It had been a week. Seven days since you told him it was over. Since you stood there — eyes sad, voice steady — and said you couldn’t hold him back. That you loved him too much to be the thing that dimmed his future.

He’d said nothing, really. Just blinked through the burn in his throat, nodded, maybe even smiled a little. Like that would make it easier for you to walk away.

But now… Now he couldn’t breathe in his apartment without inhaling memories of you. Everywhere he turned — the spot on the floor you used to sit while flipping through his records where te rug always bunched up, the mug you used that still sat in the sink, the dumb mixtape he’d been working on on the table halfway through. He’d been telling himself to respect your decision. To give you space. But space felt like a punishment when your whole heart lived in someone else’s hands.

His fingers itched for something. A reason. Anything that could excuse him showing up at your door.

Then he found it — your keychain, the one he gifted you with the little surfboard chipped charm, forgotten on his bookshelf like it didn’t still hold weight. It was nothing. It was everything.

Now he’s standing outside your door, breath shallow, sweat damp on his palms. He feels like this small, ordinary thing in his hand is somehow holding his entire future — like it’s the only proof that what you had was real, and maybe still is. It became the most important thing in the universe. The thing that helped him breathe again.

He hesitates for one second.

Then knocks.

Three soft taps.

He waits. And hopefully, just hopefully… you won’t slam the door in his face.