Two weeks later
Jordan stared at the loft, the vast space now stripped bare and echoing under the late-afternoon light that slanted through the windows overlooking the Hudson. The exposed brick walls stood stark without their clutter of framed prints; the leather sectional gleamed unnaturally pristine, cushions plumped and free of the familiar indent of a massive frame; the kitchen island shone, counters wiped to a mirror finish, no lingering coffee mugs or half-eaten takeout containers to soften the edges. Even the air felt thinner, purged of the faint musk and cedar that had once lingered like a signature.
He was slick with sweat, shirt clinging damp to his back, forearms streaked with gray dust and grime that smudged across his cheeks where he’d absently wiped his brow. His hands were filthy, nails rimmed black, palms raw from gripping rags and scrub brushes. He had spent the last two hours cleaning the loft top to bottom: vacuuming every corner where dust bunnies had gathered in neglect, scrubbing the hardwood floors on his knees until they gleamed, wiping down shelves and windowsills and emptying the fridge of forgotten groceries, scouring the bathroom tiles until the grout shone white again.
It felt like something he had to do after two weeks of the loft being uninhabited.
After the breakup with Ben, a phrase that still landed foreign on his tongue, as if his mind refused to fully claim it, Jordan had, once again, sought refuge in his father’s arms. He took the familiar elevator up to the Fifth Avenue penthouse and when the doors slid open, Consuelo greeted him with quiet warmth and invited him in. He found Ted in the vast walk-in closet, standing before the full-length mirror in a midnight-blue Brioni tuxedo that fit him with effortless precision. A rosewood watch winder rotated slowly on the central island, its velvet-lined compartments displaying a curated constellation of timepieces that went from a vintage Patek Philippe Calatrava to a Vacheron Constantin Overseas that gleamed like liquid mercury. Ted was studying them with the absent focus of a man deciding which fragment of eternity to wear on his wrist tonight.
Jordan’s reflection appeared behind his father’s in the mirror, pale and hollow-eyed, and Ted’s hand froze mid-reach. One glance at his son’s face was enough. Without a word, Ted closed the winder’s glass lid, picked up his phone from the marble counter, and canceled whatever black-tie obligation awaited him downtown. The evening, and the penthouse, now belonged entirely to them.
The tears Jordan had dammed up for what felt like an eternity finally broke free, surging forth like a relentless tsunami that swept away every fragile barrier he had built, leaving only devastation in its wake. Ted enveloped his son in his arms without a moment’s pause, holding him close with the steady, unspoken certainty of a father who needed no words to convey his solace. Jordan surrendered to the storm, sobbing with raw, unguarded abandon into the broad shelter of his father’s shoulder, the fine wool of the Brioni tuxedo darkening under the flood of his grief.
Jordan clung to his father like a drowning man to driftwood, the sobs tearing through him in violent, unrelenting waves that shook his entire frame. Each breath came broken, a desperate gasp against the tide of grief that had finally overwhelmed him, weeks of held-back sorrow spilling out in hot, blinding tears. Ted was his fortress through it all, steady, one hand cradling the back of Jordan’s head with the gentle pressure of lifelong protection, the other stroking slow, soothing paths down his spine. He never asked what was wrong; he didn’t need to. He simply held him, like a silent bulwark, his own breath even and calm, offering the wordless reassurance that had anchored Jordan through every childhood scrape and adolescent heartbreak. Minutes stretched into an eternity in the quiet of the closet, the soft whir of the watch winder the only sound beneath Jordan’s muffled cries, until the torrent began to ebb, leaving him spent and trembling in his father’s embrace.
Eventually, Jordan pulled back just enough to get the words out, his voice hoarse and fractured as he admitted that Ben was gone, that whatever they’d been clinging to had finally ended. Ted’s arms tightened around him for a brief moment, sorrow flickering across his patrician features before settling into a steady, quiet resolve. Jordan scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand, and once the dam had cracked, the rest spilled out too. He told him about walking away from Harrison & Hale too, and almost laughed at the way Ted stayed very silent at that. Edward Cartwright never hid the fact he thought Jordan’s job was beneath his son.
