PROLOGUE: Without Her Shoes

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Yani's POV

My bare feet are cold against the brake pedal, and I can't remember the last time I sat in a car without shoes on. The engine's been off for thirty-seven minutes. I know because I've been watching the digital clock flip numbers like a countdown to something I can't name. Each minute that passes feels like a small death, a tiny surrender to the gravity of what happened upstairs in apartment 4B, where the woman I love just told me she can't do this anymore.

My keys dangle from the ignition, swaying slightly each time a truck rumbles past on Rose Avenue, their metal teeth catching the amber glow of the streetlamp above. Every few minutes, I reach for them, my fingers getting close enough to feel the warmth they've absorbed from hanging there, but my hand stops midway, suspended in the space between leaving and staying, between ending this and letting it stretch into whatever comes after midnight. There's something about sitting here that feels necessary, like penance, like the physical act of not moving is the only honest response to the emotional paralysis spreading through my chest.

The Venice night settles around my Honda like a blanket I don't want, all salt air and distant skateboard wheels on concrete, the soundtrack of other people's Friday nights continuing while mine implodes in slow motion. A helicopter chops overhead, probably headed to UCLA Medical, carrying someone else's emergency while I sit here manufacturing my own. The sound fades, leaving behind the unique quiet that only occurs in the space between late night and early morning when the city exhales and reveals its softer edges.

Through my rearview mirror, I can see the glow from apartment 4B's living room window, third floor, corner unit, and the fire escape Veyah always said made her feel safer. She'd grown up in houses where the exits weren't guaranteed, where safety was something you had to calculate and plan for so that fire escape represented possibility in a way that probably sounds dramatic to people who've never had to think about escape routes from their own lives.

The yellow glow stays steady, and I imagine her inside, probably sweeping up the glass from the picture frame that exploded against the wall twenty-three minutes ago. Veyah cleans when she's processing trauma; I've watched her scrub kitchen counters until they gleamed while working through panic attacks, organize her art supplies by color when her anxiety spiked, and fold and refold laundry when the world felt too chaotic to navigate. Right now, she's probably moving through her apartment with the mechanical precision of someone trying to put her life back in order after I scattered it across her living room floor.

That frame held our photo from the Griffith Observatory last summer, where we're standing against the railing with the city spread below us like scattered diamonds. Veyah's laughing at something I whispered, probably inappropriate, about the tourist family arguing nearby. I'm looking at her instead of the view because she'd always been more beautiful than any skyline. We'd taken that photo during our third attempt at making this work when we'd convinced ourselves that time apart had taught us how to love each other without drawing blood.

The sound it made when it hit the wall still echoes in my ears, sharp and final, like the period at the end of a sentence neither of us wanted to finish writing. But maybe that's the problem. We keep writing the same sentence over and over, hoping the ending will change, never learning that some stories are destined to break their frames.

"You can't keep doing this to me, Yani."

Her voice comes back to me now, and I have to grip the steering wheel to steady myself against the memory. It hadn't been loud or dramatic, that's what made it cut so deep. Just tired, bone-deep tired, the kind that settles into your chest after too many nights of loving someone who keeps leaving pieces of themselves in other people's text messages. Veyah has this way of speaking the truth that feels like surgery, precise, necessary, and devastating.

I replay the moment I told her about talking to Renae again, how I'd thought honesty would fix things, how I'd been catastrophically wrong about that like I'd been wrong about everything else tonight. The conversation had started innocently enough. Renae reached out about her daughter's art project, asking if I knew any local artists who worked with kids. Simple. Professional. But then it became two hours of texting about her life, her new relationship, and how she'd been thinking about our time together.

I should have told Veyah immediately. Should have handed her my phone and said, "Look, here's what happened, here's what it meant, here's why you don't need to worry." Instead, I'd carried it around for three days like a secret, letting it ferment into something bigger than it was until Veyah found the messages while looking for my charger and saw a conversation that looked like everything she'd been afraid of.

The worst part wasn't Veyah throwing the frame. It was the three seconds of silence before she did it when I could see something breaking inside her that had nothing to do with glass. She'd looked at me with this expression I'd never seen before, like she was seeing me clearly for the first time and didn't like what she found. Then she'd picked up that frame, held it for a moment like she was considering its weight, and hurled it at the wall with the kind of precision that comes from practice.

"I keep making space for you," she'd said after the glass settled. "I keep believing you when you say you want this. But you don't want this, Yani. You want the idea of this. You want to be the kind of person who can love someone like me, but you're not ready to do it."

