Maloi doesn’t move.
She just lies there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the emptiness beside her like a fresh wound. The sheets are still warm where Colet had been, and her scent lingers—wood sage and sea salt, something crisp, something fleeting, something Maloi will never be able to scrub out of her skin no matter how hard she tries.
She blinks up at the ceiling, hollow, detached, as if that might slow the ache creeping into her ribs.
Colet is already getting dressed.
She doesn’t rush, but there’s an efficiency to her movements, like she’s done this too many times before. Like she knows exactly how to leave. How to slip out of Maloi’s grasp before morning steals the last traces of the night.
Maloi watches her, throat tight, chest aching. She wants to say something, but what? Please stay? Please don’t do this? Please don’t pretend like last night didn’t mean something?
But she doesn’t. She never does.
She only watches as Colet buttons up her shirt, fingers moving with practiced ease. She fixes the strap of her bag, smooths out the wrinkles on her sleeves like they’re an inconvenience. Like Maloi is.
And maybe she is. Maybe she always has been.
Maybe that’s all she’s ever been, something Colet can have and leave behind in the same breath.
Maloi forces herself upright, sheets pooling around her waist. “So that’s it?”
Her voice is hoarse, like it’s been wrung dry from screaming, but she hasn’t screamed at all. She hasn’t said anything at all.
Colet’s shoulders tense for the briefest second, but she doesn’t turn around.
“This was never supposed to mean anything,” Colet says, carefully, like she’s setting down a piece of glass she doesn’t want to shatter.
Maloi laughs, but it comes out hollow. “You really expect me to believe that?”
A beat of silence. It stretches too long, suffocating. Maloi can hear the ticking of the clock, the distant hum of traffic outside, the sound of her own heart cracking wide open.
Finally, Colet turns.
And for a moment, a single, breathless moment—Maloi swears she sees it.
Regret. Pain. Something fragile and breaking.
But Colet has always been good at swallowing her grief before it reaches her lips. Her expression smooths over like it was never there.
“I told you from the start what this was,” she says, voice steady. Too steady.
Maloi stares at her, searching, pleading, hoping.
Say you didn’t mean it. Say you’re lying. Say anything, anything to make this hurt less.
But Colet just looks at her like she’s already gone.
And maybe she has been, this whole time.
Maloi’s hands tremble. “You don’t have to do this,” she whispers. “You don’t have to—”
“Maloi.” Colet’s voice is sharp, cutting. Final. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
Harder for who?
Maloi wants to ask, but she knows the answer.
It’s only ever been hard for her.
Colet takes a step back. Then another. Maloi wonders if she even realizes she’s doing it, if she knows how much distance she keeps putting between them, how much more space she’s carving into Maloi’s chest.
It’s always like this.
The slow unraveling. The careful retreat. The silence stretching between them like a blade, like an open wound that never quite heals before Colet rips it apart again.
Maloi clenches her fists into the sheets. “You always do this,” she says, barely a whisper.
Colet exhales sharply. “Do what?”
“Leave,” Maloi says, throat burning. “You always leave.”
Colet’s jaw tightens. “And you always let me.”
The words cut deep, splitting Maloi open in ways she isn’t ready for.
She hates that Colet is right. Hates that this is what they are. A cycle of longing and leaving, of stolen nights and silent mornings. A love that isn’t love at all, just something that exists in the spaces between what they refuse to say.
Maloi wants to scream. Wants to beg. Wants to break something just to match the way she’s breaking inside.
But she doesn’t.
She only watches as Colet reaches for the doorknob, fingers curling around the metal like she’s holding on to something more than just the door.
This is the part where Maloi should stop her. She should say something. Anything. But her throat is closing up, her body is screaming at her to move, but she can’t.
Because what good would it do?
She’s stopped her before. She’s fought for her before. And yet, every time, Colet still leaves.
So Maloi stays silent.
And the door clicks open.
Colet steps through it without looking back.
The moment she’s gone, Maloi feels it.
The ache, the devastation, the way her entire world collapses in on itself like a dying star.
She exhales, but it doesn’t feel like breathing. It feels like something leaving her body, something breaking apart, unraveling, spilling into the hollow spaces Colet left behind.
She stares at the empty doorway, at the absence that Colet always leaves in her wake, and wonders how much more of herself she can lose before there’s nothing left.
This is the worst part. Not the leaving. Not the silence. Not even the ache in her chest that never fades.
It’s the hope.
The cruel, stupid, useless hope that one day, Colet will stay.
But she won’t. She never does. And Maloi, pathetic, desperate, hopeless Maloi, will still be here. Waiting. Wanting. Wishing.
Loving her in all the ways Colet refuses to be loved.
And in the end, what is she left with?
An empty bed. A ghost of a touch. The echoes of a love that never even had the chance to exist.
Maloi drags a shaky breath into her lungs and lets her head fall back against the pillow. She tells herself she’ll forget this, that she’ll forget Colet, that she’ll stop waiting for something that will never come.
But she won’t. She never does.
And tomorrow, when the ache dulls just enough to be bearable, she will open the door again.
Because Colet will come back.
She always does.
And Maloi will let her.
She always does.