Afterward, Jordan felt a fraction lighter. Not whole, not even close to fine, and he wondered with a quiet dread if he ever truly would be again. But the vise around his chest had loosened just enough to let air reach his lungs. The pain lingered, a dull, persistent throb at the core of him, yet it no longer felt like a force that might snuff him out entirely. As the night wore on, the edges softened by degrees, imperceptible but real. He and Ted sprawled together on the vast couch in the penthouse’s screening room, a dimly lit sanctuary that rivaled any private cinema with a screen that swallowed the far wall. They devoured greasy slices of cheap delivery pizza straight from the box, the kind with too much cheese and cardboard crust, washed down with sips from a bottle of Château Margaux that cost more than most people’s rent. Ted queued up a string of mindless action flicks endless explosions, car chases through impossible cities, heroes defying physics in spectacular fireballs (for him) and a parade of muscular leads with sweat-slicked torsos (for Jordan).
Jordan woke just past eleven, sunlight already high and unforgiving as it poured through the penthouse windows. His stomach growled with a hollow insistence, while his head throbbed in protest against the too many glasses of the Margaux. The screening room couch had served as his bed; the blanket Ted had draped over him still smelled faintly of his father’s cologne. Ted himself was nowhere in sight, and the day unrolled ahead like an empty gallery hall: vast, silent, and waiting for something Jordan no longer had to give it. He drifted to the kitchen eventually, drawn by the scent of strong coffee. Consuelo had made him a breakfast worthy of consolation: delicate blinis folded around glistening Ossetra caviar, a cool dollop of crème fraîche beside them, and a silver pot of espresso that he attacked with near-desperate gratitude. He was scraping the last traces from the plate, third cup in hand, when the door swung open with theatrical force.
Ted strode in wearing sunglasses despite being indoors, linen shirt unbuttoned halfway down a chest that was way too muscular for a man in his fifties, hair tousled as if he’d just stepped off a yacht. He looked like a man who had already conquered the morning.
“Up,” he commanded, clapping his hands once. “Ass off that stool, go put on some shorts. We’re going to Mexico. Plane leaves Teterboro in ninety minutes.”
Jordan’s first instinct was to ask if Ted was still drunk from the night before, but his father’s expression was deadly serious. An old friend from the Knickerbocker Club had loaned them his Gulfstream, and Ted’s assistant had secured the Ocean Villa at One&Only Palmilla, cliffside, an infinity pool spilling toward the sea, staff on call at all hours. When Jordan mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that his passport was still back at the loft, Ted’s grin sharpened with quiet triumph. He slipped a hand into the inner pocket of his linen shirt and produced the slim blue booklet, flicking it open with a practiced thumb, explaining that the driver had swung by earlier that morning to retrieve it. Jordan didn’t bother asking how the driver had managed to get inside. He knew his father well enough to assume that he would not hesitate to instruct an employee to do what lesser mortals might call breaking and entering if it served a greater good, like sparing his son even one more hour in a city that now felt like salt ground into an open wound.
He also didn’t ask whether the driver had seen Ben there.
He couldn’t even bear the thought of speaking Ben’s name aloud, as if the mere sound of it might summon the ache back in full, devastating force.
Those two weeks in Los Cabos passed in a sun-drenched blur of deliberate oblivion, a carefully orchestrated escape that felt almost blissful in its simplicity. Jordan did little more than drift between the resort’s crystalline beaches, turquoise water lapping at powdery sand, and the shaded loungers by their private infinity pool, surrendering to long, dreamless naps and endless piña coladas blended with fresh coconut and just enough rum to soften the edges of memory. Ted, ever the masterful host, left no room for stillness of the dangerous kind; he filled every hour with distraction, determined to keep Ben’s ghost from settling over his son’s thoughts.
They snorkeled among vibrant coral gardens teeming with parrotfish and rays, chartered a sleek yacht for lazy days slicing through the Mar of Cortéz, danced until dawn in a mix of thumping gay clubs and upscale lounges where the straights mingled freely, and roared across the desert dunes on ATV adventures that left them exhilarated and dust-streaked. Jordan found unexpected amusement in watching his father work the room wherever they went: Ted sweet-talking pretty young women much younger than Jordan himself, his charm effortless as he slipped in proud mentions of being the devoted dad whisking his heartbroken son away for healing. The real delight, though, came when Ted zeroed in on the hottest guys in sight, leaning in with comically earnest broken Spanish to extol what an incredible catch his boy was until Jordan was laughing too hard to feel anything but the warm, ridiculous safety of his father’s wingman routine.
