Chapter 2: I Can’t Help It
The silence after the airport wasn’t silent at all. It was the buzz of Audrey’s phone, the ping of a text notification that shot lightning through her veins every single time. For the first month, it was constant.
Sen (10:03 PM): Made it. Room is a shoebox. Roommate snores like a chainsaw.
Audrey (10:03 PM): Send a recording. For blackmail.
Sen (10:04 PM): Attached: a 15-second audio file of guttural, rhythmic roaring.
Sen (2:14 PM): Cadaver lab is… a thing. Formaldehyde is a hell of a perfume.
Audrey (2:15 PM): Think of it as immersive storytelling.
Sen (2:16 PM): The story is ‘The Tragedy of My Lunch’. It didn’t end well.
They called on walks to class, his voice in her ear as she trudged to the community college campus, the asphalt still dark with morning damp. She’d describe the pathetic, leafless trees. He’d describe the aggressive, palm-lined boulevards. They built a bridge of words, frantic and sturdy, over the three thousand miles between them.
But bridges need maintenance. And fatigue is a slow, corrosive agent.
By the third month, the texts came in clusters, not a steady stream. He was swamped with organic chemistry; she was picking up extra shifts at the café to afford a better camera lens. Their calls got shorter. “Hey, can I call you back in an hour?” became “Crazy day, talk tomorrow?” became a missed call and a heart-emoji apology.
The ritual, though, remained. Every night, around 11 PM her time, 8 PM his, her phone would light up. Sometimes just a meme. Sometimes a quick voice note: “Walked past a place that smells like the campfire marshmallows. Weird.” Sometimes a simple: You good?
Every night, her thumbs would hover over the keyboard. The words were always there, a phantom limb she could feel typing. I love you. I miss you so much it feels like a bone is missing. I love you. She never sent them. She’d delete the line, watch the cursor blink, and write something safe.
Audrey (11:07 PM): All good. Tried to photograph fog on the river. Looks like a blurry mess.
Sen (11:09 PM): Send it. Your blurry messes are better than most people’s masterpieces.
It was the kindest kind of torture.
She’d lie in bed, the same bed she’d had since high school, wearing the same soft sleep shorts, and she’d stare at the ceiling he’d stared at a hundred times during sleepovers. The distance wasn’t just geographic. It was experiential. His world was expanding at a violent, thrilling rate—labs, lectures, a city of millions. Hers had contracted to the four walls of her childhood bedroom, the steam of the coffee machine, the repetitive click of her shutter in familiar, exhausted places.
She felt herself becoming a museum curator of their past. She’d scroll through the photos from the bonfire night, zooming in on his laughing face until it pixelated. She’d wear his old high school sweatshirt, the one he’d forgotten at her house years ago, until the cuffs were frayed and the smell of him was entirely replaced by the smell of her laundry detergent.
One Tuesday, in April, the rain was a monotonous grey sheet outside the café window. She was wiping down tables, the smell of sour milk and bleach clinging to her skin. Her phone vibrated in her apron pocket. A call.
She slid into the back hallway, beside the mop bucket. “Hey. You’re calling early.”
“I know. Just got out of a study group that was actively melting my brain.” His voice was different. Lighter. There was a smile in it she hadn’t heard in weeks. “Need a distraction.”
“I have plenty of those. Today’s special is a burnt scone and existential dread.”
He laughed. It was easy. It was the old laugh. Her heart did a foolish, hopeful squeeze.
“That’ll do.” A pause. She could hear traffic, voices in the background, his new life humming along. “So, uh. Met someone.”
The words were ordinary. They hung in the damp, chemical-scented air of the hallway.
“Met someone?” she echoed. The phrase felt foreign, like a poorly translated line.
“Yeah. In my anatomy study group. Gabby. She’s from Arkansas, originally. Parents are from Michoacán. She’s… she’s sharp. Like, scary smart. And she doesn’t take any of my shit.”
Audrey’s hand, holding the phone, went numb. The cold from the cinderblock wall she leaned against seeped through her shirt. She could hear everything in his voice—the animation, the interest, the nascent crush. It was the sound of him moving forward.
“Oh,” she said. The word was a stone.
“She’s got this dark hair, down to here,” he continued, and she could picture him gesturing, probably at his collarbone. “And she’s got this way of explaining the brachial plexus that actually makes sense. We were in the library until two AM last night just going over nerve pathways.”
He talked about nerves. About arteries. About Gabby’s laugh, which was apparently loud and unselfconscious. He talked about how she’d corrected the study group leader, politely but firmly, and he’d been in awe.
Audrey said nothing. She watched a drop of condensation trace a path down the fire extinguisher case.
“Aud? You there?”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m here. She sounds… great.”
“She is. It’s just… nice. To have a friend here who gets it, you know? The stress. The workload.”
Friend. The word was a life raft. She clutched at it.
“That’s really good, Sen. Really. I’m glad.” The sentences came out on autopilot, flat and serviceable. “You needed that.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice softening. “Anyway. How’s the fog photo series going?”
They talked for seven more minutes. She has no memory of what she said. She remembers the gritty texture of the wall against her forehead. The sharp, chemical tang of the floor cleaner. The way her own voice sounded like it was coming from another room.
When the call ended, she stood in the hallway. The café’s noises were muffled, indistinct. She didn’t cry. The feeling was beyond that. It was a complete systems shutdown. A hollowing out.
She walked back onto the floor. Her manager, Brenda, was frowning at the espresso machine. “Audrey, table three needs a refill.”
“Okay.”
She picked up the coffee pot. It was glass, full of near-boiling liquid. Her hand was steady. She walked to table three, an older couple, and smiled.
“Top you off?”
“Please, dear.”
She poured. The stream of coffee was perfect, dark and steaming, filling the white china cup without a splash.
