Chapter 3: Awkward Sunday
The stale air of Emily’s old apartment tasted of regret and cheap citrus cleaner. Cardboard boxes formed a labyrinth on the worn beige carpet, each one a sealed tomb for a part of her life that hadn’t fit. Jay heaved a box marked “KITCHEN – MISC” onto his shoulder, the muscles in his back tightening. He could feel Emily’s eyes on him from across the room where she was taping a final box shut.
“That’s the last of the heavy ones,” Marcus announced, dropping a duffel bag by the door with a thud. He wiped sweat from his brow, eyeing the near-empty space. “Man, Kitsuhara. You lived like a minimalist monk. Where’s all your stuff?”
“Most of it was Kyle’s,” Emily said, her voice echoing slightly in the barren room. She stood up, brushing dust from her leggings. “The fancy espresso machine, the ugly modern art, the seventy throw pillows. All his.” She gestured to the meager collection of boxes. “This is me. Turns out I’m about eight boxes deep.”
There was a brittleness to her smile that made Jay want to cross the room. Instead, he adjusted his grip on the box. “Lightweight. I like it.”
The plan was simple: load Jay’s hatchback and Marcus’s jeep, do one final walk-through, and never come back. The simplicity was a relief. They’d made three trips already, the silence between Emily and Jay in the car filled not with awkwardness, but with a quiet, focused solidarity. She’d pointed out places as they drove—the cafe where she’d studied, the park where Kyle had told her she smiled too loudly. Each memory was offered like a piece of evidence, and Jay listened, storing it all away.
As Marcus wrestled the duffel bag out into the hallway, Emily did a slow turn in the center of the living room. The walls were bare, pale rectangles marking where frames had been. The sunlight looked lonely without furniture to catch it.
“Feels like a crime scene,” she murmured.
“The scene of the crime was him being a dick,” Jay said. “This is just the cleanup.”
She let out a short, grateful laugh just as the sound of a key in the lock froze them both.
The door swung open.
Kyle stood in the threshold, holding a single cardboard file box. He was exactly as Jay had pictured: a few years older, wearing a knit polo that probably had a name-brand logo, his hair expensively messy. He looked surprised, then his expression cooled into something dismissive as his gaze swept over Jay, the boxes, and finally settled on Emily.
“Emily,” he said. His voice was calm, professional. “You’re still here.”
“Just leaving.” Her posture went rigid, her chin lifting. “You said you’d be gone until five.”
“Meeting ended early. Wanted to grab some remaining files.” He held up the box as proof. His eyes flicked to Jay again, a quick, assessing glance that took in his worn t-shirt, the weight of the box he carried. “I see you enlisted help.”
“These are my friends. Jay, Marcus.” She didn’t gesture. The introductions were bullets, fired flat.
Kyle gave a curt nod that didn’t reach his eyes. “Gentlemen.” He stepped inside, setting the file box on the kitchen counter—a counter Jay now knew Emily had scoured that morning, erasing her fingerprints. There was a tension in the room now, thick and chemical.
Marcus reappeared in the doorway, instantly reading the scene. He leaned against the frame, crossing his arms, a silent sentinel.
Kyle ignored him, focusing on Emily. “Can we speak? Privately? For a moment.”
Jay’s gut tightened. He saw Emily’s fingers curl into her palms. She glanced at Jay, a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. The silent question was clear: Is it okay if I do this?
He gave the slightest nod. Your call.
“Fine. A moment.” Emily’s voice was steel wool, rough but strong. She walked toward the bedroom, the one she’d shared with him, and Kyle followed. He didn’t close the door entirely, leaving it ajar a disrespectful inch.
The three men were left in the silent living room. Marcus pushed off the doorframe and wandered to the window, pretending to be deeply interested in the parking lot below. Jay slowly lowered his box to the floor, his ears straining. He heard the low murmur of voices, Kyle’s calm and measured, Emily’s rising in pitch, then being forcefully reeled back in.
“...not about winning, Emily, it’s about practicality,” Kyle’s voice filtered through. “The deposit. You’re leaving before the lease term. There’s a financial liability.”
“I paid my half through the end of the month. That was the agreement.”
