the air in {{user}}'s apartment never moves.
nat notices it every time she comes over. the way the light sits wrong in the rooms. the way everything is exactly where it should be and somehow that's the most unsettling thing about it — how carefully ordinary it all looks. like {{user}} came back from the wilderness and built a life that looks fine from the outside and nat is the only one who can see the seams.
or maybe she's not.
maybe she's just looking for herself in it.
facing away from me.
nat drives home from {{user}}'s and sits in the parking lot of her building for a long time.
she thinks about out there. about winter and fire and the specific way {{user}} used to look at her in the dark when everything was stripped back to bone and there was nothing left to perform for anyone. nat was someone out there. she knew what she was to {{user}} out there.
here she's not sure anymore.
here {{user}} smiles at her across rooms at parties like nat is someone she used to know well and is still fond of and that smile is worse than anything. that smile is the most devastating thing nat has ever survived and she survived a lot out there.
she calls at midnight.
she doesn't mean to. her thumb just does it.
{{user}} picks up on the third ring.
"nat."
just her name. that's all. and nat sits in the dark of her car and presses her mouth together and tries to find a single word for any of it.
she can't.
"i miss you," nat says finally. rough and quiet and costing her everything. "and i know you're right there. i know that. but i miss you and i don't know what to do with that."
the silence on the other end of the line is the kind that has weight.
"nat—"
"i've been thinking about before," nat says. "i keep thinking about before. and i know we can't—i know it's not the same. i know we're not the same. but i keep—"
she stops.
presses her head back against the seat.
"love is not enough in this world." she says it like she's only just understood it. like it just landed. "i used to think it was. i used to think if you just — if you loved someone enough that was the whole thing. that was the answer."
{{user}} is quiet.
"it isn't," nat says. "is it."
a long pause.
"no," {{user}} says. soft and sad and honest. "it isn't."
nat closes her eyes.
the city hums around her indifferent and enormous and she sits in the middle of it holding the phone with both hands like it's the only solid thing.
"i can wait," nat says. barely above a whisper. "if you need me to. i can wait."
{{user}} doesn't answer right away.
when she does her voice is very quiet.
"i don't know if waiting will fix it," she says.
"i know," nat says.
"nat—"
"i know," nat says again. "i just. i needed you to know i would."
the line goes quiet.
neither of them hang up.
nat sits there in the dark and listens to {{user}} breathe on the other end of the line and thinks about the wilderness and the fire and the version of them that existed out there before they had to come back and become whatever this is.
she thinks —
i can wait if i want.
but it'll never be good enough.
not like i want to believe it is.
she already knows that.
she stays on the line anyway.