorbing my response.
“Okay,” he said finally. “That wasn’t the answer I wanted, but I appreciate the honesty.”
