Page 210 of That Rush

The solitude feels good. But I still wish Aiden were here.

I wish his broad shoulders were blocking the doorway while he complains that the hammock was designed for one person. I wish Josie were sprawled across my legs with a book open, correcting me whenever I skip a sentence because Sprinkle apparently requires full literary accuracy.

The quiet is real. So is wanting them inside it.

I stay outside until rain begins tapping against the porch roof, then head in to make dinner. When I open the cupboard, Aiden’s coffee sits beside mine. He bought it after declaring mine tasted like someone described coffee to hot water from another room.

He was wrong, obviously.

His is better.

I run my thumb over the folded top of the bag, then close the cupboard and pull pasta from another shelf.

While the water boils, the evidence of them piles up. Aiden’s spare shirt on the hook behind my door—left there after I told him to stop stealing the one I sleep in. Josie’s purple cup in the drying rack, the one I bought after she declared mine boring. Her library book on the coffee table, which I renewed yesterday knowing she wouldn’t be here tonight. My life never disappeared beneath theirs. I kept choosing where to fit them in because I liked the shape we made together.

I drain the pasta, add sauce, and eat on the couch with Josie’s drawing propped against the lamp.

Aiden wanted a shared home, marriage, years he could name. I treated every permanent word like a door locking behind me. But somewhere in the argument, defending my right to choose hardened into its own rigid rule: refusing to picture any choice that might actually change my life.

I pick up my phone and open the message thread I have avoided for eleven days. His last text asks if I made it home safely after a late library event. Mine says yes and includes a complaint about the terrifying size of the moth waiting beside my porch light.

I tap the message field.

I love you. I want you and Josie in my life. I can picture years with you, maybe even marriage someday. But I need to keep my cabin for now. I need time that's just mine. I need you to ask instead of deciding. We have to build what comes next together.

I read it twice.

Every word is true. Sending it would put the repair in my hands when Aiden ended us because the future I could offer did not resemble the one he had already planned.

I will not bargain him back by presenting a revised version of myself.

If we try again, he has to understand why the key, the closet, and the family assumptions hurt. I need to know he wants a future shaped by both of us, even when my choices do not make immediate sense to him.

I save the message as a draft and set my phone facedown.

The cabin is still peaceful. My life is still whole. I no longer need to pretend either truth makes me happier without him.

Pike’s Perk is busy enough Thursday morning that I can hand over Josie’s drawing without turning the exchange into an event.

That is the plan, anyway.

As I enter, Sadie looks up from the register. Her gaze lands on the folded purple construction paper in my hand, and she stops reaching for a cup.

“Regular?”

“Please.”

“To stay?”

“I haven’t decided.”

She glances toward the table beside the office where Rowan sits with her laptop and several invoices. “That sounds like a yes.”

“I appreciate how neither of you respects an evasive answer,” I say.

“We respect it,” Rowan says without looking up. “We simply recognize one.”

Sadie starts my drink while I take the chair across from her sister. Rowan’s eyes drop to the paper when I place it on the table.