“Someone has to be.”
Alex tried harder. He cooked Sam’s favorite pasta, bought tickets to a band they both loved, showed up at Sam’s door with a six-pack on a rainy Tuesday. Sam would smile—that old, bright smile—and for an hour, things felt normal. Then the smile would falter, and Sam’s eyes would drift to the window, or his phone, or anywhere but Alex’s face.
“So that’s it?” Alex asked.
Then, slowly, the silence stopped feeling like absence and started feeling like space. Room to breathe. Room to notice the things he’d neglected: his own friends, his half-finished novel, the guitar in the corner that had gathered dust.
“For what it’s worth,” he said without turning around, “I would have woken up excited every day.” The Boyfriend
Alex smiled, and was surprised to find it didn’t hurt. “Good. I’m glad.”
Sam was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know how.” “Someone has to be
Alex had been dating Sam for eight months when he first noticed the crack. It wasn’t in the ceiling or the foundation of his apartment—it was in Sam’s laugh. That familiar, warm sound that used to fill the room now had a thin, hollow ring to it, like a bell with a hidden flaw.