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“I’ll be home soon, I promise.”
“You said that yesterday too,” they pointed out.
“I know, but I mean it. Two more days, if that, please just try to understand.” They could hear the strain in his voice now. Montparnasse did not beg, it wasn’t becoming, but this was close.
“I want to understand. I’m trying to understand, but a week ago you came in and said you were leaving for a few days and now it’s been two weeks and I still don’t know where you are or what you’re doing and you won’t tell me anything. ‘Parnasse, please, I need to know you’re okay.”
“I’m telling you I’m okay. I’m fine, everything's fine. This is just taking longer than expected.”
“That still isn’t telling me anything! You just keep saying it’s fine and it isn’t.”
“It will be. Two more days. Get some sleep, it’s late.”
“You know I can’t sleep. Besides the sun rises soon. Please just- just come home soon.”
“I love you, little bird.”
“I love you too, mon chaton.”
The line went dead. Jehan laid there quietly until sunrise. They watched it, but it seemed lackluster. It wasn’t as spectacular as it was when Montparnasse was just creeping in the window as Jehan got out of bed. The routine they had come to know was disrupted and they were lost. Days just dragged on with a gnawing pit of worry in their stomach. They had no answers to anything and the only constant besides the worry was the phone calls. Every night at four am exactly they got a call. Never the same number twice, but always Montparnasse on the line with reassurances of his safety and promises of returning soon. Whatever that meant. They grew to expect the phone call every night, it was never late, but it was always over at exactly four-forty-five. Forty-five minutes was all they were given to hear his voice.
The few days had turned into a week and the week turned into two and then two turned into losing count. It felt like a year, was it a year? Jehan didn’t know. They were angry now. Angry at having no answers, at not having a way to contact him, at being treated like they couldn’t understand what was happening.
Then, he missed a call. Jehan had sat all night, sitting up on their bed waiting for the phone to ring. Four AM came. And then it went. And then four-thirty came. And that went too. And four-forty-five passed and they realized the call wasn’t coming.
Jehan cried. They knew what it meant. What it had to mean. Montparnasse wasn’t coming home. No more promises and no more reassurances. Montparnasse wouldn’t have missed the call if he didn’t have to.
The sunrise came. Jehan didn’t get up. They laid on their bed and pushed their face further into Montparnasse’s pillow. They tried to block out all the light and all the sound in the apartment to properly mourn their love, but no number of pillows could have blocked out the familiar swish of a window closing.
Jehan bolted up looking around frantically. They got out of bed and darted to the living room where a frazzled and entirely disheveled Montparnasse was looking wide-eyed at the empty window seat.
“You-you didn’t call,” Jehan sniffed.
Montparnasse whirled around and grinned at the smaller person.
“I promised I’d be home, didn’t I?”