The Things We Keep

It’s magic hour in London on a warm Friday night in May, and Willow is sitting on the edge of the bed.

A small suitcase rests on the floor in the closet.

She isn’t packing yet.

She’s just staring at the bouquet Charlie bought her for their anniversary.

The stems are wilted and dry. Several petals have fallen onto the desk.

Considering they’ve been dead for a few days, she’s surprised neither of them has thrown them out.

She stands, carries the bouquet to the trash, and drops it in. The empty vase smells faintly sour when she places it back on the bookshelf.

At the window, she watches the neighbor’s children jumping down the front steps, laughing as the warm night settles over the street.

One of them trips and bursts into tears. The mother lifts him easily.

Her phone vibrates.

Before checking it, she already knows it’s Charlie.

I’m headed to Simon’s before Tom’s, so I won’t be home. Could you bring my anxiety meds?

Of course.

Tonight is Tom’s party.

A theme party.

She walks to Charlie’s side of the bed to find his prescription pills and notices a sticky note covered in ideas for SoundFold, phrases that read less like strategy and more like affirmations.

Think bigger.

Scale the brand.

Culture moves faster than you think.

In 2020, Charlie and his friends Tom and James launched SoundFold, a music app and festival that briefly turned three North London boys into cultural gatekeepers.

Charlie still talks about those years the way aging athletes talk about college championships.

Tonight will be another reenactment.

Charlie will corner people into explaining how they’re incorporating AI into their businesses while he drinks one too many gin and tonics.

Someone will eventually ask Willow how the book is going.

No one will ask about the thing that actually changed their lives.

Her phone buzzes again.

Indie Sleaze theme. Wear something funny. Not cool on purpose.

She sighs.

Back in the bedroom, she opens the closet.

As she reaches for her shoes, the suitcase catches her eye again.

She pauses, looking at it.

For a moment, she imagines what it would mean to fill it, how strange it would be to compress an entire life into something that could be carried down a flight of stairs.

She once watched a television show about estate sales. Rooms full of objects strangers picked over like souvenirs.

Lamps, old postcards, boxes of costume jewelry laid out on folding tables.

A lifetime reduced to price tags.

A life small enough to fit inside a suitcase.

Then she turns away.

She chooses an outfit that reminds her of Molly Ringwald in an old John Hughes movie: a black leather skirt, a pink silk blouse, anything but indie sleaze, whatever that actually means.

In the mirror, she notices grey hair beneath the blonde dye and the faint lines around her blue eyes.

For a moment, she studies her reflection like a stranger.

She applies red lipstick. Wipes it off. Apply it again.

She considers straightening her long, golden hair.

Straight hair is the version of herself she learned to present to the world.

Curly hair feels closer to the person she used to be.

She straightens it.

When she leaves the flat, the sky is turning violet.

Outside, the air smells like lilacs.

Tom’s Crouch End home is already crowded when she arrives. Writers and musicians smoke on the sidewalk, talking loudly over one another.

“Fashionably late, Willow,” James calls out.

“I’m late for everything,” she replies. “Even my own life.”

Inside the house, music blasts through the speakers. The air is thick with sweat, perfume, and lager.

The room swims with mid-2000s costumes, tight denim jackets, skinny jeans, and neon tights.

For a moment, she stands in the doorway watching the crowd. The whole room feels like a museum exhibit devoted to a very specific kind of nostalgia.

She finds Charlie beside the record player, pouring himself a glass of wine.

“You look nice, but didn’t you get the text?” Charlie asks. “It’s indie sleaze, not Wall Street.”

Tom appears beside him with a grin, holding a lager, his eyes already half-glazed.

“I’d say Willow’s look is 80s Los Angeles art dealer with a mild Percocet problem.”

“Finally, someone understands her brand,” Charlie says.

Willow rolls her eyes and looks around the room.

Before the conversation continues, Sophie appears with a bottle of wine and a marijuana joint tucked behind her ear.

“This party is so you,” she says. “Didn’t you date someone from The Kooks once, Willow?”

“We slept together twice and went to brunch once.”

“In this crowd, that counts as dating,” she says in a thick Scottish accent.

Sophie pours Willow a glass of wine and hands her the joint.

“So how’s the book coming?”

“The deal fell through.”

Sophie shrugs.

“Rejection is basically the job, innit?”

Willow takes a drag, nodding in agreement.

Within minutes, she realizes the weed is far stronger than expected.

