The Apartment felt different after the officers left.
Not emptier…
Just wrong.
As if the air itself remembered Liam and refused to believe he was gone.
I moved without thinking, drifting from room to room like a ghost haunting my own life. My fingers grazed the back of the couch, the kitchen counter, the places where his laughter once lived. Everything looked exactly the same as yesterday — yet nothing felt familiar.
Grief has a way of bending reality.
It makes the ordinary seem foreign.
It makes silence feel loud.
It makes time stop.
I ended up in the living room, standing in front of the small wooden box Liam had given me last winter — a handcrafted thing he'd carved himself, insisting it was "imperfect but made with love." I had teased him for calling it that. He'd only laughed, saying everything worth holding was imperfect.
My hand hovered over the lid.
I hadn't opened it in months.
Not because I forgot…
but because some memories are fragile enough to break you even when you're whole.
Now I wasn't whole.
But I opened it anyway.
Inside were little pieces of our story:
A movie stub from our first date.
A dried sunflower petal he tucked behind my ear one early afternoon.
The keychain he won for me at a carnival game he absolutely cheated on.
And at the bottom — a folded sheet of paper.
My breath stalled.
Liam's handwriting.
Instantly recognizable — slightly crooked, charmingly messy.
I unfolded it with trembling fingers.
It wasn't a letter.
Not exactly.
It was a list.
Title scribbled at the top:
"Things I want to do with Mira — someday."
My chest tightened.
The first item read:
1. Take her to the sunflower field in late spring.
(Where the sunlight is warm, not hot. She likes warm.)
My eyes blurred.
He noticed everything.
I kept reading.
2. Teach her how to ride the old motorbike.
(But only in an empty parking lot because she'll panic if cars are around.)
A trembling, broken laugh escaped me.
He wasn't wrong.
3. Make her a birthday breakfast without burning the kitchen.
(This one will take training.)
A sob punched through my throat.
4. Build her an art studio.
(A real one. With big windows and a messy desk and a drawer labeled "Mira's chaos.")
Tears soaked the corner of the paper.
5. Grow old with her.
My hand flew to my mouth.
The words blurred into a silent devastation.
Grow old.
The future he wanted — the one he didn't get.
The one slipping through my fingers like sand.
I sank onto the floor, hugging the note to my chest. My heartbeat felt too loud, too desperate, like it was trying to reach him wherever he had gone.
That was when I heard it.
A faint vibration behind me.
Soft.
Persistent.
My phone.
I wiped my eyes enough to see the screen.
1 New Voice Message
From: Liam
My blood turned to ice.
It was timestamped the night before.
I didn't tap play immediately.
I couldn't.
My hands shook too hard.
A part of me wanted to throw the phone away, terrified of what I would hear — his voice breathing life where life no longer existed. Another part of me was starving for him, aching, desperate, willing to destroy myself just to hear one more syllable.
I pressed play.
The message crackled for a second.
Then—
"Mira?"
His voice.
Soft.
Warm.
Alive.
My heart broke all over again.
"Hey… I know you're probably asleep," he said, a little breathless, as if he'd been laughing. "But I just wanted to say… thank you. For today. For every day."
Silence.
A small, shy exhale.
"I didn't tell you this earlier because you'd roll your eyes, but… you make my world softer. Calmer. Somehow better."
My lips trembled.
"I'm heading home now. I'll see you in the morning, okay? Sunflower Café at 8:30."
A pause.
"I love you."
The message ended.
And for a moment, the world disappeared.
Just his voice remained — echoing softly in the corners of my broken heart.
I closed my eyes, clutching the phone to my chest.
He was gone.
But the echoes of him…
They were still here.
And they weren't letting go.
Not yet.
TO BE CONTINUED....