The next morning didn't feel like morning at all.
It felt like a continuation of the same endless night — the kind where time loses its edges, where sleep is nothing more than a fragile concept you can't seem to reach.
I hadn't slept.
Not really.
I had drifted in and out of broken, restless pockets of consciousness — each one pulling me back into a world where Liam didn't exist anymore. Every time I opened my eyes, the truth waited for me like a shadow sitting patiently at the foot of my bed.
The light outside my window was pale when I finally forced myself to stand. My body felt heavy, as if grief had added a new gravity to my bones.
I walked into the kitchen and filled a glass of water, but my hands trembled so badly I had to grip it with both palms. The apartment was too quiet. Too still. Every sound — the hum of the fridge, the faint rustle of curtains — felt amplified in the absence of the one voice I wanted to hear.
Liam's last voicemail played in my head on an endless loop.
I love you.
My heart squeezed so hard it hurt.
I set the glass down and leaned against the counter, trying to anchor myself. That was when I noticed something on the table.
A sketchbook.
Not mine.
Liam's.
He had started using it a few months ago after deciding he wanted to "learn how to draw so he could see the world the way Mira does." He wasn't very good — he said this proudly, with a grin that made my insides melt — but he tried. He tried for me.
My fingers hesitated before touching it.
Opening it felt like stepping into a room he had just been in moments ago. Like invading something sacred. Like being handed a piece of him I wasn't sure I was ready to confront.
But I opened it anyway.
The first page was a disaster — a lopsided attempt at sketching my face, with a note scribbled below:
"Not even close. Why is she so hard to draw??"
A small, involuntary smile tugged at my lips. The page after that was a rough, incomplete drawing of a sunflower — my favorite — with the words:
"It looks like a mutated potato but she'll understand."
Another page held a sketch of us on the couch, though it was more abstract emotion than accuracy. He had drawn himself holding me, both figures slightly crooked, but there was a softness in the lines that made my throat tighten.
Then I turned to the last page.
And stopped breathing.
It was dated two nights ago.
A pencil drawing of a ring box.
Underneath, in his messy handwriting:
"When she smiles tomorrow, I'll know.
And I'll ask her soon.
Sunflower Café feels right."
My vision blurred instantly.
He was planning to propose.
A sob pushed through my lungs so violently I had to grip the table to stay upright.
My knees gave out, and I sank to the floor with the sketchbook clutched to my chest. The weight of the moment pressed down on me from every side — grief, love, shock, the unbearable sense of a future stolen.
My tears fell onto the paper.
He wanted a lifetime with me.
We were one sunrise away from a new chapter we would never get to write.
I stayed on the floor a long time, crying with the quiet desperation of someone whose entire world had been rewritten without her permission.
Eventually, when I could finally breathe again, I wiped my face and carefully closed the sketchbook. My fingers lingered over the cover.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
For what, I didn't know.
For surviving.
For not knowing.
For not waking up early enough to stop everything from happening.
Guilt is a cruel companion.
A sudden knock startled me.
Not loud.
Not urgent.
Just gentle enough to feel out of place.
For a moment, panic tightened my chest. I didn't want visitors. I didn't want sympathy. I didn't want anyone to tell me how to grieve or how to feel or how to "stay strong."
But the knocking persisted — soft, patient, familiar.
I stood up slowly and opened the door.
It was Elena.
Liam's older sister.
Her eyes — usually bright and sharp — were swollen and red. Her face carried an exhaustion that spoke of sleepless hours and grief too large for her small frame. She held a paper bag in one hand and a thermos in the other.
"Mira…" she breathed, voice cracking immediately.
Something inside me broke all over again.
Before I could speak, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. The hug was tight, trembling, drenched in shared loss. We held onto each other like survivors of the same shipwreck.
After a long moment, she pulled back slightly.
"I brought you tea," she said softly. "You probably haven't eaten."
I hadn't.
She stepped inside without needing permission — as if Liam's memory had made this place a shared territory. She set the bag on the table and looked around the apartment, her gaze lingering on small remnants of him.
His jacket on the hook.
His mug by the sink.
His handwriting on a post-it near the fridge.
Every single detail sliced deeper.
"Mira…" Elena whispered, turning back to me. "He loved you more than anything in this world. You know that, right?"
My breath trembled.
I nodded.
She took my hands in hers.
"I need to show you something," she said.
Her tone carried weight.
A different kind of echo.
"Something he left for you."
And just like that, the air shifted — heavy with a new mystery, a new ache, a new truth waiting to unfold.
The kind of truth that could either heal me…
Or break me completely.
--
TO BE CONTINUED