Same Song, Different Verse
The first time he cancelled I didn't think much of it.
Training had picked back up, deadlines were stacking, senior year had a way of filling every gap you thought you had.
I understood that. I'd always understood that about Daniel, the way his life ran loud and full in all directions at once.
So when he said can we reschedule I said of course, and meant it.
The second time, I said the same thing. Meant it slightly less.
The third time, I didn't say anything. Just read the message, put my phone face down on my desk, and stared at the ceiling for a while.
It was the quality of the distance that bothered me more than the distance itself.
When Daniel was busy, genuinely, ordinarily busy, it felt like absence.
Like a space where someone usually stood, temporarily empty.
You knew they'd be back. The shape of them was still there.
This felt different. This felt like the space was being maintained deliberately.
Like someone making sure a door stayed shut without drawing attention to the fact that they were holding it.
Calls went to voicemail more often than not. When he did pick up, the conversations were short and slightly airless, how are you, fine, how are you, fine...
the kind of exchange that technically counted as talking while saying nothing at all.
Just tired, he'd said the last time. Long week.
I'd heard that before. Different words, same song.
I mentioned it to Saraph carefully, the way you mention something you're hoping someone will tell you is nothing.
She didn't tell me it was nothing.
"How long?" she asked.
"Three weeks. Maybe four."
She was quiet in the particular way she got when she was thinking something she hadn't decided whether to say yet.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing yet," she said. "I'm just thinking."
The thing about doubt is that once it finds a crack, it doesn't need much room to grow.
I started noticing things I'd trained myself not to notice.
The way his location was off on the one app we shared, consistently, at hours that didn't line up with practice schedules I knew by heart.
The way a name appeared in the background of a story he'd posted and then disappeared, the post deleted within the hour. Small things. Things that could individually mean nothing.
Together they made a pattern I didn't want to name.
I didn't confront him. I didn't know what I'd even say, I noticed you deleted a post" wasn't a conversation, it was an accusation dressed up as observation.
And some part of me still believed in the rooftop. Still believed in the diner and the hand on the center console and you'll always be my favorite win written in a notebook.
Some part of me needed more than a pattern before I let that go.
One evening I called and he didn't pick up. I sat with the silence after the voicemail tone for a moment before speaking.
"Hey. Just checking in. Call me when you can."
He texted back twenty minutes later.
Sorry. With family. Talk soon.
I stared at the message.
I put my phone down.
Picked up my journal.
Wrote nothing.
I told Saraph the next morning, all of it, the deleted post, the location, the nine thirty family text. Not frantically, not in tears.
Just laid it out plainly, the way you lay out evidence when you're trying to look at it clearly rather than emotionally.
Saraph listened without interrupting, which meant she was taking it seriously.
"I'm not spiraling," I said, when I'd finished. "I just want to know if I'm seeing something real or if I'm seeing what I'm afraid of."
"You're not spiraling," she said. "And you're not imagining it."
"Then what is it?"
She looked at me carefully. "I don't know yet. But I think it's time we found out properly.
Not guessing, not waiting for him to volunteer something, actually finding out."
"How?"
She picked up her coffee, thinking. "Let me make some calls. Ask some careful questions.
I know people who know people, and if something is going on, someone will have seen something." She met my eyes.
"Give me a few days."
I nodded.
"And Nuella." Her voice was gentle but direct.
"Whatever we find, you're going to be okay.
Either it's something that can be explained, or it's something you deserve to know.
Both of those outcomes are better than this."
She gestured at the space between us, at the weight I'd been carrying quietly for weeks.
"This half-knowing thing you've been living in."
I exhaled. Long and slow.
"Okay," I said. "A few days."
She squeezed my hand across the table.
Outside the café window, the campus moved past in its ordinary morning rush, students and coffee cups and the sound of the day beginning, entirely unbothered, entirely unaware.
I watched it go by and tried to remember the last time things had felt as simple as they looked from here.
I couldn't quite place it.
But I held onto Saraph's words, both outcomes are better than this, and let that be enough to get through the day.