ALINA’S POV

The apartment smells like him — leather and coffee, a threaded undertone of smoke that refuses to leave, even though the cigarette in the ashtray had been stubbed hours ago. It’s ridiculous how the little things insist on carrying other people with them: the particular bend of Dante’s mug, the crease in the armchair where he sits when he’s thinking, the way his keys clink against the bowl by the door. All of it is ordinary, domestic, proof that life can still make itself into a pattern. I want that pattern to matter. I want to fold into it like a clean sheet.

Instead I lie on my...