That's when I'd known we were really done. Not because of the anger or the accusations, but because she was right.

My phone buzzes against the passenger seat, pulling me back to the present. Sanchez is texting, asking if I'm still coming to the late session, where we were supposed to finish mixing my new track about second chances. The irony isn't lost on me, spending my evening destroying my relationship, then going to polish a song about learning to love better. I stare at the message, imagining the studio with its dimmed control room and soundproof walls, where people make music instead of destroying each other in living rooms that smell like lavender candles and unfulfilled promises.

The studio feels like another planet right now, somewhere inhabited by the version of myself who still believed this could work, who thought loving Veyah was just a matter of wanting it badly enough. That woman seems impossibly naive now, sitting here with bare feet and a broken heart, learning that love requires more than desire. It requires the emotional maturity I'm apparently still developing at thirty.

I type back, "Not tonight," and set the phone face down, choosing to sit in this particular pain instead of running to the booth where I can pretend my heart isn't scattered across Venice Beach like broken glass. Some nights require you to feel everything instead of singing it away. Some nights demand that you sit with the consequences of your choices until they teach you something worth knowing.

The recollection hits me without warning: Veyah's apartment door closing behind me as I walked out. Not a slam, Veyah doesn't slam doors when she's really done, but that soft, final click that means "this is it." I'd stood in the hallway for a full minute, staring at the peeling paint on the wall across from her door, watching a roach skitter along the baseboards, waiting for the door to open again. Waiting for Veyah to appear in her oversized paint-stained t-shirt and say we could figure it out like we always did.

Instead, I'd heard the deadbolt turn, that slight metallic sound that felt like the last note of a song I wasn't ready to end. The finality had hit me then, not just this fight, but all of it. Three years of trying to love each other correctly, believing that passion could substitute for stability, that intensity meant we were meant to be.

My feet had carried me down three flights of stairs and out to the parking area behind the building, past the dumpsters and Mrs. Rodriguez's plastic lawn chairs, but I'd left my shoes somewhere between the living room and the hallway, between the fight and the goodbye. I'd been so focused on getting out before I said something even worse that I'd forgotten the basic logistics of leaving. Now, I'm sitting here barefoot like some metaphor for being unprepared for the life I'm trying to live.

Venice Beach continues around me, indifferent to my apocalypse. The distant thrum of bass from a house party on Speedway mingles with someone's dog barking at shadows, the low whoosh of late-night traffic heading toward Lincoln Boulevard carrying people to and from lives that make sense. A group of teenagers walks past, sharing earbuds and stumbling over their laughter. I remember being that young when heartbreak felt temporary and love felt infinite.

A couple walks past my car, arms linked, the woman wearing a vintage band t-shirt and the man carrying takeout containers from the Thai place on Abbot Kinney. They're having some quiet conversation that makes them both smile. I feel like an alien observing human behavior from behind glass. They look so easy together, so uncomplicated, like they've figured out how to care for each other without keeping score.

I roll down my window slightly, letting in the night air that tastes like ocean salt and other people's possibilities. The breeze carries the scent of roses from someone's garden, mixed with the ever-present smell of seaweed and car exhaust that defines this neighborhood. I try to remember what it felt like to be someone who walked down streets without carrying the weight of another almost-ending, someone who could smell roses without thinking about all the things that bloom and die.

My phone buzzes again, and I know before I look that it's her. The apartment's glow flickers, not off, just Veyah moving through rooms, probably putting things back in their places because that's what she does when her world tilts sideways. She needs order when everything else feels chaotic and needs to know that at least her physical space can be controlled, even when her heart can't be.

"You left your shoes."

These are three words that somehow contain everything, practicality and finality, and maybe, buried underneath, the smallest invitation to have a reason to come back. I stare at the message, reading it over and over, looking for subtext that might not exist. Veyah has always been direct, but she's careful with her words, especially when hurt. This could mean she wants me to come back for them. It could mean she's planning to throw them away. It could mean nothing more than what it says.

I type and delete five different responses: "I can get them tomorrow," "Are you okay," "I'm sorry," "Can we talk about this," "I love you." Each one feels wrong, either too casual or too desperate, either ignoring what just happened or pushing for more than she can give right now. Finally, I settle on "Keep them" and hit send before I can overthink it further.