“Verbal agreements are fragile things. I have the ledger. The utility spike from last—”
“Don’t you dare nickel and dime me, Kyle. Not after the fucking staring.”
There was a pause. Jay’s fists were clenched.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Kyle said, his voice chillingly even. “I’m trying to have an adult conversation about finances. You’re being emotional. That’s always been the issue, hasn’t it? The performance of everything.”
Jay took an involuntary step forward. Marcus caught his eye from across the room and shook his head sharply, a warning.
He heard Emily take a sharp, audible breath. When she spoke again, her voice was terrifyingly quiet, each word a shard of glass. “Get out of my way. We’re done. Keep the deposit. Consider it a fee for me learning what a small, hollow man looks like up close.”
Footsteps. Then Emily emerged from the bedroom, her face pale but her eyes blazing. She walked straight past Kyle, who followed her out with a thin, unpleasant smile.
“I’ll send you the finalized accounting,” he said, picking up his file box. He gave the room one last look, his gaze lingering on Jay with a faint hint of amusement, as if Jay were a curious pet she’d brought home. Then he was gone. The door clicked shut behind him.
The released breath in the room was collective.
“Fucking accountant vampires,” Marcus spat. “Charging you for the air you breathed. You okay, Em?”
Emily was trembling, a fine, adrenaline-powered shake. She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “Yeah. Just. Yeah.” She looked at Jay. “Can we go? Now. Please.”
“We’re gone.” Jay picked up the last box. “Marcus, grab the duffel. Em, you got your keys? Do the lock.”
She fumbled her key from her pocket, walked to the door, and turned the deadbolt with a final, solid thunk. She pulled the key out and stared at it for a second before dropping it into the mail slot mounted on the wall. It landed inside with a faint, metallic clink.
The sound was irrevocable.
The drive back was silent. Emily sat in the passenger seat of Jay’s car, forehead leaned against the cool glass of the window. Marcus followed in his jeep, giving them space.
Back at the apartment, the process reversed. They formed a chain, hauling the eight boxes of Emily’s life up the stairs and into the already-crowded living room. The physical work was a tonic, draining the residual poison of the encounter. By the time the last box was stacked in a corner of Jay’s room—the only available space—a semblance of normalcy had returned.
“I’m ordering a pizza the size of a manhole cover,” Marcus declared, collapsing onto the couch and pulling out his phone. “My treat. For emotional damages.”
“Pepperoni,” Emily said, pulling her braid loose. “And pineapple. Don’t start, Mark. It’s good.”
“Psychopath,” Marcus muttered, already tapping his screen.
Jay went to the fridge for water, handing one to Emily. Their fingers brushed. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I will be.” She uncapped the bottle, took a long drink. “It’s just weird. Knowing he’s over there in my— in that space, rearranging the energy or whatever. Erasing me faster.”
“He can’t erase you,” Jay said, the words coming out more forcefully than he intended.
The doorbell rang, a harsh, electronic buzz.
“Pizza’s fast,” Marcus said, not looking up from his phone.
“That’s not the pizza,” Jay said. The pizza place never rang; they just pounded on the door. A cold sense of foreboding settled in his stomach. He walked to the door and looked through the peephole.
Romi.
She was dressed for campus in a chic sweater and jeans, her makeup perfect. She held a small paper bag from the bakery down the street. Her expression was set in a determined, pleasant mask.
Jay opened the door. “Romi. Hey.”
“Hey.” She smiled, a bright, practiced thing. “I was in the neighborhood. Brought you those bear claws you like.” Her eyes swept past him, into the living room, where Emily stood holding her water bottle, and Marcus lounged on the couch. The smile didn’t falter, but it hardened at the edges. “Oh. Company.”
“Emily’s moving some stuff in. Temporarily,” Jay said, stepping back to let her enter, because not letting her in would be a declaration of war.
“How nice.” Romi stepped inside, her perfume—something floral and expensive—cutting through the smell of dust and cardboard. She placed the bakery bag on the cluttered coffee table. “Hi, Emily. Heard you had some roommate trouble. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” Emily said, her voice cautiously neutral. “It’s working out.”
