The apartment had that specific Sunday evening feeling — the day mostly gone, nothing replacing it yet. I was on the couch with the television running at low volume, not really watching it.
Some competition show — people doing something timed, the editing making it seem more urgent than it probably was.
The door.
Key in the lock. The pause while she dealt with her shoes in the hallway. I didn't move.
Maya came through with her bag over one shoulder, the energy of someone who'd been out long enough that the apartment felt different coming back to it. She clocked me on the couch without making it a thing.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey."
She dropped her bag by the hallway table. Moved toward the kitchen, then changed direction, then ended up standing in the middle of the living room for a moment, caught between the two.
"Long one?" I asked.
"Vera's. And the client called again on the way home. Third time today."
"Same revision?"
"Different revision. Same problem." She looked at the television. "What is this?"
"I don't know."
"Why are you watching it?"
"I wasn't really."
She looked at it for another second. Then she came and sat at the other end of the couch, not quite settling — perched slightly at the other end. Her phone was in her hand. She looked at it, then set it face-down on the cushion beside her.
The show continued.
Someone failed at something and the canned audience reacted. Maya watched it with mild attention, too tired to disengage and not engaged enough to care.
I almost said something. Didn't. She shifted on the couch and I looked back at the screen.
The show moved into its next segment. A different contestant, same format, same manufactured urgency.
"This is terrible," she said.
"Yeah."
"Why is it still on?"
"Neither of us turned it off."
She looked at me sideways at that. Not the full turn — just the sideways kind. Then back at the screen.
"We could watch something else," I said.
She didn't answer immediately. Half a second longer than the question needed.
"Sure," she said.
I reached for the remote. Pulled up something — a show I'd seen recommended somewhere, didn't remember where. She didn't object. We settled into it without discussion, the way you default to things when neither person has a strong preference and the alternative is deciding.
***
Twenty minutes in and neither of us had said anything.
The show was fine.
Competent, the kind that moved without requiring much. I was watching it with about half my attention, the other half on nothing in particular — the room, the window, the evening light gone flat and grey outside.
Maya laughed at something on screen.
I looked over. The moment had already passed.
She glanced at me. "Did you see that?"
"I missed it."
She looked back at the screen. A second later: "It's not as funny explained."
"Okay."
She pulled her feet up under her. Shifted position — the settling kind, the kind that meant she'd decided to stay rather than just landed there. The distance between us on the couch was the same as it had been.
The show continued. I watched it properly for a while, catching up. She was right — it had a dry timing that worked better if you were paying attention.
We watched it without talking. The room got slightly darker as the evening moved and neither of us reached for the lamp.
***
The silence had been sitting for a while when she shifted.
Not dramatically — a small repositioning, her weight moving. Her legs had been tucked under her long enough that she stretched them out, and in doing so she leaned slightly, finding her balance, and her shoulder came into contact with mine for a second — brief, incidental.
She pulled back immediately.
Not slowly. The correction was fast — faster than the contact had been — and she created space, a deliberate inch or two, and looked at the screen with the focused attention of someone who had decided the screen was very interesting.
I looked at the screen.
"Sorry," she said. Flat. To the television.
"It's fine."
She didn't say anything else.
The show kept running. Someone on screen in the middle of a conversation that had nothing to do with anything, and we watched it and neither of us moved and the space she'd created stayed exactly where she'd put it.
The episode ended.
The next one loaded automatically.
Maya didn't move for a moment. Then she reached forward and picked up her phone. Checked it. Set it back down.
"You can go if you want," she said. Still at the screen.
Not a clean exit. Not quite a suggestion either — the kind of line that could mean several things and had been aimed at none of them specifically.
I didn't answer immediately.
The next episode was already running its opening.
"I'm fine," I said.
She nodded once. Not agreement — acknowledgment that I'd said something.
We kept watching.
The space she'd made was still there between us. She didn't move back into it. I didn't move toward it. The show ran on into the evening with both of us on the same couch and the distance of people who had decided, without saying so, that this was where things were going to stay.
***
She went to bed an hour later.
"Night," she said, standing. Not looking at me — at the television, at the room, the general direction of the hallway.
"Night."
She picked up her phone. Stood there a half second longer than leaving required. Then she went.
I listened to her footsteps.
The hallway. Her door.
I sat with the show still running and didn't turn it off immediately. Let it go for another few minutes — the sound of it filling the room, the light from the screen doing what screens do in dark rooms.
Then I turned it off.
The apartment went quiet.
I stayed on the couch in the dark for a while. Not long. Just long enough for the quiet to establish itself — the kind that followed someone leaving a room they'd been in.
Eventually I got up.
The space on the couch where she'd been was just the couch.
I went to bed.