Chapter 23 | Lyralda

I walked for a long time after leaving Jade’s place.

Well, long in the sense that time, in moments like that, becomes a very unreliable material. Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe forty. Long enough for the anger to fall back down.

The sidewalk slipped under my feet without me really looking at it. Shop windows passed by. Groups were laughing in front of bars. A car went too fast down a side street. The city, as always, kept existing with an almost vexing regularity.

And I felt like I was walking with something open in my chest.

Not a hole.

Not a spectacular wound.

More like a seam that had come undone.

Jade had been right about too many things at once, which was deeply annoying for someone who had just been called a little puppy incapable of expressing himself.

I could still feel the sentence in my stomach.

But I could also feel, even more violently, what had come out after. What I had said. What I had finally said without detour, without polishing it, without turning it into a small reasonable sentence to avoid bothering anyone.

I’m tired of it.

I’m tired of feeling replaceable everywhere.

I’m tired of acting as if it doesn’t do anything to me.

The problem is that once words exist out loud, they become much harder to put back in the box.

I stopped at a street corner.

My phone was in my pocket.

I already knew who I wanted to write to.

Which, in a simpler world, should have made things easier for me.

Obviously not.

I took out the device.

The screen lit up.

Lyralda’s last message was still there.

I’m here if you need me, Eliott.

I had left it unanswered.

Like a very mature guy.

I stared at the sentence for a few seconds.

Then I opened the conversation.

I typed:

“Good evening”

I deleted it.

“Are you awake?”

I deleted that too.

“I’m sorry”

I left the words for one second.

Then deleted them as well.

The worst thing with shame is that it makes you believe you have to arrive somewhere clean. With a proper sentence, a measured request, a posture that doesn’t disturb too much.

When in reality, when you’re truly not okay, you’re never very clean.

I finally wrote:

“Can I see you please?”

I stayed still after sending the message, as if my phone had just transmitted legal proof of my general state to the entire universe.

The answer came very quickly.

“yes”

Then, almost immediately:

“where are you?”

I looked around me.

I recognized the pharmacy on the corner, the small closed kiosk, the bakery that would pretend to be artisanal again tomorrow morning.

I sent her the name of the street.

Three little dots.

Then:

“don’t move”

I couldn’t have said whether that answer reassured me or finished me off a little more.

I stayed there.

Hands in my pockets.

The air was colder than earlier. Or maybe I had just stopped walking fast enough to ignore it.

People passed in front of me without looking. A woman was laughing on the phone. Two students were half arguing about whether the tram was still running. A smell of fried food came from a snack place farther down.

I watched all of it as if I were on the other side of glass.

Lyralda arrived on foot.

No grand effect. No running. No visible panic. Just her, dark coat, hair tied back, moving down the street with that way she had of making it look like she knew exactly where she was going, even when the situation was clearly less simple than that.

When she saw me, she barely slowed.

Then stopped in front of me.

Her eyes moved over my face for one second.

A long second.

I didn’t know exactly what she was reading. The fatigue, surely. The rest too.

“Good evening, Eliott.”

Her voice was calm.

Not cold.

Not soft either.

More fragile, maybe, but you had to know her to hear it.

“Good evening.”

Silence.

The kind of silence where everything already exists, but no one has chosen the first useful sentence yet.

Then she asked:

“Do you want to walk or do you want to go upstairs?”

I blinked.

“Upstairs?”

“I’m five minutes away.”

I should have answered right away.

Instead, I looked at her as if she had just offered me an equation.

She understood immediately.

Obviously.

“Eliott.”

“Yes?”

“Are you shaking a little?”

I lowered my eyes to my hands.

It was true.

Not much.

Just enough to annoy me.

“Are you cold?”

She lifted her shoulders slightly.

“So we’re going upstairs.”

She turned around before I had even formally validated the decision, which was very… her.

I followed her.

We walked in silence.

The street gradually emptied as we moved away from the livelier terraces. Our steps made a regular sound on the sidewalk. Twice, I almost spoke. Twice, I found nothing that wasn’t ridiculous or too late.

When we reached her building, she took out her keys without a word.

The lobby was quiet. The elevator even more so.

In the metal wall, I caught sight of my reflection beside hers.

Her apartment was warm.

Not in a dramatic sense.

Just that slightly soft temperature of places where someone thought to close the windows before night.

She placed her keys in the small bowl near the entrance. Took off her coat. Then looked at me.

“Do you want water?”

I nodded.

“Yes.”

She went into the kitchen.

I stayed in the entrance one second too long, like a badly briefed guest on the exact level of intimacy of the scene.

When she came back with a glass, she handed it to me without comment.

I took it.

Our fingers barely touched.

