4338.204 · July 23, 2018 AD
Love You, Okay, Bye
Luke calls Jamie hoping for connection, for the familiar warmth that once defined them. Instead he receives brevity. And when the line goes dead without an echo of love returned, Luke is left holding more than a phone. He is holding the mathematics of a relationship reduced to its sparest equation.
The call lasts barely a minute. Jamie's voice is familiar but flattened, stripped of the warmth Luke aches for. There are reasons—Mr Gangley has fallen again, one of those incidents that demands presence without urgency—but beneath the practical words lies something harder to name. Distance. The kind that doesn't announce itself, that grows in pauses and truncated answers and the absence of reciprocated affection.
Love you, Luke offers. The words slip out like reflex, true and weighted.
Okay. Gotta run. Bye.
The line dies. The silence that follows is louder than anything spoken.
Luke's gaze falls to the tent confirmation still glowing on his screen—that absurd, extravagant gesture of hope. It was meant to be shelter, provision, proof that he still believes in building something together. But now the questions circle like vultures. Should he tell Jamie about Clivilius? Would the impossible truth reignite what's fading between them, or would it sound like madness to a man already weary of the ordinary?
For the first time, Luke fears not the world beyond the portal, but the possibility that Jamie might never walk through it with him.
