Page 113 of Impulse Control
The light felt sharper. My head felt heavier. The coffee tasted weaker no matter how much I poured.
I wore Dominic’s sweater to bed by accident — not as a statement, not even consciously. It was just there, on the chair, and I grabbed it the way I grabbed everything else lately, on instinct, without thinking about what it meant.
I woke up tangled in it, warm and irritated with myself.
I didn’t change.
I told myself it was practical.
I told myself it smelled like home.
I told myself a lot of things.
At the studio, René was already pacing when I arrived. He handed me a flash drive and didn’t look up.
“Cyrus needs support on the afternoon shoot,” he said. “You’ll manage post.”
No question. No acknowledgment. Just an assumption that I would absorb the workload the way I always did — quietly and competently.
I nodded. Took the drive. Opened three new folders before I’d even put my bag down.
This was the version of myself everyone liked.
The one who didn’t need anything.
The one who made things easier.
The one who never asked where she fit — only how fast she could move.
The nameless girl wasn’t on that shoot.
And I noticed the absence immediately.
I checked the mirror more than once.
Checked my phone twice.
Didn’t tell myself why.
By the time I got home that night, it was already dark. The building was loud with life — laughter from Alix’s place, someone cooking something garlicky, music bleeding faintly through the walls like the world was still happening just fine without me.
I stepped into my apartment and felt that same wrongness again.
Not empty.
Just… unoccupied.
I kicked off my shoes, dropped my bag, opened my laptop on autopilot.
My calendar was still there. Waiting. Color-coded and relentless.
Green. Blue. Yellow. Purple, barely visible.
I added two more reminders.
Moved one thing from Thursday to Friday.
Solved three problems before they became emergencies. Then dove into my assignments for this week. I was ahead on images, and we had a guest lecturer coming in, so we needed to be ready to just submit our images for critique the following week.
