“No.”
She stepped closer.
“Not okay.”
People nearby were laughing, drinking, talking. Nobody seemed to notice them except her three friends, who had arranged themselves near a cocktail table with the subtlety of amateur spies.
Freya lowered her voice.
“You disappeared.”
Evan’s eyebrows drew together.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Yes.”
“I heard the words.”
“Then?”
He stared at her.
“Freya, you ended things.”
For several seconds she genuinely did not understand the sentence.
Then anger arrived.
“No.”
Evan’s expression hardened.
“Yes.”
“You stopped calling.”
“Because you told me to.”
“I never told you to stop calling.”
He laughed once.
Not amused.
“What are we doing?”
“I have no idea.”
“You told me not to contact you again.”
Freya’s pulse jumped.
“No, I did not.”
He stared.
“You did.”
“When?”
“The night your dad was admitted.”
Something moved through her.
Not doubt.
Memory.
May 14, three years earlier.
Hospital corridor.
Her father unconscious after a stroke.
Her sister Tessa crying into a paper cup of coffee.
Evan standing beside an elevator while Freya told him she could not discuss Seattle, their future, or anything beyond the next hour.
Then an argument.
Not a huge one.
Bad enough.
Freya looked at him.
“You said you needed space.”
“For the night.”
“You said you were leaving.”
“I said I was going home because your sister asked me to stop making things harder.”
Freya’s face changed.
“Tessa said that?”
Evan looked confused.
“You were there.”
“No.”
“You were standing twenty feet away.”
“I was talking to the neurologist.”
He stopped.
For the first time that evening, the certainty left his face.
Freya continued.
“You told me you couldn’t do this at the hospital.”
“I said I couldn’t have the conversation at the hospital.”
“You walked away.”
“You told me to.”
“I told you I could not deal with Seattle that night.”
“Yes.”
“So I left.”
“And the next morning?”
Evan stared.
“You texted me.”
“No.”
A pause.
“Freya.”
“I did not.”
His face became very still.
She saw something change behind his eyes.
Then he reached into his pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you.”
He unlocked his phone.
His fingers moved quickly.
Not searching randomly.
He knew where to go.
That bothered her.
“What is that?”
“An old backup.”
“You keep three-year-old texts?”
“I keep everything.”
“Yes.”
She remembered.
Receipts.
Flight confirmations.
Photographs of parking spaces.
Every email categorized into folders.
Evan had once shown her a screenshot of a restaurant reservation from sixteen months earlier to prove she had been the one who insisted on eating outside in January.
She had called him clinically deranged.
He called it documentation.
Now he opened an archived conversation.
Her name sat at the top.
FREYA.
No photograph.
Just the thread.
Evan held the phone between them.
The last exchange appeared onscreen.
His message, 12:46 a.m.
I’m going home. I am not asking you to decide Seattle tonight. I’m sorry I pushed. I love you. Call me when you can.
Below it, 2:17 a.m.
A message from Freya’s number.
Don’t call tomorrow. Don’t come back to the hospital. I can’t do this with you anymore. I can’t choose you over my family. Please don’t contact me again.
Freya stopped breathing.
The rooftop vanished.
The music.
Lights.