Nothing came of Ted’s enthusiastic matchmaking, of course. The few bold souls who took his endorsements to heart and approached Jordan, offering a drink, a dance or a shy smile across the bar, were met with the same gentle deflection: a warm apology, a polite refusal, and Jordan retreating before the conversation could deepen. He simply wasn’t ready. Even the fleeting notion of a stranger’s hands on him, the idea of a meaningless, no-strings night turned his stomach in slow, nauseating waves. Each evening, when Ted slipped out to rendezvous with whichever hot young thing had caught his eye that day, he paused at the villa door to ask if Jordan had plans. Each evening, Jordan murmured something about Netflix or an early night, retreating to the cool hush of his room with a book he barely read. Ted never pushed, never prodded, simply nodding with that quiet understanding that needed no words.
And yet, in the privacy of his own thoughts, Jordan felt a small, carefully guarded relief. The easy interest of the bronzed Mexican men around him, their open looks, the unselfconscious way their attention lingered, still found him. It wasn’t even want, not exactly, but the reassurance of it: proof that he was still legible, still desirable, that the breakup hadn’t erased him or rendered him invisible.
In the end, Ted had been right: mending a shattered heart beneath the golden sun of Los Cabos was infinitely preferable to shivering through New York’s biting February winds, alone with memories that echoed too loudly in empty rooms. The two weeks had worked their quiet alchemy, dulling the sharpest edges of grief without erasing them entirely, leaving Jordan sun-bronzed and steadier, if not whole. They returned to the States on the first day of February, the jet touching down at Teterboro under a slate-gray sky that felt like a deliberate rebuke. Ted planned only a brief stop, long enough to swap luggage before vanishing to a weekend of winter polo and fireside deals at a friend’s sprawling estate in the Hamptons. As the car cut through the familiar sprawl toward Manhattan, Ted glanced over from the leather seat.
“Penthouse?” he asked simply.
Jordan shook his head, gazing out at the approaching skyline. “The loft.”
It was time to step back into real life, no more borrowed villas or orchestrated distractions. The empty rooms waited, and so did whatever came next.
Jordan stepped into the loft and stopped just past the threshold, key still in his hand, the door easing shut behind him with a soft, familiar click that suddenly sounded foreign.
Something was wrong.
Not wrong in the way he had braced for: no lingering ghost of Ben’s cologne, no forgotten jacket draped over the back of a chair, no half-empty coffee mug on the counter to twist the knife. He had prepared himself for emptiness, for the hollow echo of a space that had once been filled by a 6’7” man who took up more room than his body alone. But this was different. The loft felt… altered.
The air hung stale and heavy, thick with the faint, undisturbed mustiness of weeks without ventilation, without life. Dust motes drifted lazily in the slanted February light filtering through the windows, catching on surfaces that hadn’t been touched in far too long. Slowly, Jordan noticed the absences carving hollows into the familiar space: the broad oak tool chest that had once dominated the corner by the entryway, Ben’s pride, scarred from years on job sites, was gone, leaving only faint scuff marks on the hardwood; the row of expensive coats and flannel shirts that used to overflow the hall closet had vanished, the hangers now swaying empty; the cheap wireless speaker Ben blasted his cop-show marathons through had disappeared from the coffee table, along with the stack of dog-eared trade magazines he’d pored over in quieter days; even the battered wire-rimmed glasses case that perpetually lived on the nightstand had been claimed, a small, intimate theft that stung sharper than the larger ones.
Jordan’s chest tightened as the realization settled, cold and undeniable. Ben hadn’t just moved out, he had vanished from the space as thoroughly as possible, stripping away every shared trace in a rush that left chaos in its wake. The loft wasn’t just untidy. It had been hollowed out, Ben stripping away the pieces of himself in a resolute purge, leaving Jordan to confront the jagged voids where a life once shared had been uprooted. He dropped his keys into the bowl by the door, ceramic, one of Ben’s impulsive flea-market finds, and the clink rang out too sharply, swallowed quickly by the indifferent quiet.
For the first time since the breakup, the ache sharpened into something almost physical, a fresh bruise blooming under the sun-faded tan from Los Cabos.