And that tiny contact reminded me, in a very unhelpful way, that we had already been much closer than that.

I took a sip.

Then another.

Then I kept the glass between my hands just to have something to hold.

Lyralda said nothing.

She waited.

Not impatiently.

Not with that fake neutral expression that actually wants to force speech.

She really waited.

As if she considered that after giving me space, the least she could still do was leave me the words.

Maybe that was the worst part.

Or the best.

I didn’t know anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said.

She didn’t move.

“Why?”

I looked up.

“You know very well.”

“I’d rather you say it.”

Obviously.

I let out a breath.

“For the other day.”

She nodded slightly.

“Okay.”

I stopped.

She waited again.

“That’s all?” she asked after a few seconds.

I lowered my eyes to the glass.

“No.”

The word came out lower than expected.

“I said nonsense.”

“Yes.”

I lifted my head immediately.

“Ah.”

“Do you want me to lie to you?”

I shook my head slightly.

“No.”

“Then yes.”

Her voice stayed calm. Not hard.

“You said nonsense.”

Silence.

Then she added, without raising her tone:

“And above all, you gave me intentions that were not mine.”

I took that in silence.

Because I couldn’t really do otherwise.

She came a little closer.

Not too much.

Just enough for the distance to stop being comfortable.

“You decided all by yourself that I was somewhere else. All by yourself that I was keeping you as an option. All by yourself that I was waiting for better.”

I looked at the glass.

“I know.”

“No.”

The word made me look up.

“You know it now. That’s different.”

She paused.

“At the time, you didn’t want to know.”

I felt shame return, cleaner this time. Sharper. Not the blurry shame of being “not normal.” A much simpler shame: the shame of having been unfair.

“I thought…”

“Yes.”

She had that small breath which, with her, sometimes replaced a laugh when the situation was not funny at all.

“You thought a lot of things.”

I lifted my eyes to hers.

“Are you angry with me?”

This time, she took longer to answer.

She looked away barely. Just one second. Then came back to me.

“A little.”

The sincerity of the sentence tightened something in me more than if she had said yes outright.

“Because I had let you come.”

The “you” passed through me like a discreet current.

I did not point it out.

Not openly.

But something in me registered it very well.

“And because you left before asking me,” she added.

I lowered my eyes.

“Yes.”

“And also because I respected exactly what you wanted.”

I lifted my head.

“I know.”

“No.”

She continued very calmly.

“You don’t know what it cost me, Eliott.”

The silence after that sentence was enormous.

Not theatrical.

Just real.

I had nothing to answer that wouldn’t be miserable.

So I said the only exact thing.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked at me for a long time.

Then nodded, very slightly.

“I know.”

I placed the glass on the coffee table before I dropped it.

My hands were empty now.

That was a bad idea.

I no longer had anything to hold.

The calm of the apartment suddenly weighed much heavier on me.

Jade.

Work.

Mister Delmas.

The shame.

The file.

Aïcha.

Me in the middle, always.

I ran a hand through my hair.

“I don’t know how to do it anymore.”

The sentence almost escaped me.

It wasn’t even very well phrased. Not worthy of a real confession. Just… tired.

Lyralda didn’t answer right away.

Then she asked:

“Do what?”

I gave a small joyless laugh.

“Exist properly.”

The answer floated between us.

I immediately regretted saying it.

Too dramatic.

Too naked.

Too true as well, so unbearable.

But she didn’t smile.

She didn’t minimize it.

“You still think it’s a question of correctness,” she said softly.

I frowned slightly.

“What?”

“You think that if you held yourself a little better, if you said things a little better, if you were a little less intense, a little less awkward, a little less you, then everything would be better.”

I stayed still.

Because she had just formulated something that had lived in me for years with the air of a natural fact.

She took one step toward me.

“And since it never really works, you end up hating yourself.”

The silence closed over the room.

I felt my throat tighten too fast.

I turned my head a little.

Bad idea.

She saw everything.

Obviously.

“Eliott.”

Her voice had changed.

Lower.

I already hated what was going to happen.

Because I could feel the crack opening, and I no longer had the energy to hold it shut.

“I’m tired,” I said.

It was a ridiculous sentence.

Too small to contain what it had to carry.

But it was the true one.

She came closer again.

This time, she placed a hand on my arm.

Just that.

Not a grip.

Not an immediate embrace.

As if she were still leaving me one second to choose.

“That’s normal, Eliott. You’ve lived through this year.”

And that sentence, more than anything else, made something give way.

Not brutally.

Not in elegant movie tears.

I lowered my head.

I felt my shoulders contract.

Breathing became more complicated.

I vaguely heard her voice.

“Come here.”

And this time, I didn’t think.

I let her take me against her.