The Weight Between Us

I stir my coffee though I haven’t tasted it.

The spoon clinks too loud, brittle as a bell.

No one looks, but heat still crawls up my neck. I set the spoon down fast, steadying my hands in my lap.

Jovon’s talking about her boss again, her hands slicing the air, bracelets chiming with every gesture. She doesn’t notice the tightness in my shoulders or the way my eyes won’t stay still. To her, I’m unchanged — the same friend who hauled boxes up three flights, the same one who baked her a cake when no one else did. She thinks she knows me.

But she doesn’t see the blood I can’t stop replaying.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. You need to know that first. They only wanted me to scare him, make sure he paid what he owed.

I told myself it would be words, maybe a shove. Nothing lasting. Nothing I couldn’t live with.

But he fought. He clawed at me, grabbed for the knife I brought just to look tough. And then my hand moved before my mind did.

One thrust. Then another.

I can still feel the give of his body, the sudden hush afterward. For a heartbeat I thought the world would stop with him — the air, the lights, everything. But the streetlight kept flickering, a car rolled past, tires hissing like nothing had happened. Like I hadn’t just killed a man.

I burned the clothes, scrubbed my hands raw. No one’s found a trace. But it’s here, inside me still, rattling louder every day. A weight and a scream all at once.

And now I’m sitting here with you, Jovon, nodding at your jokes, letting you believe I’m whole. The café hums on — cups clinking, milk hissing, voices rising and falling — but all I can hear is that night. My mouth is dry, my pulse rattles in my ears. I force myself to meet your eyes. I stop pretending.

“I killed him, Jovon.”

The words sit between us, ugly and alive.

The café carries on in its careless loops, but at our table everything freezes. Your hands are still mid-gesture, your story half-shaped.

At first you blink, like I’ve spoken another language. “What?”

“I killed him.”

This time it lands. You flinch. The café noise swells — laughter, chairs scraping, milk hissing — absurd against the weight between us.

“That’s not funny,” you whisper.

“I’m not joking.”

Something shifts in your face. The bracelets slide down your wrist and stay there, still. You look at me like I’m a stranger in borrowed skin.

“Why are you telling me this?”

I search for an answer, but all I have is the truth- “I couldn’t keep lying to you. Not to you.”

You close your eyes, steadying yourself, and when they open again there’s a new distance in them. Not love. Not hate. Just something sharp, raw, unbridgeable.

The café hums on. And I sit here, waiting, not sure if your next words will save me or end me.

Jovon’s lips part, then close again. She looks down at her coffee, as if it might offer her an answer I can’t. Her hand trembles, just slightly, when she reaches for it. She doesn’t drink. She sets it back down.

“Why me?” she whispers, still not meeting my eyes.

“Because you’re the only one I trust,” I say, though even to me it sounds thin, worn-out. Trust — what does it mean, when I’ve already shattered everything it might stand for?

Her gaze lifts then, sharp as glass. “You think this is trust? You drop this on me like — like it’s some secret you cheated on a test? You killed someone.”

The word hangs heavy. Killed. It isn’t softer for her mouth. If anything, it’s worse.

I want to reach for her hand, but I don’t.

Instead, I press mine together so tightly the knuckles ache. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Stop.” She cuts me off, her bracelets giving a faint, final chime. “Don’t. You don’t get to explain it away.”

The café is too bright suddenly. Too loud.

The hiss of the milk steamer scrapes my nerves raw. Somewhere, someone laughs.

The sound feels cruel.

I lean forward, desperate. “I’ve carried this alone. It’s eating me alive. I thought — maybe if you knew—”

“Then what?” she snaps. “I forgive you? I hold your secret? You’ve turned me into your accomplice just by telling me!”

Her voice rises enough that a man two tables over glances our way. She notices and lowers it quick, hissing now, every word tight-

“You’ve ruined my life in one sentence.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes.

She’s right. God help me, she’s right.

She stands suddenly, her chair screeching against the tile. “Don’t call me. Don’t come to me. I don’t know you.”

And then she’s gone — bracelets jangling one last time before the café swallows her.

I sit there, staring at the empty space across from me. The spoon in my cup slides and clinks again, too loud, just like before.

But this time, no one looks.

Only me. And the memory.

The chair she left behind still rocks, a small sway, as if it hasn’t realized she’s gone.

I watch it settle, empty, the imprint of her presence fading like warmth from a hand.

The noise of the café doesn’t soften; it swells. Every clatter, every burst of laughter, every hiss from the espresso machine presses against me. People sip, stir, scroll their phones. They don’t see the crater that just opened at my table.

My throat tightens, dry as ash. I want water, want air, but neither seems possible. I press my palms flat to my knees to stop them from trembling, but it only makes the shaking more obvious — an earthquake contained inside skin.

I tell myself- Breathe. Just breathe. But breath feels borrowed now, stolen from a man who no longer draws it.

Jovon’s voice echoes — You’ve ruined my life in one sentence. The words land heavier than the confession itself, because she’s right. I didn’t just kill him. I killed us — the long talks, the late-night calls, the little rituals of care she thought proved she knew me. All gone.

The door jingles faintly when someone else leaves. My body jolts like it might be her again, coming back, bracelets chiming, face softened with forgiveness. But it isn’t. It won’t be.

The table between us feels like a wound now — one side occupied, the other not. The untouched coffee across from me is still warm, faint steam curling upward as if she never left. I fix my eyes on it until the blur comes, hot and unrelenting.

And in that blur I see the knife, the flickering streetlight, his eyes wide then empty. For the first time, I can’t tell if I’m remembering him or remembering her — the way her gaze turned sharp and distant, a mirror closing me out.

I whisper it again, quieter this time, not to her but to the hollow she left behind- “I killed him.”

The words taste like rust. This time they don’t sit between us. They sit inside me, heavy, immovable.

And the café hums on.