Page 21 of A Single Soul

The thought of cooking with someone else the way I did with him…

Or ofhimdoing it with someone else…

Jesus. I couldn’t even describe the way that hurt.

Cory

Lying in bed that night, I tracked Matt’s movements on the floor above me. His routine had been weirdly comforting on some of my loneliest nights. Even though I couldn’t see him and he had no idea I could hear him, there’d been something soothing about listening to him move around in his room before settling into bed. As if it were a reminder that someone I cared about was close by. Not in the same room or even on the same floor, but at least in the same building. On those really lonely nights, I took what I could get.

Sometimes I wondered if he stayed up reading. A paperback? Or did he take his work to bed? Maybe some doomscrolling?

Tonight…

Tonight, all I could think about was how bad I wanted to be there with him. I was lonelier than I’d been in I didn’t know how long, and hearing his floor creak under his weight, hearing him settle into his bed, hearing the stillness that always followed—it just made my chest hurt. I wanted to be there with him.

It wasn’t even sex I wanted right now. Yeah, I’d absolutely fuck Matt without a second thought, but what I needed in this moment wasn’t physical. I just wanted to be close to him.

Above me, the floor creaked with his usual path across the room. Then the bed announced he’d climbed in.

Part of me wished he had someone with him now. Part of me was grateful he didn’t. Did that make me a bad friend? Probably. But there it was.

I couldn’t stop my mind from whirling with thoughts of Matt as he settled in above me. What if he had been with someone? Did he sleep curled against his partner? Did he like being the big spoon or the little spoon? Did he drift away from them in the middle of the night, only to cuddle up close to them in the morning?

And how much more would it suck when there was another set of footsteps moving around up there? When it wasn’t just the sounds of a one-night stand, but that of someone whose name was on the lease? When they sometimes didn’t have sex and just went to bed?

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Today had been harder than it should’ve been. Tomorrow promised to be more of the same.

Would I be an asshole if I bailed? Maybe. Maybe not. I had to take care of myself, too.

But I knew me. I knew I’d go.

Because at the end of the day, I wanted Matt to find happiness.

Even if it was killing me to help him find it with someone else.

Chapter 8

Matt

It was almost eleven, and I hadn’t heard from Cory.

Should I text him? Why am I afraid to text him?

All I knew was every time I looked at my text app, I expected to see that typing icon. I still had no idea what he’d meant to say last night. Maybe he’d just opened the wrong window? Like he was actually intending to write something to someone else? Or he’d left the window open with a text half-written?

Except… no. He’d started and stopped multiple times. I didn’t imagine in that time he’d failed to notice which window he was typing in.

I still didn’t know what that was all about, and for reasons I couldn’t quite explain, I couldn’t bring myself to make contact. Not now. For the five years we’d been friends and neighbors, neither of us had hesitated to knock on the other’s door, but I was suddenly a coward who couldn’t send a text. What the hell?

Probably because I was irrationally certain that if I texted, the response would beSorry, can’t make it. Have fun without me!

I bit back a groan. I hoped he wasn’t bailing today. I hated leaning on him, and my God, I owed him big time, but there was no way I could handle this shopping trip with just…them.

Though at the moment, only one of them was around.

I scanned my living room. “Where’s Raziel?”

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