"Go," Alyx finally said, her voice oddly serene, flat, as if it had been hollowed out. "Just… be careful," she added finally.
Marshall's smile was firmer, relieved. "I'm a frog, Alyx. Or a scorpion. Whatever. But I'm cautious."
Barney dragged him out of the apartment, and Alyx went to the window to watch them leave. She saw Marshall walking with his shoulders a little straighter, clearly imitating Barney's confident swagger. But this only made the weight of her secret—*that Lily is here*—double, transforming into a heavier stone in her chest with the added weight of *watching Marshall try to pick up women following Barney's advice of all people*.
She couldn't stay, couldn't keep prolonging her departure. She couldn't remain the silent spectator to the spectacle of Marshall trying to be Barney, while the love of her life—*of their lives*—lurked in the shadows, the date of her return unclear, as if waiting for a signal Alyx had no right to give. A signal for her to come back.
With a cold determination, she went to her desk, turned on her laptop. She opened the tabs with the apartments she had been secretly visiting but hadn't been able to commit to out of fear of leaving this part of her life behind. There was one that met all her criteria, right at the edge of her budget but not out of reach thanks to her trading. It had the layout Lily liked: a separate kitchen with granite countertops, a renovated bathroom, a spacious, light-filled living area. And a private outdoor balcony—a complete space to start over. Or, more likely, a safe place to wait alone for her world to stop shaking.
She made the call and scheduled the appointment for the next morning. Then, she opened her desk drawer and took out Lily's sketchbook. Only ten blank pages remained. She took it, along with the silver earring she had found months ago—the physical relic Lily had forgotten in their apartment—a pack of cigarettes, and her thermos, and went up to the rooftop.
The night was cold. She wrapped herself in her jacket, lit a cigarette, and drew until her fingers went numb. This wasn't landscapes or fruit bowls like she'd done in her classes lately. Instead, she let flow the forbidden images: the curve of Marshall's neck as he read his law books, the way Lily bit her lip in concentration, her own hands trying to hold the ghosts of Lily's and Marshall's hands.
She filled the pages like that, until only the last one remained—the final page of the sketchbook. By then, she had no more coffee or cigarettes. She drew with meticulous, almost photographic realism a scene that never truly existed but encapsulated her deepest truth: the three of them sitting around the table at a past Christmas dinner. Marshall in an ugly reindeer sweater, Lily in the center between them laughing with her head thrown back, and her, Alyx, on Lily's right side, smiling with a smile that in real life was never that peaceful, secure, and filled with a sense of belonging. She surrounded them with a frame of fairy lights and garlands.
And on the side, within the margins of the frame, with her tight, urgent handwriting, she wrote for the first time in her drawings as a final confession:
Lily is back.
Her image haunts me and though she saw us, she fled.
But I still love her.
Marshall doesn't know and wouldn't understand that everything
I built to protect him now feels like
the biggest lie.
What is my nature?
To fade into the background and watch over them in silence?
To be the guardian who lies out of loyalty?
The lover who stays silent for fear of final rejection?
Or the artist who denied her calling for fear of getting lost
in it, and got lost anyway?
When she saw no more space on that side, she continued writing beneath the drawing and the frame:
Or worse yet: was I just a third wheel, an experiment, a supporting character in Marshall and Lily's great love story? And if they ever see me as I truly am, they will surely choose the simplicity of being just the two of them.
When she finished, she simply closed the sketchbook, left the rooftop, and stored it in her desk drawer along with Lily's earring, which she placed in a small envelope. As she did, she planned in her head: *Tomorrow I'll sign the lease. And tomorrow I'll begin to build a life where my love for them is not a burden I carry, but a memory I keep in my drawer alongside a finished sketchbook and a silver earring.*
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