His eyes burned suddenly, hot and stinging, as if the dust in the air had turned abrasive. A quiet sob clawed its way up his throat, raw and involuntary, lodging there like a stone he couldn’t swallow. Jordan squeezed his eyes shut, hard, the lids trembling with the effort to hold back the flood threatening to spill over. He wouldn’t cry. He could be brave; he had to be. It was only exhaustion, the drag of jet lag pulling at him after the long flight from Mexico, the shift from scalding sun to this gray, indifferent city. All he needed was to strip the bed and remake it with fresh sheets, the bed that was his alone now, no longer theirs, and sleep. In the morning, with sunlight cutting through the blinds and the city humming below, everything would feel less sharp, less final. It had to.
He fell into an exhausted sleep, the kind fueled by jet lag and a sadness that weighed heavier than any transatlantic flight, pulling him under like a riptide. When he woke hours later, he stared at the ceiling for a long moment before resolve settled in. He had to do something about the mess.
He could have called a cleaning service; money wasn’t the issue, and strangers would have scrubbed away the chaos without judgment. But he decided against it. The hard work would be penance and distraction in one, far better than drifting through the loft for hours, eyes unfocused on nothing, thoughts circling relentlessly back to his boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, Jordan corrected himself sharply, the word a small, necessary cut.
Ben was no longer anything to him anymore.
He spent the next two hours attacking the disarray with methodical fury: hauling crusted takeout containers to the trash, the cardboard soft and sour under his fingers; scouring the sink until the stainless steel gleamed and the faint odor of neglect dissipated; wiping down counters sticky with spilled beer, gathering empty bottles into rattling bags for recycling; sweeping up crumbs and dust from the floors, then mopping in wide, aggressive strokes until the wood shone damp and dark. Emboldened, he shifted furniture: pushing the sectional closer to the windows for better light, angling the coffee table to fill the empty space where Ben’s tool chest had once loomed, dragging a sleek mid-century chair from the bedroom to create a new reading nook by the bookshelf. Physical labor, sweat beading on his skin despite the winter chill seeping through the panes.
When he finally stopped, hands raw and breathing hard, he stepped back to survey his work. The loft looked cleaner, more intentional, almost curated, like one of his gallery installations. But that sense of weirdness still clung to him, insidious and unshakable, as if the space had been redrawn in a map he no longer recognized. It was his now, undeniably, yet it felt like standing in the echo of someone else’s life.
He had to move out.
The thought took root in Jordan’s mind the instant it surfaced, like a truth he had been circling for hours without daring to name. He couldn’t keep living there, not when every inch of the place still carried the imprint of what he no longer had.
The kitchen island flashed him back to Sunday mornings when Ben would perch on a stool in nothing but low-slung sweats, glasses fogged from the steam of fresh coffee, grinning sleepily while Jordan flipped pancakes and stole kisses between turns at the stove. The wide sectional, newly angled toward the windows, conjured lazy weekends tangled together under a shared blanket, Ben’s massive frame curved protectively around him as they watched old movies, his beard scratching Jordan’s neck whenever he laughed at the wrong moments. Even the view beyond the glass, the Hudson glittering under shifting skies, brought back quiet evenings on the terrace, Ben’s arms wrapped around him from behind, chin resting on his head, murmuring nonsense about the city lights looking like stars they could actually reach.
All of it happy, all of it theirs, all of it unbearable now. The memories weren’t ghosts haunting the loft; they were the loft itself, woven into every surface, every corner, every breath of air. Staying would mean living inside a museum of a life that had ended, and Jordan knew, with a clarity that steadied his shaking hands, that he couldn’t do it. He had to leave before the memories calcified into something he could never escape.
His thoughts were shattered by the sudden trill of the intercom. Jordan froze for a heartbeat, then crossed to the small video panel by the door, his pulse quickening traitorously as a forbidden hope flickered to life. He told himself not to be ridiculous, of course it wouldn’t be Ben; Ben still had keys, or at least he had before everything fell apart. Ben would never need to ring from below. Yet when the screen flickered to life and revealed Derek Sullivan’s familiar face, broad, bearded, looking vaguely uncomfortable under the lobby’s harsh light, disappointment crashed over Jordan like a cold wave.
“Hey, Derek?” he said as he pressed the speaker button.
“Hey, Jordan.” Derek shifted on his feet, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry to bother you, man. Uh, Ben asked me to swing by and grab something for him. Mind buzzing me in?”