“I bet.” Romi’s gaze traveled pointedly to the open door of Jay’s bedroom, the stack of boxes just visible inside. She turned her smile back to Jay. “Can I talk to you? Quick thing.”
“We’re kind of in the middle of unpacking,” Marcus offered from the couch, not helping.
“It’ll just take a second.” Romi’s tone was light but left no room for refusal.
Jay felt trapped. He glanced at Emily, who gave a tiny shrug. Go ahead. “Sure. Kitchen?”
He led the way the few steps into the small kitchen, putting the peninsula counter between them. She didn’t follow him around it. She leaned against the opposite side, her voice dropping, though not enough.
“So she’s living here now?”
“Crashing. For a week or two. Until she finds a new place.”
“Right. In your room.” Romi picked at a flaw in the laminate countertop. “Look, Jay. We’re not exclusive. I know that. But this… this feels different. This feels like you moving someone in.”
“She had nowhere to go.”
“And you’re the knight in shining armor. I get it.” She looked up, her eyes sharp. “The thing is, it’s creating drama. People are talking. They’re asking me what’s going on.”
“Since when do you care what people say?”
“Since it makes me look like an idiot!” The mask slipped, revealing the raw hurt beneath. She quickly smoothed it over. “I just think you should be more considerate. Of me. Of what we have.”
Jay felt a familiar fatigue. This was their cycle. A vague claim on him, met with his gentle deflection, resulting in temporary détente. “Romi, we’ve talked about this. You’re my friend. Emily is also my friend. She needed help.”
“Friend.” Romi tested the word, her lips a thin line. “Okay.” She pushed off the counter. “Well. I just wanted to say that. And bring you pastries.” She turned to leave the kitchen, then paused, as if remembering something trivial. “Oh, and Jay? Maybe give Emily a heads-up. About your little… preference.”
A cold trickle of dread started in his chest. “What preference?”
She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide with fake innocence. “You know. How you hate condoms. How you always say they kill the sensation for you. I just figured, since you’re sharing a bed and all, she should probably know. For her own health.” She delivered the line with the quiet, devastating precision of a surgeon making an incision. “Girl talk. You know how it is.”
Then she walked back into the living room, her gait relaxed. “Bye, guys! Good luck with the move, Emily!”
The front door opened and closed.
Silence. A profound, ringing silence.
Marcus was staring, his phone forgotten in his hand. Emily hadn’t moved. She stood perfectly still, the water bottle held tightly in her grip. Her face was unreadable, but her eyes were fixed on the space where Romi had been.
Jay felt the world tilt. The words hung in the air, toxic and expanding. Hates condoms. Kills the sensation. Romi had known exactly where to strike—at Emily’s trust, at her safety, at the very foundation of whatever was tentatively building between them. She’d weaponized intimacy to create a fault line.
“In Jay’s defense,” Marcus started, his voice uncharacteristically hesitant. “Condoms do kill the sensation.”
Marcus’s words hit the quiet room like a stone dropped in thick mud. They just sat there, ugly and wrong.
Emily didn’t look at him. She didn’t look at Jay. She carefully set her water bottle down on the coffee table, the plastic click absurdly loud. Her movements were precise, controlled, the kind of calm that comes from sheer force of will.
Jay’s mind emptied, then filled with a white-hot static. “Marcus, what the fuck,” he managed, his voice strangled.
“What? It’s a medical fact!” Marcus threw his hands up, finally registering the devastation on his friend’s face. He faltered. “Shit. That came out wrong. I just meant— not like— Goddamn it.”
Emily walked to the window. She stared out at the brick wall of the adjacent building, her back to them. Her shoulders were rigid. The silence was a physical weight, pressing down on all of them.
The silence was a physical weight, pressing down on all of them.
Emily turned from the window. Her face was a careful blank, but her eyes were chips of flint. She looked at Marcus, then at Jay, who felt that look like a physical blow. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, his brain scrambling for any combination of words that could possibly defuse the grenade Romi had rolled into the center of the room.
"Emily—" he finally choked out.
"Shut up," she said. Her voice was low, flat, utterly devoid of the light warmth he’d heard that morning. She cut her gaze to Marcus. "You shut up, too."
