Chapter 27: The beginning of the end.

Chapter 27: Chapter 27: The beginning of the end.

Garrett noticed it before he could name it, the way you notice a room’s gone colder before you clock the window is open.

He texted her most mornings. Small stuff, Sometimes a stupid meme. Usually got something back within the hour.

That week again, nothing.

He tried again around lunch. Read receipt, no reply, he Called once in the afternoon. Straight to voicemail, no ring at all, which meant declined rather than missed.

Fine. She’s busy.

He tried again that evening anyway.

Declined again.

He put the phone down and made himself stop checking it, which lasted about twenty minutes.

She called him back around nine.

"Sorry, had a hectic day. Final year’s brutal, you don’t even know."

"You’ve been saying that for two weeks."

A pause, second too long. "Because it’s been two brutal weeks, Garrett. Project deadline, defence prep, my supervisor’s basically living in my inbox."

"Right."

"I’m not lying to you."

"Didn’t say you were."

He hadn’t. He’d just noted the gap between the sentence and the pause before it, saved it somewhere, and let it go.

"I’ll make it up to you," she said. "Promise."

"You don’t need to make anything up."

He believed that when he said it. Mostly.

Two days later, he decided to just spend time with her.

He didnt text her he was coming. That had started to feel less like spontaneity and more like a test he didn’t want to admit he was setting.

Her flat was dark when he got there. He knocked anyway, out of habit, then sat on the step outside because it was easier than standing.

An hour passed. He scrolled through nothing in particular on his phone, the cold starting to properly get into his jacket.

Another hour.

He was somewhere between annoyed and worried, unable to settle on either one properly, when he heard her key in the lock at the end of the street. Heels uneven on the pavement, a laugh that cut off the second she saw him sitting there.

"Garrett?"

"Hey."

She smelled like a night out. Sweet and sharp at once, mascara gone slightly soft under one eye, the unsteadiness of someone who’d stopped counting a while ago.

"What are you doing here?"

"Came to see my girlfriend, any problem?"

"I’m knackered, Garrett." She was already fumbling for her key again, not quite looking at him. "Can we do this another time?"

"Sure."

He said it easily enough. There wasn’t a version of tonight where pushing further got him anywhere. He could see that clearly even through however this actually felt.

She didn’t ask him in. He didn’t offer to help her find the key.

"Night," she said, already halfway through the door.

"Night."

He waited until it clicked shut before he started walking, hands in his pockets, not especially warm anymore, turning over a version of the evening that made sense and not quite finding one.

---

Garrett was mid-shift, restocking the fridge meant fordrinks, when his phone buzzed in his back pocket.

He wasn’t supposed to check it on the shop floor. He checked it anyway, quick, low by his hip, expecting a message from mom or nothing important.

JACEY: Garrett, I can’t do this anymore...I met someone else. I’m sorry x.

He read it once, standing there with a can of Coke still in his hand, and something in his chest did a slow, quiet drop that didn’t fully register as pain yet.

He put the can on the shelf, Missed the gap it was meant to go in slightly. Didn’t fix it.

He typed back with hands that weren’t entirely steady, half-hidden behind the fridge door.

YOU: How long

●●●

JACEY: Just long enough.

That was it. No number of weeks. No name. No explanation that actually explained anything.

He read it four times, trying to make the sentence do more work than it was willing to do, and slowly understood the vagueness wasn’t an accident. She wasn’t protecting him from a detail. She was protecting herself from having to say one.

Whatever this was, it hadn’t started that morning.

He put the phone away and kept stocking the fridge, because his shift didn’t stop just because the rest of his life apparently had.

---

It didn’t go well after that.

He restocked the rest of the fridge in a straight, joyless line, barely registering what he was doing. A woman asked him where the own-brand teabags had moved to, and he pointed without looking, his tone flatter than the question deserved.

"Alright, no need to be funny about it," she said.

He didn’t apologise.

An old man took too long counting coins at the till, and Garrett stood there watching him fumble through a handful of coppers with a patience that had visibly run out somewhere around the fourth minute, jaw tight, saying nothing but not exactly hiding it either.

By the third complaint, a lad who asked if the meal deal still applied to a drink that clearly wasn’t on the list got a short, sarcastic "Does it look like it does?" in response.

His manager had noticed.

She didn’t say anything straight away. Just watched him from behind the counter for a minute, the particular watching that meant a conversation was coming whether he wanted one or not.

Garrett kept scanning items, kept saying the till total in a voice that had lost whatever effort it used to bother making, and didn’t look up.

He wasn’t falling apart, exactly. Nothing dramatic. No tears on the shop floor, no scene.

Just something underneath all of it, leaking out in flat answers and short patience, in every small interaction that would’ve been fine yesterday and wasn’t fine today.

About four days later, his manager called him into the back before his shift had even properly started.

She didn’t sit down. That was the first sign.

"This isn’t working, Garrett."

"What isn’t."

"You. Since Tuesday." She folded her arms, not unkindly, which somehow made it worse. "I’ve had severalcomplaints in four days. Someone said you were rude to them over a teabag. A teabag, Garrett."

"I said where they were."

"You said it like you wanted her to leave."

He didn’t have anything for that, because it was true, and there wasn’t a version of denying it that wouldn’t have sounded exactly as flat as everything else he’d said all week.

"I get that something’s going on," she said. "I do. But I’ve got customers to keep happy, and right now you’re not managing that. I’m sorry. I’ve got to let you go."

---

He nodded. Didn’t argue. He didn’t ask for another chance, because some part of him already knew there wasn’t a version of the next shift where he’d have been any different.

He handed back his lanyard. She said something about a final pay packet, dates, paperwork that would come through. None of which he retained properly, the words arriving and sliding straight past him.

He walked out into the grey of the afternoon and stood on the pavement for a second, not going anywhere in particular.

Jacey was gone. The job now gone too.

And with them went whatever confidence he’d been holding onto. There wasn’t much left to prop him up.

He thought about the money in his account, the number that hadn’t been getting any bigger while all of this happened.

He put his hands in his pockets and started walking home, not thinking about much of anything, because there wasn’t a single thought available right now that didn’t lead somewhere he didn’t want to go.