The silence in Adrian’s flat was his favorite kind — predictable, unbroken, clean. No random laughter. No surprise music in the background. Just the quiet hum of the fridge and the soft clicking of his keyboard.
Yet tonight, even that felt loud.
He closed his laptop and leaned back on the couch, rubbing his temples. On the coffee table, Maya’s notes from the joint session with Alex lay unopened. She’d asked him to “just read it, not analyze it.” That was the problem. He didn’t know how not to analyze.
With a sigh, he picked it up — and a photograph slipped out.
It was a group photo. Their team at the clinic, smiling. Maya had her arm draped playfully around his shoulder, caught mid-laugh. He hadn’t even realized a camera was on him. His own expression was somewhere between amused and confused.
Emotion, unfiltered.
He stared at the photo. Then, without warning, a memory he hadn’t visited in years knocked hard against his mind.
Nigeria. 2004.
The house was quiet, but not peaceful.
Adrian, barely thirteen, stood in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom, watching his mother sit in silence. Her eyes were fixed on the window, her hands limp in her lap. No tears. No anger. Just… absence.
His father’s voice echoed from somewhere — probably the front room, shouting about bills, expectations, disappointment. The usual soundtrack of home.
Adrian had wanted to help. But how do you fix something you can’t name?
So he cleaned the kitchen. Arranged the books by color. Sorted the spice jars alphabetically.
He created order where he could. Because when the world around him spun, he discovered something vital: logic doesn’t break.
Back in London, Adrian pressed his fingers to his eyes, breathing deeply.
That day — that room — was where it started. His obsession with control. His fear of emotional chaos. He hadn’t just chosen logic. He’d clung to it. Because love, in his childhood, hadn’t looked like safety. It had looked like silence and sorrow.
He rose from the couch and walked to the window, rain tapping against the glass again, like it had the day he met Maya. London’s skyline shimmered through the droplets.
She saw through him in ways that made him feel exposed. Seen. Unsettled.
And yet… he wasn’t sure he wanted her to stop.
His phone buzzed.
Maya: “Alex opened up today. Said the towers were his parents fighting. We’re making progress.”
A smile touched Adrian’s lips — brief, but real.
He typed back.
Adrian: “Thanks for sitting beside him.”
There was no response.
But the silence didn’t feel so empty anymore.
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