The apartment is silent, wrapped in a peaceful stillness that should feel like coming home but instead settles against my skin like something waiting. The light is dim and warm, the familiar shadows of his living room stretching across the floor, touching the edges of the couch where I sit, watching him.
Deniz has been strange since we left the hospital.
In the car, he was distant. His questions came clipped, his answers shorter than they should have been. He held my hand, but his grip was loose, his thumb resting still against my skin instead of tracing its usual circles.
Over dinner, he talked only about my health, my medicine, the doctor's instructions. Never about us. Never about anything else. And every time I tried to catch his eyes, they slipped away—finding somewhere else to land: the window, the table, the space just over my shoulder.
