Some people enter like a knock on the door. Elian came in like a breeze.
I didn't know how long he had been drawing me until I saw the sketch...soft lines rendering the slope of my shoulder, the way my fingers curled slightly around my pen like they'd grown that way. There was a gentleness to it, like he'd studied not just how I looked, but how I existed.
I hadn't meant to sit near him again. But I did.
Two days later, back on the same park bench with my journal open but blank, I caught his shadow before I heard his steps. He didn't speak. Just settled nearby, our silence shaped differently than mine and D.K.'s. D.K. and I had a silence born of things unsaid. With Elian, the silence was permission.
"You write every day?" he finally asked.
I nodded. "I try. Doesn't always mean I succeed."
He smiled, flipping a page. "Same with drawing."
It wasn't flirtation. It wasn't performance. It was like we were both just... resting.
I didn't mention D.K. But I thought of him.
Every word I didn't write felt like him. Every silence I did share felt like Elian.
That night, D.K. texted.
Can we talk? I'll wait at our spot at 8. Just want to see you.
Our spot. My pulse stuttered. The word our did something to me I didn't want to name. I stared at the message, heart knocking like it needed a verdict.
At 7:59, I was already outside.
He stood under the lamplight, hands in his coat pockets, hair messier than usual like he'd been running his fingers through it. When he saw me, he exhaled.
"You came."
"I almost didn't."
His mouth quirked, sad. "That's fair."
We walked in silence for a while, not touching, not brushing shoulders. The gap between us carried more than words could. And when we stopped, he turned to me, gaze unreadable.
"Kaia kissed me that night," he said.
I stiffened.
"I didn't ask her to. I didn't stop her fast enough either. I was frozen. Not because I wanted it. Because I hated that it was still so familiar."
I said nothing.
"But you..." his voice broke slightly. "You make me forget all the versions of myself I want to erase."
That should have felt good. Should have settled something inside me.
But all I could see was Elian's sketch. The peace it offered.
"You're still choosing between past and present, D.K.," I said quietly. "And I can't be the in-between."
He looked wrecked. "So what are you saying?"
I touched his hand, briefly. "I'm saying I'm not here to be the one who waits to be sure."
Then I walked away.
Not because I didn't love him. But because love wasn't supposed to feel like waiting for a verdict.
The next day, Elian and I sat on opposite benches again.
"Did you forgive him?" he asked.
I blinked. "What makes you think he needed forgiving?"
He didn't answer. Just flipped the page and began sketching something new. Something I wouldn't see until much later.
"You looked different today," he said after a while. "Lighter, but sadder."
"Maybe I left a version of myself behind," I replied.
He nodded like he understood. "Those are the hardest funerals."
It hit me in the chest. Not like a punch, but like a door closing gently but firmly behind you. Final.
We didn't speak for another hour. I wrote a paragraph. He filled three pages. When he stood up to go, he left the sketch on the bench between us. This one wasn't of me. It was of two people, drawn from the back, seated close but not touching, with a breeze ruffling the space between them. A title on the bottom corner read: What Could Have Been.
I didn't ask if he meant D.K. and me. Or him and me.
Maybe it didn't matter.
Later that week, I saw D.K. again.
He was helping set up for a community reading event,something we both used to do together, before our routines had fissured into fragments. I hadn't planned to attend, but my feet took me there anyway, pulled by memory or guilt or some mix of both.
He looked up as I entered the hall. There was no dramatic pause, no cinematic tension. Just a quiet understanding that settled between us like dusk.
He handed me a folded program. "You're reading?"
I shook my head. "Just watching."
He seemed relieved. Then disappointed. And that tiny flicker of emotion in his eyes told me everything: he still didn't know what I wanted. Because I wasn't sure either.
I took a seat in the back, fingers tracing the spine of my notebook, unsure if I wanted to write about this or let it pass unrecorded. Some things felt truer when they lived only in memory.
Then Elian walked in.
Not looking for me. Just there.
Our eyes met across the room. He nodded. Calm, unbothered. Like he'd simply arrived because it felt right. Not to chase me. Not to challenge D.K. Just... to be.
The complication wasn't Elian. It was how I felt safe with him. How I didn't question myself around him.
When the final reader left the stage, D.K. walked over. "That was good, right?"
"Yeah," I said. "It was."
He paused. "You know him?"
"Elian? Yeah. He draws in the park."
D.K. glanced over. "He's talented."
And that was all he said.
But it felt like he was saying more.
Later, I caught Elian outside, lighting a cigarette he didn't smoke. Just held between his fingers like a habit he never let become addiction.
"You okay?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"Want to sit?"
We sat on the curb like teenagers with nowhere to be. The streetlamps buzzed above us. My head leaned against his shoulder.
"I don't think I want to be understood anymore," I whispered. "I just want to be held in the confusion for a bit."
He didn't answer. He didn't move.
But he stayed.
And that, somehow, was more than I'd had in months.
There's no clean way to fall out of a routine. No elegant way to shift who you belong to.
But there's a moment, quiet and tender, where your body relaxes into someone's presence,not because they claim you, but because they never asked you to be anything other than what you already are.
Elian never asked for anything. And that's why I kept showing up.
To the bench. To the silence. To myself.
Even when the ache of D.K. lived under my ribs like a song I once loved too much.
I don't know if I'm ready for Elian. I just know he's ready for me.
And sometimes, that's how new beginnings happen. When you're not looking. When you're still healing. When someone shows up and doesn't try to fix it,just stays long enough for you to breathe differently.
Long enough for stillness to stir.