Jordan hesitated only a fraction of a second before thumbing the release. The soft click echoed as he leaned against the doorframe, waiting for the elevator’s distant hum to announce Derek’s arrival. He wasn’t sure what to make of Ben sending his oldest friend as an emissary, cowardly, perhaps, or mercifully distant. Maybe it was for the best, sparing them both the raw unpredictability of a face-to-face encounter. Jordan had no idea what he would do if Ben suddenly appeared in the doorway: collapse into those arms again, or finally shatter completely. The uncertainty knotted in his gut as footsteps approached down the hall.
“Hey, dude,” Derek said when Jordan opened the door, his broad frame filling the threshold, a tentative half-smile tugging at his beard. “Damn, you look this tanned in February?”
“Uh, just got back from Los Cabos,” Jordan answered, the words coming out stiffer than he intended, awkwardness settling between them like dust.
Derek fell silent for a beat, his gaze steady and searching, taking inventory, Jordan thought, either cataloging the damage for a detailed report back to Ben or simply weighing how broken his friend’s ex looked. Maybe both.
“You said you needed to grab something?”
“Yeah,” Derek replied, shifting the empty duffel slung over his shoulder. “His GED certificate, the framed one. Ben’s been stalling on coming back here for days, so I offered. He told me it’s in the bedroom closet, top shelf. Mind if I…?”
“No, of course not,” Jordan said, stepping aside with a forced neutrality. “Be my guest.”
He closed the door behind Derek with a soft click, the sound echoing too loudly in the hollow space, then leaned against the wall as Derek’s heavy footsteps receded toward the bedroom. The sight of Ben’s oldest friend moving through their, his, home felt like a small invasion, a proxy retrieval that spared them both the brutality of seeing each other, yet somehow made the absence ache sharper.
Derek emerged from the bedroom less than a minute later, the duffel bag now slung over his broad shoulder, zipper pulled tight with a decisive rasp. “Got it,” he said, offering a quick, apologetic nod. “Sorry to barge in like this, Jord. I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Hey, want a beer?”
The words tumbled out before Jordan could stop them, catching him as off guard as they clearly did Derek, whose steps faltered mid-turn. They weren’t friends, not truly. Jordan had always liked Derek well enough, his easy laugh, the way he ribbed Ben without ever crossing the line, but their connection had always run through Ben, a shared orbit rather than a direct bond. Without him in the room, the air felt suddenly thinner, the invitation hanging awkwardly between them.
“Oh,” Derek said, eyebrows lifting in clear surprise. “Shit, man, I’d love to, but I gotta run. Picking Timmy up from school.”
“Of course, yeah,” Jordan answered, the words overlapping as heat crept up his neck. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s great,” Derek replied, a genuine warmth softening his features for a moment. He hesitated, as if weighing something unspoken. “Hey… how you holding up, Jordan? You doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Jordan managed, forcing a casual lightness into his tone that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m fine. Just… you know. Breakups suck. But I’m getting there.”
“You look good, if it’s any consolation,” Derek said. “Better than Ben, anyway. He’s a wreck. Got a new place, but…”
“I don’t want to know any of that,” Jordan cut in, shaking his head. He winced. The words came out sharper and louder than he’d meant. “Sorry. I just…”
“No, no, I get it,” Derek said quickly, raising both hands in surrender, his eyes softening with something close to pity. He studied Jordan for another long moment, the silence stretching just long enough to feel uncomfortable. “Hey, why don’t you come over for dinner sometime? Kara would love to see you.”
The invitation was so genuinely warm, so devoid of obligation or awkward charity, that it cracked the tension in the room like sunlight through a storm cloud. Jordan felt a flush of shame. Shit, he thought, how pathetic must I look if my ex’s best friend is taking pity on me with a dinner invite?, but beneath it, a flicker of gratitude stirred.
“Yeah,” he said, managing a small, sincere smile despite knowing it would never actually happen. “I’d love that. Just say when and I’ll be there.”
“It’s a date, then,” Derek replied, his grin returning, broad and easy. He reached out and clasped Jordan’s shoulder, the kind of grip that said more than words could. “Gotta run, man. Good seeing you. Hang in there, you hear me?”
The loft felt even emptier after Derek left, the door’s soft close echoing longer than it should have, as if the space itself had exhaled and found nothing left to fill it. The strangeness that had settled over the place earlier now deepened, pressing in from every corner until Jordan could feel it against his skin. At first he thought it was simply the sight of Derek, Ben’s oldest friend, a living tether to a world that still revolved around the man Jordan had loved, still loved, proof that Ben’s life continued somewhere beyond these walls, breathing, moving, going on without him. But that wasn’t it, not entirely.
