Page 154 of Suite 7

“You wait. And if she wants to hear more, she’ll ask. And if she doesn’t, you wait longer.”

He moves toward the elevator.

“Tonight you sit with what you’ve done. Really sit with it. Feel it. Don’t fix it. Don’t manage it. You owe her that.”

The elevator opens.

“She still loves you,” he says. “Both of you. That’s the hell of it.”

The doors close.

The silence he leaves behind is different. Fuller.

We sit at the kitchen table for a long time. Not talking. The tea Kane made earlier gone cold in its mugs.

Eventually he stands. Holds out his hand.

I take it.

We end up on the couch. The TV on. Neither of us watching. His arm around me. My head on his shoulder. The city carrying on outside.

The hours move.

Around midnight I look toward the kitchen.

The rolls are still on the floor.

Scattered where they fell this morning. Nobody picked them up. Nobody addressed them. They’re there, some against the cabinet, one near the island, the bag crumpled where it landed. The evidence of a morning that started one way and ended another.

“Kane.”

“Yeah.”

“The rolls.”

He follows my gaze. Looks at them for a long moment. Doesn’t move.

Not tonight. They stay where they are — the way we owe her.

I close my eyes. Feel the steady weight of his arm around me. The city lights blurred through the glass. The quiet that isn’t comfortable but is at least shared.

Somewhere across the city, Sloane is in her apartment with her colored pens and her photo of two girls on a beach and her hurt that we put there.

We can’t fix that tonight.

The rolls stay on the floor.

We fall asleep like that.

28 Kane

Every Monday for as long as I can remember, Sloane texts me something random before nine AM. A meme. A complaint about traffic. A photo of whatever ridiculous thing she saw on her commute. Once, the word “MONDAYS” with seventeen exclamation points.

It’s nine forty-seven now.

Nothing.

I stare at the screen. No notifications. No missed calls. Just the wallpaper, a photo of the city skyline I took months ago, and nine forty-seven.