MAKOL II – I Can Live in Your World

Take A Plane

Note on the Theme

Maladaptive daydreaming is portrayed from the inside, through the protagonist’s emotions and lived experience. This novel is not intended to provide diagnoses, clinical explanations, or medical advice.

Sharon had been gone for a week.

Seven days.

Makol had counted them without meaning to.

He shouldn’t have.

When she had explained that she needed to go back to Italy to take care of everything she had left unfinished—the house, the accounts, documents, boxes, pieces of a life that no longer belonged to her—he had understood.

He had even said it was the right thing to do.

And he truly believed it.

Part of him had wanted to go with her. Every other part of him had wanted to stop her from leaving.

He had done neither.

He had learned something since Sharon had come into his life.

He had learned that loving her did not mean occupying every inch of her world.

There were times when she needed to be alone. Hours when she wrote and seemed to disappear into whatever she was creating. Other times she would sit perfectly still, perhaps with a cup gone cold between her hands, while entire stories unfolded inside her head.

At first, Makol hadn’t understood.

If Sharon drifted away in her thoughts, he tried to reach her.

If she fell silent, he asked what was wrong.

If she withdrew, he assumed he had done something wrong.

Then he had learned.

He had learned to sit beside her without interrupting.

To let her write.

Not to ask every time where she had gone in her head.

Even to get up and leave the room when he realized she needed a space that belonged only to her.

This trip was supposed to be the ultimate test.

Sharon could go to Italy on her own.

She could close the door on her old life.

She could finish the novel that now occupied a large part of her days.

And he could wait for her.

Like a normal man.

The problem was that Makol had discovered very quickly that he was not a normal man at all.

The first morning he woke up nauseous.

The second morning too.

By the third, he had stopped blaming something he’d eaten.

On the fourth day, he woke before dawn and reached toward the empty side of the bed.

He stayed like that.

His palm resting on the cold sheet.

It was ridiculous.

He knew it.

Thousands of couples spent weeks apart. Some spent months apart. People traveled constantly for work and came home to find exactly the same love they had left behind.

Seven days was nothing.

And yet his body seemed not to know that.

His stomach was almost constantly knotted.

He ate because his mother watched him until he did. He slept badly. And above all, he thought.

He thought too much.

What if something happens to her?

What if she needs me?

What if she gets sick while she’s alone?

What if someone—

He stopped himself.

Start again.

What if—

Enough.

Then he looked at his phone.

No new messages.

Five minutes later, he looked again.

The worst part was that Sharon was fine.

Very well, actually.

She called him and told him about everything she was sorting out. She complained about paperwork, phone calls, people arriving late for appointments.

And she wrote.

She had finally found the right rhythm, and the novel was moving forward quickly.

Makol was happy for her.

And miserable.

The two things coexisted perfectly.

His family watched the gradual collapse of his dignity with varying reactions.

His mother said almost nothing.

Every time she passed him, she stroked his face.

A brief touch on his cheek or through his hair, the way she had when he was a child.

That might have been the worst part of all, because it meant he looked pathetic enough to awaken her maternal instinct to comfort him.

Maira, on the other hand, had chosen reason.

“Makol.”

He looked up.

“You may find this hard to believe, but there are women who travel for work every month and still love their husbands.”

Makol went back to staring at his phone.

“I know.”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

“I said I know.”

His brother, sitting a short distance away, decided to contribute.

“Think about it. There are men who would pay for a week-long vacation from their wives.”

Maira slowly turned her head toward her husband.

He stopped smiling.

“Not you,” he clarified immediately.

She kept staring at him.

“I meant in general.”

Silence.

“Very generally.”

Maira narrowed her eyes.

Then she shook her head.

“You’re not convincing. You’re an Arawen man.”

He looked at her for a moment.

“Coming from the progressive woman in the family.”

Maira opened her mouth.

Closed it again.

Makol might have laughed.

Probably.

If he hadn’t felt as though someone were twisting his insides.

His mother passed him.

A hand on his cheek.

Again.

Makol closed his eyes for a moment.

That was when his father spoke.

Until then he had stayed apart, apparently far more interested in what he was doing than in the conversation.

“I don’t understand.”

Maira sighed.

“What don’t you understand, Dad?”

The man gestured toward Makol.

“All this thinking.”

Makol looked at him.

“If you want your wife, get on a plane and go to your wife.”

Maira’s eyes widened.

“Dad!”

“What?”

“That isn’t right.”

His father frowned.

“What isn’t right?”

