The room pulsed with an almost illicit energy that evening. The front door concealed more than just a space; it held a secret. Outside, passing figures flickered in the glass like ghosts, blind to the transgression breathing behind these 987 square feet, a passion that should never have existed. Inside, time unravelled. Reality wove itself into something indistinct, tangled between longing and inevitability.
Robin always arrived first, a silent ritual. Perched in the blind spot at the top of the stairs, phone abandoned on her lap, gaze anchored to the vacant wall, she measured time not in minutes but in the rhythm of her own pulse. The waiting wasn’t agony, it was proof. Elliot would come; he always did. And that was the problem. Beyond these walls, London moved unbothered, indifferent, but here everything funnelled down to two bodies navigating the weight of a decision already made. The sharp click of a key turning in the back door snapped the moment in half. Always that entrance. No one could know.
For the next few months, every afternoon would be a quiet conspiracy, bolted doors, shallow breaths, words choked back before they could be spoken. Elliot stepped inside, and Robin instantly noticed how his breath sat too high in his chest. Uncertain. He felt it, too, but that was the difference between them. Robin questioned, Elliot pretended not to. The silence stretched, thick and charged with a name neither dared to give it. The lights hummed overhead. They looked like distorted reflections of themselves, as if this version of them only existed within these four walls. Here, there were no rules.
“You came.” Robin dragged a hand through his hair, exhaling a quiet, humourless laugh.
“I always do.”
“I always do.”
Robin took a step forward. Measured. As if giving her a chance to retreat. She didn’t. Now, he was here, close enough that the heat of his skin blurred the space between them. Her heart betrayed her, a fierce rhythm pounding against her ribs, insistent and undeniable. For a moment, she thought about all the certainties she had once held. But when Elliot reached out, she knew nothing would remain unchanged. And for the first time in a long time, she was sure she didn’t want to stop it.