The next morning, the rain had cleared. The streets looked scrubbed clean, the sky pale and wide. I opened the curtains in the living room while Julian was still in bed, letting the light spill in and chase away the last of the night. The apartment felt unusually still, as though it knew there were things waiting to be said.

I made coffee and sat at the kitchen table, my hands wrapped around the warm mug. My mind kept circling back to our conversation from the night before, not in a frantic ...