Chapter 6: Aperire
(Ellis'POV )
April.
The word itself feels like a contradiction. A month balanced between winter and spring. Between everything frozen and everything blooming. A hinge. A threshold. A promise.
That's what April was to me when we met. She was a promise. She was not loud or obvious. She simply existed in that quiet way that made people want to look twice. She felt like something waiting patiently to unfold. I used to think the month was named after the weather, after pale blossoms and heavy rain. Then I read that April might come from the Latinaperire, meaning "to open," to reveal, to unfold, and to let light into places that had been closed for too long.
That was what she did to me. Opened things I didn't know I still had in me. And now I stand here wondering how I ever managed to close her instead.
When I first met her, she wasn't my type. She was not even close. She was tall, taller than me in work boots, broad shouldered and sunburned, with short copper hair that looked more like wildfire than anything soft or delicate. The first time I saw her at the ranger station, she leaned over a map with her brows drawn together while talking to her team. She looked like someone carrying everyone around her without even noticing the weight. I remember staring at her and thinking that she seemed intense.
Then I saw her carry a grown man across a clearing after he dehydrated on a trail, and it was like watching a myth breathe. But that wasn't what made me fall. No. It was later.
The first time she laughed with embarrassment, covering her face like she wasn't allowed to.
The first time she told me she liked thunderstorms because they sounded like mountains talking in their sleep.
The first time she showed up at my door with soup because I'd sprained my ankle and was too stubborn to admit I needed help.
She was shy underneath all that armor and funny beneath all that silence. She was sweet in ways she did not even seem to notice herself. She was guarded, but with me she opened up in a way that felt careful and intentional, like trust was something she gave slowly and only when it mattered. I found myself drawn toward her in a way I could not explain. It felt like gravity, something steady and impossible to resist, and before I realized it, I had fallen for her completely.
The only thing that never seemed to work between us was our intimacy. I tried and I truly did try, but something always felt slightly out of place. It felt like part of her stayed somewhere far away. Her body was with me, but something inside her always seemed distant.
Whenever I asked if something was wrong, she told me everything was fine. She told me I was fine and told me she was happy, but she still felt far away. Sometimes she stared at the ceiling with an expression I could never understand, and she looked so quiet and distant that I started questioning myself.
Was I failing her? Was I disappointing her? Was I doing something wrong? Was I too soft or too awkward? Was I somehow not enough?
I wanted connection. She gave me vacancy. Not intentionally and never to hurt me, just something locked behind a door she did not know how to open. I did not know if she was scared or ashamed or simply disconnected, but she never told me, and I never pushed hard enough to find out. Over time my confidence cracked.
I started wondering if she wished she were with someone else. Someone who fit her better. Someone who didn't make heruncomfortable in her own skin. And then I hated myself for thinking that.
Most of the time, I couldn't even finish unless I imagined her smaller, fragile, delicate, something I would never, ever say aloud. And when even that stopped working, when my mind couldn't twist her into something she wasn't, I found myself imagining another woman entirely—short, petite, breakable in that innocent way that made me feel wanted, needed. It was a shameful escape hatch, one that sickened me even as I used it.
On that fateful night, when I finally stepped out of the room, everyone was staring at me like I was something rotten. Their expressions cut deeper than anything I'd said. July's voice tore through the air, sharp and merciless:"Get the hell out. Everyone heard what you said about April."The sentence punched the breath out of me. I didn't argue and I couldn't. Shame pressed down on my chest so hard I thought I might collapse right there.
I went out looking for her. I wanted to fix it but she was already gone. Vanished before I even had the chance to put words in the right order, before I could try to take back the poison that had spilled out of me. The alcohol blurred everything into a smear: lights, faces, the floor tilting under my feet. But even through the haze, I knew I'd detonated something I couldn't rebuild.
Ben found me outside, leaning against the wall like I couldn't hold myself up. I remember the night air being too cold, or maybe it was just me shaking.
"You're screwed," he said with this exhausted disappointment that made my stomach twist.
"She... she heard, Ben. She heard me." My voice cracked on the words. I could barely get them out.
He exhaled slowly and set a firm hand on my shoulder. "Come on. I'm taking you home."
The drive felt suffocating in its silence, broken only by the low hum of the engine that filled the space between my breaths. I kept trying to call April and kept trying to text her, hoping for one more chance or one more minute, anything at all. Every unanswered ring felt like another part of me shutting down.
Eventually, the notifications I had been dreading came all at once. Message failed and call failed appeared on the screen, and I understood she had blocked me, fully and completely. I still kept trying anyway, with desperate and unsteady taps on the screen, until everything went black and I passed out, my phone slipping from my hand.
The next morning I woke with a pounding headache and a feeling in my stomach that told me everything was broken beyond repair. Ben was already awake when I stumbled into the kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand. He did not say much at first and just handed me the mug without meeting my eyes.
After a long, heavy pause, he finally asked, "Do you remember what happened last night?"
"Partially," I admitted, my voice rough.
"Well, let's refresh your memory." He took a breath, then recited word for word the things I said. The horrible things I barely remembered saying. Words that cut through me like knives. I wanted to disappear. My knees buckled, and I broke down shaken with shame and regret.
