"Go," Alyx finally said, her voice strangely serene, flat as if it had been emptied. "Just... be careful," she added at last.
Marshall's smile was firmer and relieved. "I'm a frog, Alyx, or a scorpion, whatever. But I'm cautious."
Barney dragged him out of the apartment, and Alyx went to the window to watch them leave. She saw Marshall walking with his shoulders a little straighter, clearly imitating Barney's confident pose. But this only made the weight of her secret—that Lily is here—double, transforming into a heavier stone in her chest, with the added weight of watching Marshall try to pick up women following Barney's advice of all people.
She couldn't stay. She couldn't keep prolonging her departure. She couldn't remain the silent spectator of Marshall's show of trying to be Barney while the love of her life—of their lives—lurked in the shadows without a clear date of when she would reappear, as if waiting for a signal Alyx had no right to give—for her to come back.
With cold determination, she went to her desk and turned on her laptop. She opened the tabs with the apartments she had been secretly visiting but hadn't been able to finalize any out of fear of leaving this part of her life behind. There was one that met all her criteria and was at the limit of her budget but not out of reach, thanks to trading. It had the layout Lily liked: a separate kitchen with granite countertops, a renovated bathroom, a spacious, light-filled area, and a private exterior balcony—all complete to be a place to start over. Or more likely, a place to wait alone for her world to stop shaking.
She made the call and scheduled the appointment for the next morning. Then, she opened her desk drawer and took out Lily's notebook. Only ten blank pages remained. She took it, along with the silver earring she had found months ago—the physical relic Lily had forgotten in their apartment—plus a pack of cigarettes and her thermos, and went up to the rooftop.
The night was cold. She wrapped herself in her jacket, lit a cigarette, and drew until her fingers went numb. It wasn't landscapes or fruit like she had done in her classes lately, but she let flow the forbidden images that were for her: the curve of Marshall's neck as he read his law books, the way Lily bit her lip when concentrating, her own hands trying to hold the ghost of Lily's and Marshall's hands.
She filled the pages until only the last one remained, which would be the end of the notebook. By then, she had no coffee or cigarettes left. She drew with meticulous, almost photographic realism a scene that never existed as such but encapsulated her deepest truth: the three of them sitting at the table during a past Christmas dinner. Marshall in an ugly reindeer sweater, Lily in the center of the two laughing with her head thrown back, and her, Alyx, on Lily's right, smiling with a smile that in real life was never so calm, secure, and with a sense of belonging. She surrounded them with a frame of fairy lights and garlands.
And on the side, in the margins of the frame, in her tight, urgent handwriting, she wrote for the first time in her drawings as a final confession:
Lily is back.
Her image haunts me and although she saw us, she fled.
But I still love her.
Marshall doesn't know and wouldn't understand that everything
I built to protect him now feels like
the greatest lie.
What is my nature?
To fade into the background and watch over them in silence?
The guardian who lies out of loyalty?
The lover who stays silent out of fear of final rejection?
Or the artist who denied her calling out of fear of losing herself
in it, and in the end, lost herself anyway?
When she saw no more space on that side, she continued writing below the drawing and the frame.
Or worse: maybe I was just a third wheel, an experiment, a secondary character in the great love story of Marshall and Lily. And if they ever see me for who I truly am, they'll surely choose the simplicity of being just the two of them.
When she finished, she just closed the notebook under the rooftop and stored it in her desk drawer along with Lily's earring, which she placed in a small envelope. While planning in her head: tomorrow she would sign the apartment contract, and tomorrow she would begin building a life where her love for them wouldn't be a burden she carries, but a memory she keeps in her drawer along with a finished notebook and a silver earring.
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