ARIA
It had been three nights.
Three quiet, sleepless nights in Sarah's guest room, where everything smelled like eucalyptus and the windows never quite shut out the city's humming.
And still, I hadn't cried.
Not once.
I tried. Once, in the shower. Let the hot water slap my back until my skin turned pink. I thought maybe I'd break open if I pushed hard enough. But nothing came out.
Instead, it just sat there. That thing in my chest. The hollow weight of something I couldn't name, couldn't touch.
Grief? Maybe.
Shame? Definitely.
Rotting in me like an open wound left to fester, untouched, ignored, left for dead.
I'd tried to go back to work the next day after my father was buried. Just to feel something. But Sarah had been waiting by the door with her arms crossed and this look in her eyes like I was a child trying to sneak out in the middle of a thunderstorm.
"You're not going anywhere," she'd said. "Don't make me tie you up."
And Ash… I had told her my plans too and