It was jealousy, cruel and unexpected, curling low in his gut. Ben had someone who would cross the city to spare him pain, who would retrieve stuff from the ruins of their shared home just so Ben wouldn’t have to face the man who had dumped him before he was ready. Derek’s errand was small, almost trivial, yet it spoke of a bond forged in choice, not obligation, a friendship that existed because both men wanted it to, fiercely and without condition. Jordan wasn’t alone, not truly. Ted had just spent two weeks proving, in his absurd, extravagant way, that he would always be there; his mother would do the same in a heartbeat, arriving with quiet efficiency and unwavering loyalty. But they were his parents, bound to him by blood, by duty, by a love that was as inevitable as gravity. What Ben and Derek shared was rarer: a connection chosen freely, sustained purely by mutual affection and shared history.
I’m so fucking lonely.
The realization struck with such sudden, brutal clarity that it nearly summoned fresh tears. He was, profoundly, achingly so. Somewhere across the last few years, amid the pull of work and the daily grind of keeping their life afloat, he had let his friendships slip away like sand through his fingers. His world had narrowed to Ben and the the office, two pillars that had consumed him entirely, and now, with neither left standing, the emptiness yawned wide and merciless. The worst of it was knowing he had only himself to blame. He’d fed himself excuses for years: the job demanded everything, adult life required sacrifices, Ben needed him at home through the darkest stretches of depression. He’d chosen, again and again, to stay in, to prioritize, to let calls go unanswered and invitations lapse. He’d barely thought of them at all: Sarah with her sharp wit and late-night gallery openings, Damien’s easy laughter over brunches that stretched into evenings, Luca’s fierce loyalty and spontaneous weekend escapes. One by one, they’d stopped reaching out, stopped extending the invites, until the silence had calcified into distance. And Jordan, too absorbed in his own orbit, had let it happen.
You could just call them, Jordan thought, the idea surfacing tentative and fragile, like testing thin ice. Could he really? Just pick up the phone and dial Sarah’s number, ask how she was, pretend the silence hadn’t grown into something irreversible? Would she even answer, or would the call ring out to voicemail, her voice bright and distant on the recording, a relic from a time when their friendship seemed forever.
She might pick up out of politeness, or curiosity, or lingering affection, but what then? Apologies for lost time, stilted updates on lives that had diverged without him noticing? He had been the one to fade, convincing himself that real friendship endured neglect. But it didn’t, not always. And now, in the stark light of this empty loft, the truth felt like another loss layered atop the rest: not just Ben, but the constellation of people who had once orbited close enough to feel like family.
He picked up his phone from the coffee table, thumb hovering over the screen as if it might burn him. The contacts list opened with a swipe, and he scrolled to Sarah’s name. It sat there, unchanged. The call log beneath it told its own quiet accusation: six missed calls from than two years ago, all unanswered, never returned. No texts chasing them, no follow-ups. Just silence. She probably hated him, the asshole who’d traded his friends for a boyfriend and vanished without explanation, who’d let “busy” become a permanent excuse. Would she even want to hear from him now, this ghost dialing out of nowhere?
Call and find out.
Before the doubt could root deeper, before he could talk himself into waiting until tomorrow or next week or never, his thumb pressed her name. The line connected. One ring. Two rings. His heart hammered so loudly he almost missed the click.
“Hello?”
Sarah’s voice came through the line, familiar in its cadence, yet strangely distant, clipped with the polite formality of a professional call. In the background, Jordan caught the faint clatter of keyboards and muffled office chatter, the hum of a busy afternoon at whatever agency or firm she’d landed in after graduation. Of course she’d be at work; it was barely past three.
“Uh, Sarah?” he said, his own voice sounding thin and uncertain in his ears.
“Yes, who is this?”
“It’s Jordan.”
A pause. “I’m sorry, Jordan who?”
“Uh… J-Jordan Cartwright. From Yale.”
Silence stretched across the connection, thick enough that Jordan’s pulse thudded in his throat. He could almost picture her, dark hair twisted up in that effortless knot she favored, brow furrowing as she stared at the unknown number on her screen.
“Holy fuck.”
The formality shattered, her tone snapping back to the Sarah he remembered, warm, irreverent, alive with that sharp, infectious energy that had made their late-night study sessions feel like adventures.
