Chapter Fourteen: The Fireworks Fade
London was colder than Adrian remembered.
He and Maya returned in late autumn, the streets lined with orange leaves and the faint promise of winter. Their return wasn’t triumphant—there was no grand reunion or celebratory moment. Just quiet luggage wheels rolling over cobblestone and two people trying to figure out what together really meant.
For a few weeks, it worked.
Maya moved into Adrian’s flat temporarily. Mornings began with shared cups of tea and the occasional kiss in the hallway. Adrian even made space on his bookshelf for her sketchbooks and art therapy manuals.
But beneath the surface, tension brewed—subtle, like hairline cracks in glass.
Maya noticed it first.
The way Adrian double-checked the thermostat three times before leaving the house. How he colour-coded their grocery list and added timestamps to their calendar reminders. Even their date nights were meticulously scheduled.
One evening, as she lit candles in the living room, Adrian frowned.
“These are real wax,” he said. “They’ll drip on the table.”
“They’re supposed to,” Maya replied, gently. “It’s part of the charm.”
He extinguished them anyway.
The next week, Maya returned home early to find Adrian reorganizing the kitchen drawers.
“Why are my brushes in the same container as the utensils?” he asked, holding one of her fine-tipped painting tools between two fingers like it was a contaminant.
“Because I used them earlier while cooking. It wasn’t that deep.”
“It’s unhygienic.”
“It’s human.”
The silence after that was deafening.
They tried to salvage things.
They went to the Tate Modern together—Adrian, awkward among abstract shapes, and Maya, at home in the chaos. They had dinner near the Thames, watching the lights dance on the water’s surface. There were smiles. Laughter, even.
But the warmth faded faster each time.
One night, Maya sat on the edge of the bed, sketching. Adrian walked in, stiff from another twelve-hour coding sprint, and glanced at her notebook.
“You’re drawing again,” he said.
“I never stopped.”
He nodded, hesitated. Then, “Do you think it’s productive?”
She looked up sharply. “Does it have to be?”
“No, I just meant—what’s the goal?”
“Adrian, not everything needs a goal.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
The next morning, Maya packed a bag.
Not everything. Just the essentials.
When Adrian found her by the door, her coat in hand, he looked almost confused. Like he couldn’t compute the moment.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I need air,” she said softly. “You’ve built walls in here. And I can’t keep breathing inside them.”
He reached for her hand. “I can fix this.”
She smiled—a sad, soft thing. “You can’t fix everything with logic. Sometimes, you just have to feel your way through.”
And then she was gone.
Adrian stood alone in the flat, silence echoing off the walls.
He looked at the calendar on the fridge. “Dinner with Maya – 7:00 PM.”
He didn’t erase it.