“Life doesn’t work like that. Sharon left partly because she needs her own space. Makol has to learn that they can be apart without anything happening.”

His father stared at her as if he were sincerely trying to understand the problem.

Then he looked at his son.

Then back at Maira.

“I don’t know anymore what’s considered right these days and what’s considered strange.”

Maira dropped back against the chair.

“Dad…”

“I see a man who can’t stand being away from his wife. I don’t see any medical reason stopping him from traveling. I don’t see the police at the door forbidding him to leave.”

Makol’s brother smiled.

“Well said, Dad.”

Maira shot him a look.

“You are not helping.”

“I’m helping a lot.”

“No.”

His father continued, still puzzled.

“If his wife were in the hospital and he couldn’t reach her, I’d understand. If he didn’t have the money for the trip, I’d understand. If someone had forbidden him to leave, I’d understand. But he has a passport.”

Makol stared at him.

“He has money,” his father continued.

His brother nodded.

“Confirmed.”

“He has a phone.”

“That too.”

“And there are planes.”

Maira covered her face with both hands.

“I can’t believe this conversation.”

Makol, however, felt something loosen inside him.

Not the pain.

That was still there.

But something that had layered itself over the pain all week.

Guilt.

The belief that desperately wanting to reach her meant he had failed.

That if he left, it would prove he was incapable of giving her freedom.

Maira lowered her hands.

“And Sharon’s space?”

His father looked at her.

“A woman can have all the space she wants.”

Maira nodded, as though they were finally getting somewhere.

Then he concluded:

“Beside her husband.”

Maira covered her face again.

His brother burst out laughing.

“Dad, you’re a genius.”

“I didn’t say anything genius.”

And that was exactly the point.

To his father, there was no dilemma.

Makol looked at his phone.

Then at his father.

Then back at the phone.

His heart sped up.

“You really think I should go?”

His father stared at him.

“I think you’re an adult and can do whatever you want. But if you keep walking around the house with that face, your mother is going to get sick in your place.”

From the next room, his mother shouted:

“It’s true.”

Makol stood up.

Maira slowly lowered her hands.

“Makol.”

He already had his phone in his hand.

“Makol, he didn’t mean—”

“Yes, I did,” his father said.

“Dad!”

Makol was already searching for flights.

His brother got up and came closer.

“When?”

Makol scrolled through the screen.

A flight that evening.

Departure in a few hours.

He selected it.

“Tonight.”

Maira stared at him in disbelief.

“Tonight?!”

“There’s one.”

“Makol, at least talk to Sharon first.”

He stopped.

For one second.

Then shook his head.

“No.”

“No?”

“If I tell her, she’ll tell me not to come.”

“Probably because she wants to be alone.”

Makol looked at his sister-in-law.

“Or because she’ll think I’m doing it because I don’t trust her.”

Maira fell silent.

“I trust her.”

He said it quietly.

And it was true.

“I’m not afraid she’ll stop loving me. I’m not afraid she won’t come back.”

He lowered his eyes to the phone.

“I miss her.”

Two words.

Nothing else.

His mother appeared in the doorway.

She looked at him.

Then smiled faintly.

Makol pressed the button.

Booked.

For a few seconds, nobody said anything.

Then his brother looked at the time.

“If you’re leaving tonight, you should pack.”

Makol was already heading toward the bedroom.

Ten minutes later, he came back.

He didn’t have a suitcase.

He had a backpack.

Maira stared at it.

“That’s your luggage?”

“Yes.”

“How long are you planning to stay?”

Makol froze.

He hadn’t thought about it.

His brother burst out laughing.

Inside the backpack were a change of clothes, his documents, a charger, and little else.

Credit cards.

Passport.

Phone.

That was enough.

He could buy everything else.

“You’re completely insane,” Maira said.

Makol kissed her forehead as he passed.

“Probably.”

“And what if Sharon gets angry?”

That question managed to stop him.

Makol stood still for a few seconds.

Then he smiled.

It was his first real smile in a week.

“I’ll be angry with her from up close.”

Maira shoved him away.

“Idiot.”

His mother came over and needlessly straightened his collar.

“Call me when you arrive.”

“I will.”

His father gave him a nod, as though all of this were the most logical conclusion possible.

Makol went outside.

He got into the car.

Started the engine.

And only then, as he drove toward the airport far too fast with a ridiculous backpack on the seat beside him, did he realize something.

The nausea was gone.

Sharon had no idea he was coming.

And for the first time in seven days, Makol could breathe again.