Turn 7 of 12

Check your phone — Milo's last message

You reach for the phone. The movement costs you something — the bed was warm where you'd been lying, and the air in the flat has that 3 a.m. chill that settles into exposed skin like it's paying rent. The phone is where you left it, face-down on the desk, and when you flip it over the screen wakes into the notification. One message from Milo, sent eleven minutes ago, while you were staring at the ceiling and pretending you weren't.

*you know what's mad. I poured the last bottle out tonight. Down the sink. Stood there watching it go. Don't know why I'm telling you. Just felt like I should.*

You read it twice. The words sit in the blue bubble with the calm of a man who does not know he has been edited and unedited in the space of an hour, who does not know that a version of him exists — existed — for about twenty minutes where he never needed to pour anything out, because there was nothing to pour. He did it anyway. That is the thing that lodges under your ribs. Four quit attempts. Four failures. And tonight, on his own, in a flat that smells like vinegar, he stood at his sink and poured the bottle out and texted his friend about it at 2:30 in the morning because it felt like something that mattered.

You type *good mate* and delete it. Too small. You type *that's massive Fen* and delete that too, because it sounds like something a motivational poster would say, and Milo would hear the strangeness in it immediately. He knows your voice the way you know his — by texture, by rhythm, by the specific way you underplay things that matter. You type *yeah it does matter* and then sit with it, cursor blinking in the text field, aware that anything you say is carrying weight it was not designed to carry.

You send *proud of you* and put the phone down before you can watch the read receipt. It is not something you would normally say. It is not the register you and Milo operate in. But it is true, and you are tired of the small steady not-enough, and somewhere between the editing and the undoing you have lost the ability to pretend that ordinary is the same as sufficient. The phone stays face-up on the desk, screen dimming. The laptop is shut. The folder is still on the desktop. The stripe of orange light on the ceiling has not moved.