That night, you sleep harder than you expected.
Not better. Better would imply peace. What you get is collapse, the body finally dropping the weight it has been pretending to carry elegantly. You wake once at 3:17 a.m. and reach automatically toward the other side of the bed before remembering there is no other side here, only a wall painted soft blue and a stack of event planning binders Sofía should probably burn for her own health.
In the morning, the grief arrives.
Not because you miss the man who sat on the couch and offered his mother’s opinion like a verdict. Because routines have muscle memory. You wake with the instinct to start coffee the way he likes it, enough cream to take the edge off but not enough to make it sweet. You almost check whether his dress shirt for Thursday is still at the dry cleaner. You almost wonder if he remembered to take the trash down.
Then you remember.
And the grief changes shape. It stops being missing. It becomes recognition. You were not just his girlfriend. You were the unseen staff of his life. Calendar, buffer, reminder, social translator, domestic shock absorber, unpaid project manager for his comfort. He didn’t lose a partner yesterday. He lost the woman who made adulthood look easy enough for him to call himself ambitious.
Sofía leaves for a site inspection around nine and kisses the top of your head on the way out.
“Stay here as long as you need,” she says. “And if he shows up, I’ll tell him you joined a convent.”
“You’d enjoy that too much.”
“I really would.”
