VOLUME I ACT I CHAPTER EIGHT The Things We Don't Say (Part Two)
VOLUME I
ACT I
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Things We Don't Say
(Part Two)
There’s a strange kind of quiet that follows forgiveness, not peace exactly, but a tentative truce. A silence that hums with things still unspoken, unprocessed. That’s what the next week felt like with K. We were fine. Better. But not whole. Not yet.
Every conversation was deliberate. Every laugh a little cautious. But at least we were sharing space again. Sharing breath.
And for a while, I thought that would be enough.
Until the dream returned.
It was Friday night. He’d fallen asleep early after a long workday, and I stayed up scrolling my phone. Around midnight, I turned off the lights and settled beside him, listening to the soft rhythm of his breathing.
Somewhere in the early hours, he stirred. Twitched. Then his whole body went rigid.
“No, no,” he mumbled, voice raw. “Stop. Please, just stop”
I sat up immediately. “K?”
He jolted awake, eyes wide and disoriented. His chest was heaving.
I reached for him. “Hey, it’s okay. It was just a dream.”
But he recoiled, just for a second. Just long enough for it to feel like a knife.
He ran both hands over his face and let out a shaky breath. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean. ”
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “What was it?”
He didn’t answer. He just got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.
The door closed softly behind him.
And I lay there, staring into the dark, wondering if his nightmares were stronger than the love we were trying to rebuild.
The next morning, he was quiet. Thoughtful again. The kind of thoughtful that wrapped around itself like armor.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, watching him slice into his pancakes without appetite.
“Not really.”
“Okay.”
“I will eventually,” he added. “I’m just… tired of thinking about everything in terms of what’s real and what isn’t.”
“I understand.”
He looked up at me. “Do you?”
I hesitated. “Maybe not completely. But I want to.”
He pushed his plate away. “I dreamed I was standing on a stage. Hundreds of people in the audience. Lights in my face. And I kept reading a script, except it wasn’t written by me. Every time I tried to speak my own words, no sound came out.”
I sat back. “And who wrote the script?”
“You did.”
His voice was low. Not angry. Not accusing.
Just… tired.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Again. Always.
“I know.”
He stood up and began clearing the table. And that was the end of the conversation, for now.
But not the end of the weight it left behind.
Later that day, his brother texted me again.
“Mom’s asking if you’ll come over for dinner.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You. Just you.”
“Okay. What time?”
“Seven. Bring wine.”
I stared at the screen for a long time. Then at the wine bottle on the kitchen counter. Then at the small bag of groceries I’d planned for the night.
Somehow, nothing felt quite enough.
Still, I showed up. Dressed simply. Nothing too careful, nothing too showy. Just me. Or at least, the version of me that was learning how to be more honest every day.
His mom answered the door with a thin smile.
“You came.”
“You asked.”
We stood there for a second, her on one side of the threshold, me on the other.
Then she stepped aside.
Dinner was quiet. Chicken with rosemary. Roasted vegetables. The kind of meal that felt too warm for how cold the room was.
She didn’t ask about the lie. Or the past.
She asked about my job. My classes. What books I was reading.
I answered all of them. Cautiously, then comfortably.
After dessert, we sat on the porch, the early summer air wrapping around us like a soft question.
“I always wondered,” she said, “why you were so easy to love.”
I turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“You seemed to know all the right answers. Like someone who’d studied the test ahead of time.”
I smiled faintly. “I guess, in a way… I had.”
She sipped her tea. “Do you regret any of it?”
I looked out at the yard. “Only the part where I didn’t trust love enough to come naturally.”
She nodded slowly. “My son still loves you. I can tell. But he’s scared. Scared that if he forgives you too quickly, he’ll be setting a precedent he doesn’t understand.”
“I’m scared too,” I admitted. “That I’ve created a version of love that’s too carefully built. That it’ll never feel spontaneous again.”
“Love isn’t always spontaneous,” she said. “Sometimes it’s deliberate. Sometimes it grows out of mistakes, not magic.”
We were quiet for a while after that.
Then she reached over, placed her hand gently over mine, and said, “Don’t waste this second chance.”
“I won’t.”
When I got home that night, K was sitting on the couch, watching a documentary with the volume low. He muted it when I walked in.
“How was dinner?”
“Good,” I said, dropping my bag by the door. “Your mom makes a killer rosemary chicken.”
He smiled. “She does.”
I walked over slowly, and this time, he pulled me into his arms without hesitation.
For the first time in days, it didn’t feel like we were pretending.
