Locked Out
“I haven’t heard from you in years,” Diya squealed the moment she answered, sounding equal parts offended and relieved.
I tucked the phone between my shoulder and ear as I dragged my suitcase through the airport exit. “Hi to you too.”
“Don’t ‘hi’ me. You vanish for five years and call like we spoke yesterday?”
I could hear traffic on her end—horns blaring, people shouting, life moving. It sounded strangely far away.
“I got a job in Bangalore,” I said.
There was stunned silence before she shrieked, “You what?”
Her voice was loud enough to make me pull the phone away, and I almost laughed. Almost. There was a time laughter came easily. Now it felt like trying to remember a language I used to speak.
“My office is near your apartment,” I said. “The one you’re barely using.”
“The flat?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
Then softer, “You want to stay there?”
“If it’s okay.”
She didn’t hesitate.
“Of course it is.”
No questions. No Why now? No Where have you been? Just yes.
That was how my best friend loved, quietly and completely.
━━━━━☆━━━━━
The apartment was smaller than I remembered, but comforting in the way abandoned places can be. Dust floated in slants of evening light, old books lined a crooked shelf, a forgotten mug sat by the sink, and a scarf still hung behind the bedroom door—small signs that someone had once lived here happily.
My mother followed me while I unpacked, pretending she was helping, though really she was worrying.
Again.
“Lena dear, are you sure you want to stay alone?” she asked for the third time.
“I’ll be fine.”
She hated how flat my voice sounded. I knew because she looked at me the way people looked at dying things that kept breathing.
My brother leaned against the wall. “The apartment has balconies,” he said carefully, “keep the doors locked.”
My mother shot him a warning look.
I said nothing. She watched me too carefully. Everyone did lately, as if I might break if they blinked.
Before leaving, she touched my arm.
“You can still come back home if you don’t like it.”
I nodded.
After they left, silence settled over the flat, heavy enough to feel physical. I unpacked mechanically, folding clothes, stacking books, placing toiletries, pretending this was a beginning and not some fragile attempt at one.
By nine-thirty hunger made itself known, so I ordered fried chicken, because loneliness always tasted slightly better with something greasy.
━━━━━☆━━━━━
When the delivery guy came, the smell hit me first—fried pepper, garlic, hot oil.
Ah. Comfort.
I sat cross-legged on the floor and opened the packet, only to frown. There was an extra burger I hadn’t ordered. I checked the bill.
Wrong order.
“Seriously?”
I rushed back into the corridor before the delivery guy reached the elevator.
“Wait!”
He turned. “You gave me the wrong order.”
He apologized and started swapping packets when the elevator dinged and its doors slid open.
My heart forgot how to beat.
A man stepped out, tall, dark duffel bag over one shoulder, black shirt with rolled sleeves, quiet in that dangerous way silence can be. He looked up, and our eyes locked for a second—maybe less—but it split open something I had spent years burying.
No. Not him. Not here. Not when I look like this.
His face was sharper than memory, colder, unreadable. But I knew those eyes. They had once looked at me like I was home.
The boy I had loved. The boy I had left five years ago.
For one breath neither of us moved. Then panic jolted through me and I turned toward my door, fumbling with the lock. I twisted it.
Nothing.
I tried again.
Still nothing.
The door had locked.
My phone was inside. Wallet inside. Keys inside. Even my slippers.
I was barefoot, standing in checked pajama pants and an oversized white top, holding fried chicken in front of my ex.
Wonderful.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him unlock the apartment opposite mine. Of course he lived opposite. Because apparently fate had jokes.
He went inside without a word, the door shutting behind him as if he had not just wrecked my nervous system.
I stared at the lock and whispered, “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
I jiggled it again.
Still nothing.
For a split second, I considered knocking on his door, but couldn’t. Absolutely not. I’d rather sleep in the lobby.
━━━━━☆━━━━━
The security guard downstairs let me borrow his phone. He recognised me from earlier that day, when I had been fighting for my life trying to drag my enormous suitcase out of the taxi trunk.
Diya answered on the second ring, breathless, like she’d been moving around.
“You knew,” I said
A pause.
“What?”
She knew exactly what I meant. Of course she did. We had all grown up together—same school, same chaotic friend group, years of lunch breaks and birthday disasters and secrets traded on rooftops. Before he became the boy I loved, he had been part of us. Part of home.
And she had put me in the apartment opposite him.
“He lives here,” I said, my voice low and dangerous. “Next door.”
Silence. Too much silence.
I gripped the phone harder.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
When she spoke, her voice had gone careful.
“I thought he would’ve moved.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Another pause stretched between us, and in it I heard the answer.
Then she sighed.
“I didn’t tell you because if I had, you never would have come.”
A sharp laugh escaped me.
“So this was what? An ambush?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Her exhale crackled through the phone.
“Because you can’t keep arranging your life around what hurts you.” Her words landed harder than they should have. Because she was right. I had spent all this time organizing my life avoiding everything that hurt me—cutting off friends, avoiding old places, building entire routes around old wounds. And she read it off me as easily as if she were reading a childhood diary.
I looked up at the building, at the balcony opposite mine. His balcony.
“You’re insane,” I muttered, though I knew I had already lost the argument.
She laughed. “You locked yourself out in front of your ex looking like that. Let’s not discuss insanity.”
Then she added, “The spare key’s at my place. I can only come tomorrow morning.”
“So I’m homeless.”
“Temporarily.”
“And barefoot.”
“Very heroine-coded,” she chuckled.
I huffed.
Then her voice softened.
“You’ll be okay?”
I looked at the chicken box in my hand.
“Obviously.”
━━━━━☆━━━━━
I ate cold fried chicken alone on a bench near the gate while stray dogs slept nearby. Streetlights hummed overhead, and it should have felt miserable, but it didn’t feel like anything at all, like I had gotten so numb to that feeling.
Around two in the morning I got restless and started walking. I couldn’t sleep anyway—I never really could.
Suddenly I felt a drop on my arm, then another one. One second I was dry and the next drenched, warm rain poured heavy enough to blur the city.
I kept walking until a sharp pain shot up my leg, sudden enough to pull me back into my body. My bare foot had landed on broken glass because someone had decided smashing a beer bottle on the sidewalk was a good idea.
“Shit.”
Blood mixed with rainwater as I looked down. A shard had lodged in my heel. I should have panicked, but instead there was only emptiness, as if pain no longer knew how to reach me.
Up ahead was the pedestrian overbridge. I limped over and climbed the wet stairs slowly and sat halfway up while rain dripped from my hair and my pajamas clung to my skin. My foot throbbed, though strangely I barely felt it.
City lights flickered below while I stared into the dark and felt only exhaustion, a living corpse maybe—that was what I had become, breathing, walking, functioning, dead anyway.
I don’t know how long I sat there before I sensed someone standing in front of me.
A shadow fell across the stair.
I looked up and froze.
Rain clung to him, darkening his shirt until it stuck to the hard lines of his shoulders and chest. Rainwater running down his throat and disappearing beneath his collar. His hair was soaked, falling messily over his forehead, water dripping from the sharp edge of his jaw.
He looked older than the boy I remembered.
Tired.
Worn down in places I had never wanted to imagine.
But his eyes were still the same.
Broken. Angry. Exhausted.
And somehow, still wanting me.
It was him. My Ethan.
