Cartographer's Regret

The clock on the kitchen wall ticked with a relentless, maddening precision, each second a tiny, almost imperceptible chisel chipping away at the silence. Liam didn't need to look to know the time. He knew it in the way the shadows stretched across his apartment, in the fading light outside the window, in the slow, cold clench in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. It was the time of day when the world wound down, when the noise of other people's lives started to recede, leaving him alone with his own. And alone, inevitably, meant thinking. Thinking about Noah.It had been years. Years since they last spoke, years since their paths had diverged so completely that the memory of their shared journey felt less like a well-worn road and more like a faded, inaccurate old map, impossible to navigate now. Sometimes, the thought was a dull ache, a phantom limb that still throbbed with a pain that wasn't quite physical but no less real. Other times, like tonight, it was a sharp, sudden stab, a cold breath against his neck, a ghost whispering in his ear. What if? If only. Why?