The silence was louder than the argument had been.
Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours of absolutely nothing. No texts. No calls. No accidental run-ins at the coffee shop we both pretended we discovered first.
Committee meetings were a masterclass in avoidance. We sat on opposite sides of the conference table like there was an invisible force field between us. He typed notes on his laptop with aggressive precision. I doodled angry spirals in the margins of my petition sheets until the paper tore. Neither of us acknowledged that the other one existed.
The others noticed. Obviously. Jasmine kept looking between us like she was watching a tennis match in slow motion. Marcus cleared his throat awkwardly every time the silence stretched too long. But nobody asked. They just let us sit there in our professional hostility, pretending we were mature adults who could handle emotional conflict without making it everyone's problem.
Chase contributed everything through emails now. Long, detailed messages about campaign strategy and voter outreach that were professional to the point of being insulting. No jokes. No sarcasm. Just bullet points and attachments like we were coworkers who barely tolerated each other.
Which I guessed we were now.
I threw myself into petition gathering like it was an Olympic sport. Sidewalks, grocery stores, that weird farmers market that only sold overpriced kombucha and sad-looking kale. I smiled at strangers until my face hurt. Collected signatures until my clipboard felt like an extension of my arm. My enthusiasm was so forced it bordered on manic, but at least I was productive.
Anything to not think about the fact that Chase Donovan was treating me like spam email.
Daniel officially moved out on Tuesday. I came back to the hotel room to find his stuff gone. The closet was half empty. The bathroom counter had this tragic bare spot where his toothbrush used to be. He even took the stupid electric razor he never actually used. He left the key card on the nightstand with a Post-it note that just said "Good luck."
No anger. No drama. Just the quiet exit of someone who knew this was coming before I did.
I sat on the bed and stared at that empty space for twenty minutes. Felt absolutely nothing. Which somehow felt worse than feeling everything.
My mother called that night. I let it go to voicemail twice before I finally answered.
"Zoey," she said. Her voice had that particular tone. The one that meant she was disappointed but too polite to scream. "Daniel called."
"Of course he did."
"He says you ended things."
"We ended things. Mutually."
"That's not what he said." She paused. Heavy. Loaded. "He said you've been different since you went back to that town. That you've been distracted."
"I've been working on a campaign, Mom. That's literally why I'm here."
"He says there's someone else."
My stomach dropped. "There's no one."
"Then why does it sound like you're lying?"
I didn't answer. Just listened to her breathe on the other end of the line like she was waiting for me to confess to crimes I hadn't even committed yet.
"I raised you to be better than this," she finally said. "To not throw away good things for temporary excitement."
"Daniel wasn't a good thing. He was a safe thing. There's a difference."
"Safety is underrated when you're twenty-three and making reckless decisions."
"I'm not being reckless. I'm being honest."
"Honest about what?"
About the fact that I never loved him. About the fact that I said yes because it was easier than saying no. About the fact that I'd been running from my own life for so long I forgot what it felt like to actually want something.
But I didn't say any of that. Just told her I had to go and hung up before she could lecture me about maturity and consequences.
At night, I stared at the list I started. The one I kept deleting and rewriting. The cursor blinked at me like it was daring me to commit to something real.
Sleep with someone who sees me clearly.
Stop running from things that scare me.
Was I doing exactly what Chase accused me of? Running again? Using chaos to avoid dealing with the wreckage?
But running from what? Toward what? My phone sat on the nightstand. Silent. Dark. Mocking me with its lack of notifications.
No texts from Chase. No random memes at two in the morning. No voice messages where he rambled about something he read or saw or thought about. No accidental pocket dials that turned into actual conversations.
Just nothing.
I told myself it was better this way. Professional distance. Clean boundaries. Two adults who could work together without making everything complicated.
Except it didn't feel clean. It felt like amputation without anesthesia.
I saw his car downtown on Thursday. That stupid loud engine that announced him before he even turned the corner. I was standing outside the community center with my clipboard, pen poised to harass someone about voter registration, when I heard it.
My heart did this pathetic leap. Like maybe he was coming to talk. To apologize. To tell me he was wrong and I was right and we should figure this out like functional humans.
He drove past without stopping.
Didn't even slow down. Didn't look my way.
My chest felt hollow. Like someone reached in and scooped out everything important and left me with just the mechanical parts that kept me breathing.
That night I deleted the list again. Rewrote it with shaking hands.
Stop waiting for him to make the first move.
But I didn't send a text. Didn't call. Didn't show up at his apartment like some rom-com heroine who thought grand gestures fixed everything.
I just sat there in the dark with my phone in my hand and my dignity in tatters, wondering how many times you could run from the same person before you realized you were actually running from yourself.
The answer, apparently, was infinite. Because even now, sitting here with an empty hotel room and an emptier chest, I still didn't know what I was more afraid of.
Him seeing me clearly. Or me seeing myself.