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𝙶𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚏, 𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚟𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚍

Alex found out through a mutual friend. Not a call. Not even a voice. Just a message, a bland line of text with the kind of information that changes the temperature of a room. 'Audra passed away'. That was it. No details. No context. Just a name and a verb that didn't belong together. He read it five times before it made sense. And then it didn't make sense at all. The world didn't tilt, or blur, or spin. It just... stopped. Like the air had been vacuumed out of the room. He didn't answer. Couldn't. What the fuck do you say to a message like that? Thanks? Good to know? Sorry? None of it fit. Nothing did.

They hadn't spoken in a long time. Not really. She wasn't his anymore, hadn't been for a while, but she'd been part of him in a way no one else ever was. Years of shared jokes and fights and growing up in each other's blind spots. He knew her laugh better than his own. Knew how she took her coffee, how she used to tuck her hands under her thighs when she was nervous. And now she was gone. Just... gone. No closure. No goodbye. Just a quiet finality that made every stupid, selfish thing he'd ever done in their relationship feel like a fresh bruise all over again. He didn't cry, not right away. Grief doesn't always come as tears. Sometimes it comes as silence. As a stare. As a drink left unfinished because your stomach won't let you swallow.

He sat in the kitchen that night while his fiancée slept in the other room, listening to the low hum of the refrigerator and wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with this kind of pain. He wasn't hers anymore, didn't have a right to mourn like he still was, but he did anyway. He loved his fiancée, or at least, he was learning to. But Kobe? Kobe was a ghost now. And you don't stop loving ghosts. You just get used to the haunting.