“Sorry, I picked up without even looking,” she said, a laugh bubbling under the words, genuine surprise softening into delight. “Hi! Fuck, is that really you?”
“Yeah. Hi,” Jordan said, a quiet rush of relief loosening the knot in his chest when she didn’t hang up.
“Fuck, I can’t believe it’s you,” Sarah said, her voice brightening with genuine astonishment. “You fell off the map, man. Everyone kept saying they couldn’t reach you anymore. How are you?”
“I’m… I’m fine,” he managed. “You?”
“Good, actually. Oh my God, has it really been, what, two years?”
“Yeah.” Jordan cringed at the truth of it. “I’m sorry about that. I’ve been a really shitty friend.”
“Yeah, you have,” she agreed, but there was no bite in it, only warmth, a teasing lilt that carried the easy forgiveness he hadn’t earned. She sounded, impossibly, happy to hear his voice.
“I’ll totally understand if you tell me to fuck off.”
“Ugh, don’t be silly,” Sarah laughed, soft and fond. “It’s not like I’ve been standing in the rain outside your building with a boombox. Life gets in the way. It happens.”
Jordan closed his eyes, the kindness in her words catching him off guard, threatening to tip him over the edge again. Tears pricked hot behind his lids, gratitude and shame mingling in a fresh, overwhelming wave.
“Tell me, what’ve you been up to?” Sarah asked, the clatter of her office fading as her voice warmed. “How’s Ben?”
Jordan let out a short, humorless laugh that surprised even him. “Ben and I broke up.”
“Shit, really? I’m sorry, Jay,” her voice went soft with genuine shock for a while, but the familiar sarcasm slid back on. “So that’s how it works, you get dumped and suddenly remember you have friends?”
Jordan laughed.
“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “we broke up and I resigned from Harrison & Hale the same day.”
“Oh, man.” She exhaled a low whistle. “Not your month, huh?”
“Fuck no,” he sighed, the words heavy with the truth of it.
Silence hovered for a moment, and Jordan searched for the courage that had carried him this far. “How about I buy you a drink sometime? Catch you up properly.”
“Yeah, sure,” she answered without hesitation. “When?”
“Uh… today?” The suggestion slipped out before doubt could stop it. “It’s not like I’ve got anything else going on. Unless you’re busy.”
“Hey, if you’re paying, I’m one-hundred-percent free,” she said, laughter threading back into her tone. “Meet me at Employees Only at seven? We’ll trash-talk Ben and your former bosses until the bartender kicks us out.”
Jordan felt the corners of his mouth lift in an involuntary but real smile, the first genuine one since touching down in America.
“Deal,” he said. “Thanks, Sarah.”
She went quiet for a second, the playful edge falling away. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, more serious. “I’m really happy you called, Jay. You should’ve done it sooner.”
They said their goodbyes with the easy rhythm of old friends rediscovering their footing, promises to text when he was en route, a teasing reminder from Sarah not to stand her up this time. The call ended with a soft beep, the screen dimming to black in Jordan’s hand. He stood there in the middle of the loft, phone still pressed to his ear long after the line went dead, as if afraid to break the spell. Then it hit him: a wave of relief so vast and sudden it stole his breath. His chest tightened, heart slamming against his ribs like it was trying to break free. Release, pure and dizzying, the kind that came after holding your breath underwater for far too long and finally surfacing into bright, impossible air.
He hadn’t realized how heavily the isolation had weighed on him until this moment, how the silence of neglected friendships had compounded the ache of losing Ben, layering loneliness upon loneliness until it felt like a permanent state. But Sarah’s voice, her laughter, her uncomplicated forgiveness had cracked it open. One call, one tentative bridge rebuilt, and the world felt fractionally wider again. Jordan lowered the phone slowly, a tentative smile pulling at his lips as he glanced around the loft. Evening light was beginning to soften through the windows, painting the walls in warmer hues. He had hours until seven, hours to shower off the jet lag and the grime of cleaning, to choose a shirt that didn’t feel like armor.
For the first time since the breakup, possibility flickered, small, fragile, but undeniably there. Tonight he would sit across from an old friend, spill the messy truth over cocktails, and maybe laugh until his sides hurt. Tomorrow could wait. Tonight, there was a drink waiting at Employees Only, and someone glad to see him.
It wasn’t healing. Not yet.
But it was a beginning.
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