Interlude - The Almost Goodbye

I woke to cold sheets and a colder room.

The fire had gone out. Her boots were gone. Her scarf—the grey one with the unraveling edge—was missing from the hook where it had hung since Paris.

For a second, I just stared at the door, still ajar, as if she might blow back in like mist off the mountain.

She didn’t.

I pulled on my jeans from the floor, shoved bare feet into cold boots, and stepped into the snow, following a trail of light prints leading down the slope. The frost bit through me like glass.

She was sitting alone on the edge of the train platform, the sky behind her bleeding lavender and steel. The mountains looked ancient, like they’d witnessed a thousand departures just like this.

She didn’t turn when I sat beside her.

I looked at her hands first—bare, red with cold, curled into fists in her lap. Then her face, tight with something not anger. Not fear. Something rawer.

“I’m not running,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”

The train to Zurich would arrive in twelve minutes. I could hear it somewhere out of sight—steady, inevitable.

“I packed nothing,” she added. “Just my ID. Toothbrush. One change of underwear.”

“You weren’t sure.”

“I’m still not.”

I waited. The silence cracked like ice beneath thin boots.

“I’ve left a lot of people,” she said. “Lovers. Jobs. Cities. But I’ve never left like this. Never left someone I...” She swallowed. “Someone I didn’t want to leave.”

My throat closed.

“I thought I could keep us as a story,” she said. “A series of scenes. Fucking in the opera box. Choking on your cock in Tokyo. Screaming your name in a goddamn sandstorm. But it’s bleeding into everything now. Into mornings. Into eggs. Into who I am when you’re not inside me.”

She turned to me, finally.

And I saw it: the fear not of losing me—but of losing herself.

“Every time you hold me without undressing me, I feel like I’m going to shatter.”

I didn’t touch her. I didn’t breathe.

“I don’t want to be the wild girl you remember when your next girlfriend wants missionary and matching towels.”

I shook my head. “That’s not who you are.”

She laughed once, sharp. “Then tell me who I am, Ginger. Because I don’t fucking know anymore.”

The train horn echoed in the gorge. Ten minutes.

She reached into her coat and pulled out a train ticket. Zurich. One way. Folded neatly. She handed it to me like a dare.

“I printed it last night while you were asleep.”

I opened it. It was torn straight down the center.

My hands shook as I held both halves.

“I wanted the option,” she said.

Wind lifted her hair and laid it back down.

“I told myself I’d leave quietly. No fight. No tears. Just one more escape. But I couldn’t make it out the door.”

“You made it this far.”

“Yeah.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “But the weird part is—I don’t think I want to run anymore. I just don’t know if I know how to stay.”

The train whistle blew, closer now.

I looked at the ticket halves. At her. At the space between us—small, but full of years.

“Coco,” I said, “if you stay, it’s not because I chase you. It’s because you stop.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s what scares me.”

The train rounded the bend, lights spilling gold across the snow.

She stood, her silhouette sharp against the mountains. The wind caught her coat.

For a moment, I thought she’d take a step forward.

Instead, she looked at me—eyes glassy, jaw trembling.

“I’m not ready to be someone’s forever,” she said. “But I think I’m ready to try tomorrow.”

She reached into her pocket, pulled out the other half of the ticket, and let both pieces fall to the tracks.

Then she turned and walked back toward the cabin—toward us.

Not quickly. Not confidently.

But toward.

I stayed behind on the bench, the train roaring past, stirring her scent into the air like a whisper.

She didn’t look back.

But she left the door open.