Your Equilibrium

Still, it felt like there was a thread between them — always taut. Relax it for a second, and it would snap back like an electric shock.

Too good. That meant something was off. There had to be a catch.

Thomas didn’t go back to the newsroom. He headed straight home — to shut everything out, to think. Instead, he ended up working on yet another article about the Middle East.

Izzy didn’t text.

She wasn’t supposed to.

But the unease crept in anyway.

He asked if she’d made it. No reply. He texted again an hour later — still nothing. He told himself she didn’t owe him an immediate answer, but this was Izzy. She was always on her phone.

He didn’t call — that would’ve been too much. Too inappropriate. He checked her socials — nothing new. No posts. No updates. Nothing had happened.

Except Izzy was silent.

Isabelle Keller 23:43

Sorry for the late reply

Gagnon told my father

O F C O U R S E

We argued for a long time

Thomas Delcourt 23:43

Consequences?

Isabelle Keller 23:45

Working together only within strict hours

Any mistake — goodbye to the paid article

Thomas Delcourt 23:46

Didn’t mean to put you in that position

Sorry

Isabelle Keller 23:46

My fault

Good night

Thomas Delcourt 23:46

We’ll figure it out

Good night, Izzy

Thomas put his phone aside and muttered a quiet curse. If he hadn’t factored in her father, then he’d let himself forget — no matter how much he claimed otherwise. Maybe that was for the best.

Still, he caught himself trying to figure out how to see Izzy outside her “curfew.”

And he didn’t like that thought.

FEAR

childhood / forgive me, if you can

Thomas

Ring. Ring. Another ring.

Anyone else in Thomas’s place would’ve hung up by now, but he always waited until the very end — because his sister Lucy never kept her phone nearby and would run all over the apartment looking for it whenever it rang.

“Tommyyyy, hiiii!” Her breathless voice came through before she even turned on the camera. “I was about to call you myself today — you’ve completely disappeared.”

“We finally sent the quarterly magazine to print. Nothing ever goes smoothly with that.” Thomas set his phone on a stand in the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Where are the kids?”

“I just sat them down for dinner, don’t distract them,” Lucy rolled her eyes and dropped into an armchair. Children’s voices echoed in the background. “André, I’m watching you — eat your meat! What are you making over there?”

“Quiche.” Thomas was peeling an onion. “Haven’t eaten anything proper all week — just sandwiches and one baked chicken.”

“Wait till Mom’s home, you can brag about healthy eating then,” Lucy smirked. “So? What’s new? Still writing things you could’ve just typed from home?”

Thomas gave her a long, pointed look, then swept the onion peels into the sink and turned on the disposer.

“Wow, terrifying. Truly terrifying,” Lucy laughed. “I’m serious — what’s going on at work?”

“Same as usual.” Thomas took out a pan. “Except now I’m fully stuck with that damn quarterly and nothing but commercial articles. Also, by pure coincidence, I’ve acquired a junior editor. Smart girl. Still willing to work for the idea, not the money. So far, it’s going well.”

Now Lucy stared at him.

“That explains the smug face. How long have you been working together?”

“About a month.” Onion done, now the chicken.

“A month?! You’ve been spending that much time with one specific girl, and I’m only hearing about it now?”

“You’re yelling like we’ve been dating for six months and I just forgot to mention it.”

“In your world, that’s exactly what this is! Is she at least normal? Not one of those obsessive reporters?”

“The news already broke her when she was young,” Thomas said before he could stop himself.

“Where’s she from? What’s her name?”

“Switzerland. Izzy. I mean — Isabelle,” he corrected quickly.

“Send me a photo.”

“Lu, relax. Her father’s a good friend of Gagnon’s, and we’re colleagues — professional ethics…”

“You could’ve just said you don’t like her. Instead, you’re making excuses like a schoolboy. Photoooo!”

“Lucy, drop it.” Thomas still didn’t look at her, focused on frying the chicken.

“Wait. You actually like her? She’s not blonde, is she?”

“Brunette. Drop it, Lucy.”

“You didn’t answer the question!”

“How’s Mom?”

“You have a crush on her!”

“How’s Mom, Lucy?” Thomas repeated, more firmly.

Lucy rolled her eyes and settled deeper into the chair.

“She’s still on shift. Misses you. Keeps asking about you like I somehow know more than she does.”

“I miss her too.”

“Planning to come back?”

Thomas hated that question.

Mostly because he didn’t know the answer.

And partly because he did — he wanted to come back, but he couldn’t. Didn’t have the strength.

“I don’t know, Lu.” He turned off the stove. “Not sure. Honestly, I’ve been thinking about going staff. Or finding something else. Maybe I’ll still make it to New Orleans.”

Lucy went quiet. Like she always did when their conversation hit the same wall.

“We miss you.”

“Come on, it’s been almost two years.”

“We’ve been together since birth. You don’t just ‘get used to that’ in almost two years. Are you coming for Christmas?”

“Probably not. Tickets are expensive, and I’d spend more time flying than actually being with you. Plus, I’d rather work through the holidays here in Quebec. And Izzy is staying too, I think…”

“So it is Izzy.”

“Lucy…” Thomas exhaled. “You know how it is. I’m done with anything more complicated than work. I’m not ready. And she doesn’t seem to need that either. We just… get along. No digging into each other’s lives.”

“And not digging into anything else either?”

“LU!” Thomas inhaled sharply and nearly dropped the baking dish.