Marcus visibly shrunk into the couch cushions.
Emily’s chest rose and fell in one sharp, controlled breath. "It doesn’t matter." The words were dismissive, final. "I’m not fucking her boyfriend, so she needs to relax."
She walked across the room, her steps measured on the worn carpet. She didn’t look at either of them. She bent at the knees, her braid sliding over her shoulder, and grabbed the medium-sized box marked “DESK.” She hefted it, the cardboard buckling slightly under her grip.
Without another word, she carried it out of the living room and down the short hall. Jay heard the spare room’s door—the one with the folding bed—open, then click shut. Not a slam. A definitive, muted closure.
The air in the living room felt dead and used up.
Marcus ran both hands over his face, dragging his skin downward. "Fuck. Jay, man, I’m— that was so stupid. I was trying to make it a joke, to break the tension, and I just—"
"Just stop talking," Jay said, his voice hollow. He was still staring at the empty space where Emily had been standing. The cruelty of Romi’s move was masterful.
He walked to the spare room door. He could hear no sound from within. He raised his hand to knock, but his knuckles hovered an inch from the wood. What was he supposed to say? She’s lying sounded weak, defensive. I would never rang hollow after his own inaction in the face of her question last night.
His hand fell back to his side.
From the couch, Marcus’s phone buzzed violently against the coffee table. The pizza alert. The normalcy of it was grotesque. "The food’s here," Marcus said, his voice uncharacteristically small.
"Go get it," Jay said, not turning around.
He heard Marcus get up, the shuffle of his sneakers, the open and shut of the front door. Jay leaned his forehead against the cool painted wood of the door. He could picture her in there, sitting on that terrible folding bed, surrounded by the stark emptiness of a room that wasn’t hers, listening to the echo of Romi’s words. Kills the sensation. It was designed to make her feel cheap, to taint the quiet understanding they’d shared in his bed.
"Emily," he said, his voice just above a whisper, unsure if she could even hear him. "Please."
Silence.
Marcus returned, the giant pizza box emitting a cloud of garlic and grease that suddenly turned Jay’s stomach. Marcus set it down, looking from Jay at the door to the box and back. "Dude."
"I know." Jay pushed off from the door. He felt untethered, a slow anger beginning to burn through the initial shock. It wasn’t directed at Emily, or even entirely at Romi. It was at himself. For letting things with Romi drift. For not shutting Marcus down faster. For the thirteen-year-old version of himself who had taken a ‘no’ as a lifetime verdict.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. His thumb moved over the screen, pulling up Romi’s contact. He didn’t text. He called.
It rang twice before she picked up. "Jay?" Her voice was bright, expectant. "Did you get the pastries?"
"We need to be done." The words came out cold and clean, no hesitation.
The brightness evaporated. "What?"
"You and me. This. It’s done. Permanently." He walked into the kitchen, needing the distance from the spare room door. "What you did today was malicious. It was fucking cruel. You don’t get to do that to people."
Her laugh was a sharp, brittle sound. "Oh, so she ran to you crying already? That was fast."
"Emily didn’t say a word to me. She doesn’t have to." He gripped the edge of the counter. "You engineered that to hurt her because you’re insecure about a situation that has nothing to do with you. We were never what you wanted us to be, Romi. I’m sorry I let it go on this long."
There was a long silence on the other end. When she spoke again, her voice was thick. "You’re choosing her? Some girl who needs you to rescue her from her own bad decisions?"
"I’m choosing not to be with someone who would do what you did." He closed his eyes. "Goodbye, Romi."
He ended the call before she could reply. He set the phone down on the counter and listened to the new, heavier quiet of the apartment. It was broken only by the faint, tinny sound of music coming from Marcus’s headphones—a deliberate retreat.
Jay looked at the closed spare room door, then at the giant, uneaten pizza. The gap between the two felt insurmountable. He had severed one tether, but the one he truly wanted to grasp was locked away, just on the other side of a thin wall, believing the worst of him. The momentum of the day had crashed, leaving wreckage in its wake. All he could do now was wait in the quiet aftermath, hoping for a sign that the door might open.