The response comes back as silence, and I know that silence means Veyah is sitting on her couch, probably wrapped in the chenille throw her grandmother made her, staring at her phone, trying to figure out if this is really the end or just another comma in a sentence that's been running on for three years. She's probably dissecting my response the same way I dissected hers, looking for hidden meanings in a text that might mean I don't want to come back upstairs and face what we've done to each other.

The minutes tick by,11:43, 11:44, 11:45, and I realize I'm holding my breath, waiting for something that might not come. Waiting for her to text back, to call, to appear at her window and wave me upstairs so we can try again to say things that don't shatter when they hit the air.

At 11:47 PM, the apartment window goes dark.

That's when I really knew that Veyah wasn't coming back down tonight, tomorrow, or maybe ever. When Veyah turns off her bedroom lamp, she decides to file it away in that careful part of her brain where she keeps all the things she's decided to stop wanting. I've learned this about her over three years of loving, leaving, and coming back: Veyah doesn't make threats or ultimatums. She just stops. She stops calling, hoping, and leaving space for you in her carefully arranged life.

The darkened window stares at me like a closed eye, and I feel something essential shift inside my chest, like a door closing in my heart. The building looks different now, more anonymous, like just another apartment complex instead of the place where I'd imagined building something lasting. Without that warm yellow glow, it could be anywhere, housing anyone, holding any story except ours.

I think about all the nights I've sat in this same parking spot, waiting for Veyah to get home from gallery openings or coffee dates with Milan, watching her climb those stairs and disappear into that same window now dark. How many hours have I spent staring up at that apartment, feeling like I was looking at home from the outside? How many times have I sat here after fights, perfect nights, and ordinary evenings that felt extraordinary because they included her?

I start the car because I have to, because sitting here until sunrise won't change the words we said or put the picture back in its frame. The engine turns over with a sound that feels too loud on a quiet night, and I realize I haven't started this car without Veyah in the passenger seat in months. We'd gotten into the habit of riding together everywhere, to the grocery store, to her art shows, to visit my grandmother in Leimert Park. Now, the car feels cavernous, as if it were designed for more people than just me.

My hands shake slightly as I put the car in drive. I catch sight of myself in the side mirror, eyes swollen from crying and not crying, lips pressed into a line that's trying too hard to hold everything together. I look like someone who's been holding back rain for hours, and maybe I have been. My face looks unfamiliar and older somehow, like I've aged years in the span of this single evening.

Pulling away from the curb, I pass under a streetlamp that illuminates the empty passenger seat where Veyah's purse used to sit on nights when we drove nowhere together to have somewhere to be. She'd always put her feet up on the dashboard and play DJ from her phone, introducing me to artists I'd never heard of, singing along off-key to songs that became the soundtrack to whatever we were building.

The seat looks impossibly empty now, like a space carved out of the universe, just to remind me what missing feels like. I reach over and touch the fabric, still warm from when she'd sat there earlier tonight when we'd driven to get dinner and talked about her upcoming show when everything had still felt possible.

Driving down Rose Avenue toward my apartment, I pass the taco truck where we'd had our first real conversation, the corner where Veyah had kissed me for the first time against my car after a night of pretending we were just friends. Every block holds some piece of our history. I realize how thoroughly we'd woven ourselves into this neighborhood, how many ordinary places had become sacred because they'd held us.

I feel the weight of knowing settle into my bones. This isn't really over; it has never been with us. We're like two planets locked in each other's gravitational pull, destined to orbit, crash, and spin away, only to find each other again when the universe gets lonely. I've seen this pattern before: the fight, the silence, the slow drift back toward each other because neither of us knows how to love anyone else the way we love each other, messy and desperate and real.

But maybe that's the problem. Maybe the fact that we keep coming back doesn't mean we're meant to be together. Maybe it means we're both too afraid to learn how to be apart. Maybe our love is less like gravity and more like addiction, less like destiny and more like the inability to imagine ourselves as separate people.

I think some loves don't end, turning onto Lincoln Boulevard toward my empty apartment, bed, and whatever comes next. They just go quiet for a while, waiting for the next song to play, for the next chance to get it right or get it wrong all over again.

The barefoot drive home feels like the beginning of something, even though it's supposed to be the end. And maybe that's the truest thing about love: it never really ends; it just changes shape, becomes memory instead of possibility, and becomes the story you tell yourself about who you used to be when you believed in forever.

I drive home through the Venice night, carrying her absence like a weight in my chest, already missing her, already knowing I'll see her again.