The room grows hot and distorted. Sounds sharpen, the thud of glasses hitting tables, heels clicking on hardwood floors.

Someone laughs behind her, and the sound echoes strangely in her head.

Her heart begins to race.

She escapes to the kitchen and drinks a pint of water.

The noise of the party presses against her like heat.

Fragments of conversation drift through the room.

Record labels collapsing. Streaming algorithms. Someone’s podcast deal.

The words blur together until they feel meaningless.

She climbs the stairs and pushes open the door to a bedroom.

Two SoundFold employees, whom Willow vaguely recognizes, sit on the bed staring at their phones.

“Willow!”

“I just need to lie down.”

She stretches across the bed.

A red-haired man exhales a cloud of cherry-flavoured vapor and starts talking.

“I listened to this podcast about dopamine regulation. It was honestly kind of life-changing.”

The other nods without looking up from his phone.

Willow suddenly feels aware of everything in the room, the buzzing lights, the music downstairs, the bodies moving through the house.

It feels like watching life from slightly outside herself.

She escapes to the bathroom and locks the door.

Sliding onto the bath mat beneath a large ruffled shower curtain, she presses her hands to her face.

When she returns to the bedroom, Charlie is waiting.

“I’m not feeling well,” she says quietly. “I should go home.”

“It’s our anniversary party,” he replies. “Could you pretend to care for like, two hours?”

The argument begins slowly.

“You hate everyone here,” Charlie says.

“I don’t hate them.”

“You resent them.”

“And you worship them.”

Charlie laughs.

“You think you’re above this world, Willow, but you’re happy to live in it when it’s convenient.”

“At least I’m honest about what it is.”

“And what is it?”

“A performance.”

The silence between them thickens.

“You’ve been miserable for years,” Charlie says finally.

“Maybe I’m tired.”

“Of what?”

“Of pretending this life is enough.”

Charlie stares at her.

“Nothing is ever enough for you.”

Something inside her tightens.

“Because something is missing,” she says.

The words hang there.

Neither of them needs to say what it is.

Charlie looks away.

“You never recovered,” he says quietly.

“Did you?”

Neither of them answers.

Eventually, Willow orders a black cab.

Outside, the party continues behind them as if nothing happened.

When Willow arrives home, the apartment is silent.

She removes her shoes and walks slowly through the living room.

The records on the shelf. The half-finished manuscript on the desk. The framed photographs.

Everything looks as though it could disappear.

She walks to the closet and pulls the suitcase out.

She opens it.

She places her journal inside.

Then the photograph.

Then, the manuscript of the novel she once thought would change her life.

Finally, a few folded clothes.

She sits on the edge of the bed.

Faint traffic drifts through the open window.

Exhaustion overtakes her.

She falls asleep with the suitcase at the foot of the bed.

Willow wakes at sunrise.

For a moment, she isn’t sure where she is.

The room is pale with morning light.

Charlie is not beside her.

The suitcase is still open.

Then she hears the front door.

Keys drop into the ceramic bowl in the hallway.

Charlie.

She stays where she is.

A few seconds later, he appears in the doorway of the bedroom.

His hair is messy, his shirt wrinkled and faintly sticky with spilled beer.

He stops in the doorway.

He looks at the suitcase for a long time before speaking.

“What’s this?” he asks finally, though it’s obvious he already knows.

Willow shrugs slightly.

Charlie walks slowly into the room. He stops beside the suitcase and looks down at the things inside.

The photograph.

Her manuscript.

The folded clothes.

Willow watches him from the bed.

Charlie sits down in the chair near the window.

Morning light fills the room between them.

After a moment, he asks, “Were you leaving?”

Willow doesn’t answer right away.

“I don’t know,” she says.

Charlie nods slightly.

Outside, the city is beginning to wake up.

Charlie rubs his eyes and leans back in the chair.

“Strange thing,” he says. “Your whole life fitting into a suitcase.”

Willow looks at it.

“I’m not sure it’s strange,” she says. “Just a reminder that most of it was temporary.”

Charlie nods slowly.

“Do you want coffee?”

“Sure.”

Morning light moves slowly across the floor until it reaches the photograph inside the suitcase.

Willow watches the light touch the corner of the picture, then the spine of the manuscript.

For a moment, she imagines closing the suitcase,

zipping it shut,

carrying it down the pavement.

Charlie comes back into the room and bends to kiss her. The taste of lager and cigarettes lingers on his lips.

The suitcase stays where it is.