I was up before she was.
The apartment quiet in the specific way it got when Maya was still asleep — a different texture than the quiet that came after she'd left. I'd learned to tell the difference without deciding to.
I got out of bed. Found the floor with my feet. Stood there for a moment longer than standing required.
The hallway. The kitchen. The motions of a morning with nowhere to be.
I filled a glass of water at the sink and stood at the counter drinking it slowly, looking at nothing in particular. The window. The counter. The second shelf where her coffee sat slightly forward from where it usually was — I'd put it back yesterday without checking the exact position.
I reached up and adjusted it.
Stepped back. It was the same.
The list was on the counter where I'd left it last night. I'd taken it out of my jacket at some point and set it there without deciding to keep it, which was its own kind of decision. I picked it up. Folded it slightly along a crease that was already there. Didn't unfold it fully. Set it back down at a different angle than before.
Left it.
I made coffee. Stood at the stove while it ran and watched the street through the kitchen window — a woman with a pushchair navigating the kerb, a delivery driver double-parked, the ordinary machinery of a Sunday morning doing what it always did. The coffee finished. I poured a cup and stayed where I was, leaning against the counter with both hands around the mug.
The list sat at the edge of my sightline.
I turned away from it and moved to the window in the living room, where the light was better and there was nothing on the counter to look at. A man with a newspaper walking a route that looked like habit rather than destination. I watched him until he turned the corner.
Set the cup down on the sill.
Picked it up again.
Took it back to the kitchen.
The list was still there. I moved it six inches to the left without looking at it directly, the way you move something you've decided not to make a decision about yet. Then I went and sat on the couch and looked at the far wall and drank my coffee slowly and didn't think about anything in particular, which took more effort than it should have.
Her door opened around nine.
I heard it before I saw her — the specific sound of it, the small pause after that meant she'd registered the apartment wasn't empty.
Then her footsteps across the hallway, unhurried, the Sunday version of her morning.
She came through in the oversized shirt, hair loose, and moved to the kitchen without looking at me directly. The checking glance she used when she wasn't ready to make the morning official yet. I stayed on the couch.
"Hey," she said, from the kitchen.
"Hey."
She filled a glass of water. Drank half of it standing at the sink, looking at the window the way I'd been looking at it earlier. Then she set the glass down and turned slightly, not quite toward me.
She saw the list on the counter.
She picked it up. Looked at it briefly — the assessing kind, eyes moving across it once. Set it back down in the same spot.
"You got everything," she said.
"Yeah."
She looked like she'd continue. She didn't. She opened the fridge instead, considered it for a moment with the door open, and closed it without taking anything.
I moved from the couch to the kitchen doorway. Not inside — just there, leaning against the frame the way you do when you haven't decided whether you're staying or going.
She moved to the counter beside the stove. The far end. The natural distance of a Sunday morning that hadn't decided on its shape yet. She had her phone now, though I hadn't seen her pick it up. She wasn't looking at it. She set it face-down on the counter and left it there.
"About yesterday—" she said.
She straightened a mug that didn't need straightening. Moved it slightly. Looked at where it had been.
Didn't continue.
A moment passed. The kind that didn't resolve.
"Did you have trouble finding the coffee?" she asked.
"No."
"It's a specific one. Some places don't carry it."
"I know which one."
She looked up at that. Not long — the registering kind, there and then not — and then back at the counter. Something had shifted in her expression in that half-second. I didn't have a name for it.
"Okay," she said.
The apartment held its Sunday quiet around both of us. Outside the window, a dog had stopped moving and was sitting on the pavement with the absolute certainty of something that had made a decision and wasn't reconsidering it. The owner stood beside it. Neither of them moved.
I watched it for a moment.
When I turned back she was still at the counter, still not looking at her phone, still not doing whatever she'd come to the kitchen to do. She picked up her glass. Set it down.
Picked it up again.
She was already moving when she said it. "I will be going out later."
"Work?"
"Yeah. Gonna take a shower now."
"Okay."
She took her glass. Left the kitchen. I listened to her cross the hallway, the bathroom door, the quiet that came after.
I stayed in the kitchen doorway for a moment after the sound had settled.
Then I moved to the counter. Picked up my mug. Rinsed it at the sink and set it on the drying rack and stood there with my hands on the edge of the basin, looking at the drain.
The list was still where she'd put it back.
I picked it up. Unfolded it fully this time — all crossed off, her handwriting small, slanted slightly left. I looked at it longer than it needed.
I folded it differently than before. Smaller. Creased it once more along a new line. Set it back on the counter.
Picked up my phone.
Unlocked it. The screen showed nothing that needed answering.
I locked it. Set it face-down beside the list.
Moved back to the living room. Sat on the couch. Reached for the remote and held it without turning the television on. Set it back on the cushion beside me.
The shower ran faintly through the wall — the specific sound of it, water pressure and the particular acoustics of this apartment that I'd stopped noticing years ago and had apparently started noticing again. I sa
t with it.
When it stopped the apartment went quiet in a different way than before. Not the early morning kind. The kind that comes after something.
I got up. Went back to the kitchen. Poured another coffee I didn't particularly want and stood at the counter with it.
The list was still there.