119

Most nights, I don’t think about him at all.

Looking back, I can see how the days arranged themselves around small negotiations. What could be said without triggering an argument. What could be ignored long enough to let the evening pass. At the time these adjustments felt temporary, like weather patterns that would eventually clear. I didn’t yet understand they were the climate.

The house settles around nine. The pool filter hums until it doesn’t. Lee goes to bed early. Warren clears his throat once before turning off the television. Waffles circles twice at the foot of my bed and collapses into himself. The sliding door is closed. The hedges hold their shape in the dark. Nothing in the house moves without reason.

On some nights, I take half a gummy. Not enough to tilt the room. Just enough to soften the edges. I know exactly when it will arrive. There is a brief, almost imperceptible lift behind my eyes. The light under the lamp rounds at the corners. The room feels dimensional, like it has depth I can step into.

That’s when I reach for my phone.

It isn’t dramatic. I don’t hesitate. My fingers move before I register the thought. I open Instagram and type the handle from memory.

marsupial_mag

I don’t need to check the spelling. He told me the first day we met. We were sitting at a bar, and he said it casually, as if it was something I should know. I remember thinking it was strange enough to be deliberate. I remember the way he watched to see if I would laugh.

I didn’t.

The account appears immediately. It’s private. A circular image I’ve seen before, replaced, then replaced again. Nothing overt. Nothing revealing.

119 followers.

The number has stayed there for months, as if the account itself refuses to move forward. Sometimes it drops to 118. Sometimes it climbs to 120. It always returns to 119.

I scroll through the follower list carefully. I don’t linger too long on any one name. I recognise the pattern now. Sydney beauticians. Girls with filtered faces and soft lighting. Handles that resemble mine without being mine. Variations of letters that echo the shape of my username without copying it directly.

I don’t know if he is looking for me.

I don’t check long enough to find out.

My chest tightens, but not sharply. It’s not panic. It’s not heat. It’s a contained pressure, as if something has narrowed slightly behind my sternum.

I think of the cats.

I don’t know why it is always them first.

Leo watching from the far side of the room when I packed. Chicken under the couch, too small to understand the shape of departure. The radiator humming. The jar of pickles sweating at the back of the fridge.

I don’t imagine him saying he misses me. I don’t imagine apology in cinematic terms. I don’t imagine a message that fixes anything.

I imagine knowing where he is.

I imagine knowing whether he ever thinks about me in the middle of a day that looks ordinary from the outside.

I imagine a sentence from him that contains the word regret.

Not because I would return. Not because it would change anything. Just to know that the story did not end only in me.

I scroll.

There are no posts. No stories. No clues. Just a list of names and profile pictures that don’t belong to me.

I block him.

The button is grey. Confirm. Block.

The account disappears instantly.

My thumb lingers on the screen a second longer than it needs to, as if something might leak back through it.

Nothing does.

The room doesn’t change. The lamp hums. Waffles exhales.

I feel flat.

The gummy settles deeper into my bloodstream. The lamp hums faintly. Waffles exhales and resettles at my feet. The house continues in its steadiness, unaware of the small disruption that just occurred in my hand.

I sit there a moment longer than necessary.

The first day I met him, he leaned across the table and said, “You’ll remember that one.” He meant the handle. He meant the strangeness of it. He liked leaving small hooks in conversations.

I remember it.

I wonder if he knows that I remember it.

I set my phone face down.

Sometimes, before I fall asleep, I imagine unblocking him and leaving the account unblocked. I imagine letting the space exist without sealing it again. I imagine what would happen if he searched and found nothing. If he searched and found me. If he searched and didn’t search at all.

The scenarios don’t escalate. They don’t bloom into full arguments or reconciliations. They hover briefly, then thin.

I don’t draft messages.

I don’t open our old thread.

I don’t revisit photographs.

I think of the cats again.

Leo’s weight on my chest during arguments. The way he pressed down harder when voices sharpened. Chicken biting at my hair at dawn, small teeth, precise.

They never asked me to shrink.

They never asked me to stay.

They chose my body without negotiation.

The only thing that hurt cleanly was them.

When I block the account, the tightness in my chest is not about him. It is about the room I left with the bowls still on the floor. It is about walking out without touching Leo because I knew if I did, I would sit back down on the bed and unpack the suitcase.

I block him because I know how proximity feels.

I enjoy my silence too much.