That’s when she felt it. A tremor, starting deep in her core. It traveled up her spine, into her shoulders, down her arm. Her hand, so steady a second ago, began to shake. The coffee pot chattered lightly against the lip of the cup. The couple didn’t notice. They were talking about a movie.
She finished pouring. She set the pot down. She walked, very deliberately, to the service station. She placed both hands flat on the stainless steel counter. She looked out the window at the rain-blurred street.
Gabby.
A name. A person with a specific laugh and hair to her collarbone and a mind sharp enough to impress him. A person who was there. A person who could see the new lines of stress and ambition on his face, who could meet his eyes over a cadaver, who could stay in the library until two AM.
Audrey’s reflection in the dark window was a ghost. Pink hair, freckles, a face that belonged to a history he was diligently, kindly, lovingly moving beyond.
The dam of words she’d built for years didn’t break. It dissolved. The I love yous didn’t feel urgent anymore. They felt archival. They were artifacts from a closed site.
He’d met someone.
She breathed in. The air smelled of burnt coffee grounds and wet wool. The world hadn’t ended. The coffee pot needed refilling. Table five needed their check.
She pushed off from the counter. Her hands were steady again. She picked up the pot, walked to the brewer, and began the routine. Each motion was precise. Each was a silence. Every single one of them was her answer.
The shift ended in a smear of grey light and exhaustion. Audrey bussed the final tables, her movements efficient and devoid of thought. The chatter of the last customers, the clatter of dishes, the hiss of the dishwasher—it all passed through her like a radio signal from a distant country. She drove home through the rain-glazed streets, the streetlights stretching and melting on the asphalt.
Her room was a tomb of quiet. She didn’t bother with lights. She peeled off her damp clothes, the scent of coffee grounds clinging to her skin, and pulled on the old, thin sleep shorts. The flannel shirt Sen had given her at the bonfire was folded on her desk chair, a blue check in the gloom. She didn’t touch it.
She lay in the dark, staring at the same ceiling. The phone on her nightstand was dark. The 11 PM ritual had come and gone in silence. She replayed his voice. Gabby. She’s sharp. The words had the flat, factual tone of a textbook diagram. They labelled a new reality.
Sleep didn’t come to find her. She fell into it, a sudden drop down a dark well.
The world resolved into a muted, luminous green. She was standing in a wide open field of grass that sighed softly against her ankles. A cloudy sky obscured the sun, but just barely, letting gold light pass through in a beautiful, diffuse haze that gilded every blade. The air was warm and still, carrying the rich, clean scent of earth and growing things.
It was quiet. Profoundly, deeply empty. The silence was a physical presence, a balm.
She saw the oak tree first. It was massive, ancient, its branches a sprawling cathedral of leaves against the hazy gold. And there, at its base, was Sen. He was lying on his back, his head resting in her lap as she sat against the broad trunk. He was wearing the soft t-shirt he’d slept in at the campsite. She was carding her fingers through his messy black hair, the way she’d never dared to in life. His eyes were closed, his face smoothed of all its earnest worry, peaceful in a way she’d never seen.
He opened his brown eyes and looked up at her. Not with friendly affection, but with a depth of knowing that stopped her breath. A small, private smile touched his lips. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The weight of his head on her thighs, the warmth of him through the thin cotton, the slow rise and fall of his chest—it was all a language more fluent than words. This was the culmination. The quiet after the confession. The belonging. Everything about the dream was so romantic, so perfect, a manifestation of fantasy she had yearned for in the deepest chambers of her heart. Here, in this impossible field, she had everything she’d ever wanted without having to ask.
He reached a hand up. His fingertips brushed her cheek, traced the line of her jaw. The touch was electric and utterly serene.
“Audrey,” he said. His voice was the campfire, the late-night whisper in the tent, the sound of home.
A violent, electronic screech shattered the silence.
The golden haze, the oak tree, the weight of him—all were sucked away in an instant. She was staring at the familiar, water-stained plaster of her bedroom ceiling. The alarm on her phone blared, a merciless drill in the dawn gloom. Her body was tense, disoriented, still feeling the phantom impression of his body against hers.
She fumbled for the phone, silencing the noise. The sudden quiet was almost worse. A deep, aching loss hollowed her out, more acute than anything she’d felt awake. She drew a shaky breath, and a hot, single tear escaped the corner of her eye, tracing a path down her temple and into her hairline. She hadn’t felt herself cry. It was an unknowing tear, leaking from the dream-world as she returned to reality.
She lay there for a long moment, the dream’s perfection curdling into a new kind of pain. It wasn’t just longing anymore. It was a mockery. Her own subconscious had staged the full, detailed play of her desires only to rip the curtain away at dawn. It felt cruel. She swiped the tear away with an angry jerk of her hand.
The phone buzzed once on the nightstand. A notification lit the screen.
Sen (7:14 AM): Big practical today. All nerves. Wish me luck.
Attached was a selfie. He was in a lab coat, his hair even more unruly than usual, dark circles under his eyes. He was giving a forced, thumbs-up smile to the camera. Behind him, in the blurry background, another student was visible—a young woman with dark, wavy hair pulled into a messy bun, looking down at a textbook. Gabby.
Audrey picked up the phone. Her thumb hovered over the keypad, the ghost of his touch still on her skin. The dream-field stretched behind her eyes, vast and empty and quiet. She typed three words, her fingers moving with a will of their own. They weren’t I love you.
Good luck. You’ll crush it.
She sent the message. She placed the phone face down on the nightstand. The morning light, real and unforgiving, began to properly fill the room, revealing the dust on the furniture, the pile of laundry in the corner, the careful, ordinary life she had built around a void. She got out of bed. The floor was cold under her feet. Another day needed to be faced.