The Little Morning
The morning begins leisurely in the sort of slow way that kind of comes around you like fog, soft but heavy as if it’s carrying an unspoken weight. I fill my favorite ceramic mug, which has a chip on its rim that I find oddly familiar when I run my thumb along it, with the hot water from the kettle and I watch as the steam fades into the air of my cold apartment. It’s been three days since the death of Marjorie Philips was splashed across every news channel, another rich socialite killed in a city rapidly losing its lustre.
The official reports were sterile, but the street rumours were anything but. The city is still tense, tight, as if everyone is holding their breath, waiting for the next name to drop from the sky. I’ve attempted to bury myself in work and in the rote rhythm of scheduling appointments and cleaning equipment, yet my thoughts continue to focus on a single notion, a single name: Eliot. He’d said forever to me, his voice a low, sincere murmur in the dark of my bedroom, then he’d simply disappeared.
Not a call not a text, nothing but a silent void where he used to be. I told myself to stop looking at my phone, to just put it down and let the battery die if that was what it needed to do. But my will is a weak thing.Here I am again, thumb poised over the screen, my reflection staring at me from the dark glass,
My eyes are wide with hope that feels more and more stupid. Still nothing. Silence is louder than any fight we’ve had.
When I finally enter the Serenique Wellness Clinic, I put on my professional smile, a mask I’ve gotten pretty good at wearing. The antiseptic and lavender oil smell is a familiar one as I always know what to expect from the sterile environment that normally calms me, but today it doesn’t help to soothe the panic-stricken hummingbird in my chest. A colleague of mine, Lydia, a person whose sunny disposition is both a blessing and a curse, waves at you from behind the shiny front desk.
“Morning, Ruthie! You look… tired.” I emit a laugh, laugh that doesn’t have enough air in it even for my own ears.
“That’s the nicest way anyone’s ever told me I look like I got no sleep crying into a pillow.” She grins, and you get the sense that she really feels for you. “Rough week?”
I nod vaguely, noncommittally, “Something like that,” not in the mood to scatter the jumbled contents of my heart all over the front desk. In the staff locker room, I change into my scrubs, the cool fabric feels like a second skin, and I pull my hair up into a tight bun, I rub the stubborn heaviness off me, like it wants to burrow into my skull. It is a day and has its predictable step forward.
Patients arrive sporadically — most are regulars who have chronic back pain, generalized anxiety, or are coming in for follow-up appointments for acupuncture therapies. It’s routine. It’s predictable. It’s safe. The monotony is a balm, numbing my frayed nerves.
I’m adjusting a patient’s TENS machine when I hear it. A voice that rose above the background murmur of the clinic that I would know anywhere. “Ruthie?” I stop moving, my fingers still pressing on the dial. The world seems to shift, distorting sound as if underwater. Slowly, I turn on my heels and there he is. Eliot.
He is just off to the side by the reception desk, a calm oasis in the ocean of my panic. He’s tall and poised, wearing a plain gray sweater with dark jeans that somehow make him look both casual and painfully familiar. His eyes — that soft, changeable hazel that used to have the ability to melt every barrier I had — meet me across the room.
For a unique, frozen beat, it seems like the world spins for just the two of us, in the quiet between heartbeats. “Eliot?” I mutter, the name a delicate thing on my tongue, half a question, half an accusation. He displays a small, sheepish smile which is a weary curve of his lips that pulls at something inside of me.
“Hey, sunshine. I blink, my brain spinning, trapped in a dizzying battle between the instinct to dash into his arms and the primitive need to slap the apology I know is coming at me across his face. Lydia, ever perceptive, glances back and forth between us, her sunny disposition vanishing as she picks up on the dense, crackling atmosphere. “Uh, Ruthie? Why don’t I go up front for awhile?”
I can only make it out for a lethargic, motionless nod, my throat too clenched for any words. When she has discreetly disappeared into a back office, Eliot moves closer, bridging the gap between us. “I’m not trying to vanish,” he says in a low voice. “I swear.”
A dam inside me bursts in that moment. “Where have you been?” My voice trembles with anger and relief, like a brain bleed. He sighs, a long, tired breath.
“A doctor’s appointment.” It was… sudden. I didn’t want to worry you.” I didn’t want to alarm you.”
The ridiculousness of his statement hits me. “Worry me?” I ask, my voice increasing in volume. “You completely disappeared, Eliot.”I thought you were dead.”
“I know.” His voice is tenderly soft, a dark blanket that wraps me up and makes me want to fall asleep. “I’m so sorry.” He looks pale under the fluorescent lights of the clinic, yet not powerless. He looks more like a man who has been wrestling with demons in the dark and hasn’t slept for days. I fold my arms across my chest, a physical shield from the draw he still has on me.
“What kind of doctor’s appointment makes you go completely off-grid? ” He pauses, his eyes briefly dropping to the floor before looking at me once again. The vulnerability here is disarming. “I’ve been getting these headaches,” he says quietly. “The doctor wanted to take my blood pressure, do some tests.
“Just to be on the safe side.” The excuse is sturdy, based in medicine, and intended to garner sympathy.
It works, but a sliver of suspicion remains. “You should have told me, Eliot. You should have sent one single text.”
A flicker of pain crosses his face. “I know. I just… I didn’t want you to panic.”
“I panic when you disappear,” I whisper, the fight draining out of me replaced by something much stronger and more enduring: fatigue. And that gets to him. His carefully crafted calm breaks, and his eyes soften with what looks like genuine remorse. He steps closer again, his presence taking up all the space in front of me.
