Page 38 of Plus One

Monique should be tired. But—

“Give me a second.”

She went back inside, grabbed her room key, and stepped into the hallway.

Maurice stood in his opened door, like he’d already been waiting right there. “Hey,” he said again.

“Hey.”

He stepped back, letting her in. His room was a mirror of hers. The same layout. The same furniture. The same view. But it felt different. Emptier somehow. His backpack sat in the corner, barely unpacked. No clothes draped over chairs. No toiletries scattered across the bathroom counter. Like he could bounce at any moment.

They went to the balcony, standing side by side at the railing.

“So,” Monique said. “What’s going on?”

Maurice was quiet for a long time. Then, in one rushed breath, he said, “You ever do something for so long that you forget why you started doing it in the first place?”

“Every day.”

He smiled slightly. “I pray. Four, five times a day. Have for thirty years. Oh-six hundred, twelve hundred, eighteen hundred, twenty hundred, twenty-two hundred. Like clockwork.” He folded a finger down with each number that he cited until his hand was in a fist.

“That’s… disciplined.”

Maurice unclenched his fist, opening and closing his hand. “That’s ritual.” His voice was small. “I—I think there’s a difference.” His fingers were in his beard now. She squinted. “Is there a difference?”

“What do you think?” she asked, though she thought she knew.

“Routine is just filling time. It’s checking boxes. Completing tasks.” Maurice’s hands fell to his sides. “Discipline is… maybe discipline is doing something because it matters. Because you want it to matter.”

“You saidritual, though. To me, ritual sounds a lot like your definition of discipline.”

“How would you define it, then?”

Monique thought about her own routines, her own rituals. The way she walked the same streets every day. The way she checked her body for new lumps, new pains. Always watching for change. The way she survived instead of lived.

She drew in a long breath. “Maybe it’s structure, stability with an expectation.”

He quirked an eyebrow for her to continue.

“Like you’re doing the same thing over and over butwantingsomething to change, hoping for a spark…”

They stood there for a long moment, just breathing, holding space for each other in a space and time that was just theirs.

“It keeps you going, keeps you alive, until you have the courage to change.”

A huff of a laugh surprised her. “Today I missed three prayer times. Just… didn’t do them. I kept waiting to feel guilty. Kept waiting for that wrongness to hit. But it never came.”

Monique understood that feeling. The absence of guilt where the world says guilt should have planted its flag. “Maybe it’s okay if you don’t want to pray,” she said quietly.

“How can it be okay? I’m supposed to be a man of faith. I’m officiating a wedding tomorrow night. I run a—” He stopped abruptly. “I’m supposed to have this figured out.”

“Nobody has anything figured out.”

“You sound sure about that.”

“I am sure.” Their earlier agreement to keep it light swan dived over the balcony.I guess later is now. “Maurice, I’m sure because I spent the last two and a half years trying to figure out how to survive, if I even wanted to survive, and you know what I learned?” Monique turned to face him fully. “I learned that sometimes you just have to admit that you don’t know. That you’re lost. That the thing you thought was keeping you together was just keeping you busy.”

Maurice looked at her with something like recognition where she expected pity or sorrow. “What was your thing? What kept you busy?”