“I’m sorry, Ruthie. You don’t deserve that.” The silence between us lengthens, becoming thicker, heavier. For a second I can only hear the buzz of the air conditioner and the pounding of my own heart. Then he says, “I sent my aunt’s ashes off yesterday.” My brows knit together in confusion. “You did?” He nods, a shadow passing over his features. “ To St. Augustine’s Church. That’s what she wanted. Her last wish.”
And then I see it, a quick flash of something in his eyes — sadness, maybe, or guilt — but it vanishes as fast as it came. “I couldn’t sleep after that,” he acknowledges. “Maybe that’s been the source of the headaches. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been so… off recently.”
Taking a shaky, deep breath, I’m letting my anger slip away, getting lost in the tangled web of my love for him. “You could’ve told me that, Eliot. I would have got it.”
“I know,” he says again, in a voice so quiet and boyish that it almost makes me smile.
“I’m not very good at this. I’m not used to letting people in.” He glances at his hands, and in that vulnerable instant, I know exactly why I fell in love with him—the understated sincerity, the broken soul hiding behind the gorgeous exterior, the things he says that make me feel seen even when he’s the one shattering me.
“Forgive me?” he says
quietly, his hazel eyes imploring. I let out a long breath, my defiance breaking down.
“You’re lucky you look like that.” He laughs, a true, relieved noise that heats the icy nooks of my heart. “Is that a yes? ” “Maybe,” I say, unable to suppress the little smile playing on my lips.
We find ourselves in the cramped clinic café at my lunch break, a room that unexpectedly makes for a cozy and secluded setting.
The air is filled with the rich scent of brewing coffee, a pleasant smell that helps cover the morning’s harshness. He talks, and I hear
He rants about the cold, impersonal nature of the business of mailing his aunt’s ashes, and about the hollow ring in his apartment now that she’s really gone. He discusses her failing health in the last months and the odd, unsettling experience of wedding planning while also finding his way through the maze of mourning.
“I keep expecting her to call,” he says, stirring his untouched cup of coffee with a finicky, distracted motion. “She was the only real family I ever had.” My heart — it aches for him.
I reach over the small table instinctively and rest my hand on his. He’s cool to the touch. “You still have me,” I whisper. His steady warm gaze lifts up from his cup and meets mine.
“I know,” he says, his voice thick with an unidentifiable emotion. “That is the scariest part.”
My own heart in her pain. “What’s to be afraid of” “Because,” he says, still moving his thumb in that small circle on the skin at the back of my hand, “I don’t want to lose you, as well.”
For an instant, none of that exists—the chilling news reports, the string of murders terrorizing the city, not Even for the stark and unsettling warnings from Aiden. Just the two of us here, held in this delicate, sunlit instant.
For the first time in days, it seems... right.
And by the time I start thinking about heading home the sun is an orange.
Eliot insists on picking me up, his hand sweeping over and brushing mine with a hesitant intimacy as we make our way to his car. The comfortable silence between us seems like a truce. "We need to get the wedding started today," he says out of the blue as he turns over the key. "This time it's real. I owe you that much." I turn toward him, taken aback.
"You're serious?"
"Dead serious," he says, a flicker of his old smile returning. We go to a tiny, peaceful place with a view of the lake and its windows are lit up with fairy lights hung from the ceiling like bottled stars.
No sooner are we seated, he pulls out a pen and a small leather notebook.
"Okay," he says and flops it open to a blank page. "Theme?"
I blink, surprised by the question. "Theme?"
"Yeah,” he says with a real smile. "Every great wedding has one. You said you wanted something dreamy, remember? Maybe blush tones, silk ribbons, that sort of thing?"
I laugh again, a real, uninhibited laugh. "You really listened to all my ranting about that?"
"Noted, my love." He said calmly.
As we speak, there’s something different about him. He’s softer and gentler tonight. It’s as if the man I originally met has resurfaced, blocking out the secretive, aloof identity he had developed. He is apologizing mid-subject, braiding his regret so seamlessly into his discourse that it is nearly imperceptible.
"For missing your texts. For worrying you. For not being the man you deserve."
Every word seems completely authentic and yet… there’s a darkness I can’t quite put my finger on seeping from beneath his eyes, a complexity his answers don’t quite encompass. When the waiter sets our plates down, Eliot holds my hand again, his grip solid and reassuring.
"I want to make this right," he says, his gaze intense. “No more secrets. No more vanishing acts. Just us."
I get a little smile. “That would be nice." He gently squeezes my fingers.
"You still want to marry me, Ruthie?"
The question dangles between us, both as simple as it is profound. I was thinking I would see something. Lie, pretense, guilt but his eyes were solidly calm.
"Yes," I breathe, feeling like both a surrender and a win. "I do."
"Oh okay.” He says.
He kisses me like it the world was ending
When we finally separate, his thumb rubs along my cheek, barely making contact.
"Goodnight, sunshine." I watch him disappear down the still street until he's consumed by the darkness, his lanky frame getting smaller and smaller. There’s something about him tonight that feels… concluded.
As if he’s at last laid something heavy down, shed a burden he’d been hauling. But as I enter my apartment and close the door behind me, I have this lingering sense that the air is still vibratin
g with some unseen strain. Maybe it’s just the city, still rattled. Or maybe, just -- as Aiden warned -- the tale isn’t over yet.