“You’re alone there, Thomas. You won’t last like that forever. You need to learn to trust someone.”

“You’re not hearing me. I don’t want anything complicated. Just something normal. Something that doesn’t go anywhere — no ‘happily ever after.’”

Lucy clearly wanted to argue, but got distracted.

“Oh, Mom’s home. Moooom! Thomas is here!”

Noise, movement. Their mother rushed in, still taking off her coat, grabbed the phone from Lucy, and — as always — started firing questions without waiting for answers.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Yes, I eat properly, I can cook, how many times should I tell you, look.”

“I’m working, Mom. The money’s good.”

“I miss you, Mom.”

“Mom, I’m sorry, I won’t make it, Mom, I — ”

Thomas missed home unbearably, but the very thought of returning triggered something close to a panic attack. A chain of betrayals — not started by him, but ending with him — tightened around his throat every time. He simply couldn’t go back. Physically couldn’t. Couldn’t get close to anyone because he was afraid of getting burned again.

His mind threw up the memory of Izzy burning her fingers on the sauce — and how he’d rushed toward her without thinking. Close. Too close.

Good thing her father had strictly limited their time together.

For the best.

For the best.

For—

Damn it, Lucy. Why.

collision / when you hide, get a mirror to look around the corner

Thomas

Isabelle Keller 21:43

sorry, I’ll be busy tomorrow

Beaulieu suddenly dropped a longread on me, I’ll need the whole day

Thomas Delcourt 21:44

Need help?

Isabelle Keller 21:44

don’t think so, thanks

Isabelle Keller 21:45

might move into your department though

I’m going to lose my mind among my lot

Thomas Delcourt 21:47

Text me if anything

At the very least, I’ll edit

Isabelle Keller 21:48

you’re the best

thanks

His subconscious tried to latch onto that last message, but stopped itself.

Thomas didn’t fully understand his own reactions. If he had remained the French version of himself — playful, flirtatious, sleeping with colleagues, always smiling, easygoing, constantly seeking emotional and physical connection — it would probably be simpler.

With Izzy, he wasn’t looking for that connection. But he inevitably gravitated toward a point of comfort and unforced silence. She didn’t need flirting. She didn’t even particularly need a friend. Just someone who was always there, yet far enough away so that nothing became complicated. Thomas didn’t yet know why, but he felt that Izzy didn’t need anything “complicated.”

That only made him want to take a step closer even more, but he was afraid of scaring her off. It’s not every day a girl tells you you’re the best without implying anything beyond the situation at hand. The best because you’re willing to help. The best because you don’t ask unnecessary questions. The best because you’re there, but at a distance.

Thomas still hoped Izzy would move over to the politics and economics row. She had already started doing it more often, claiming she got distracted by the lifestyle editors’ chatter. Colleagues at nearby desks whispered, joked, then eventually stopped paying attention — none of the rumors had ever been confirmed. Thomas and Izzy hadn’t become a couple, hadn’t become friends, hadn’t stepped outside the boundaries of an unusual newsroom professionalism.

Just in case, Thomas even came into work later that day — Gagnon didn’t require constant presence as long as deadlines were met, and Thomas stayed reachable. He didn’t want to pressure Izzy by temporarily being “the best.”

The moment he saw her, he knew he’d made the right call.

Izzy was in full shutdown mode. Touch her, and she’d kill you. Or at least bite your hand off. On days like this, she wore her “super-protective sweater” — oversized, gray, soft, slightly worn, with a meme cat and the words so fugging happy. And yet she still wore it over a white shirt — as if trying to preserve some trace of strict style — pulling the sleeves down to her fingertips.

“Again? Isa…”

“Tststststst!” Thomas stopped Antoine, Gagnon’s deputy, halfway, catching him by the arm.

“She shouldn’t be sitting here!” Antoine hissed. He loved order, and in the newsroom chaos, he could only tolerate it when people sat exactly where they were supposed to. “You’re distracting her again. I’ll be the one blamed!”

Antoine hadn’t been deputy for long and was still anxious about holding onto the role. When you claw your way up from an internship, you end up like that. Not that he was a full Cerberus, but he saw everything, like he had three heads.

Thomas stood up and steered him further from the desk.

“Beaulieu dumped a complicated piece on her. Look at her, she’s about to eat her sweater from stress.” Thomas nodded toward Izzy, feeling a flash of fear himself. She was staring at the screen, barely blinking, eyes wide, fingers nervously twisting the ends of her ponytail. “I asked him to keep her busy, but didn’t expect this.”

Antoine shook his head.

“You won’t break her? She’s hyper-responsible. She even makes me nervous,” he added more quietly. “Catch her if anything.”

“You’re telling me?” Thomas shot him a look. “Of course I will — I offered yesterday,” he added quickly, cutting off the topic.

“Thomaaaaas,” Antoine drawled. “Please don’t tell me you two…”

“That we text outside work?”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“The whole newsroom is placing bets on when you’ll sleep together. Do something about it. Make a statement or something.”

“Are you serious?” Thomas grimaced. “We work together. The office’s private life isn’t your business. What’s your problem?”

Antoine said nothing, but Thomas noticed the relief on his face.

“Thomas! Can you come here?”

He did. Not too close — he stayed across from Izzy, at his desk.

He didn’t hear the quiet snickers.

But he filed that strange interrogation away.

Izzy

Izzy was ready to explode and regret ever leaving news for long-form and analysis. What could be difficult about covering the construction of a cutting-edge data center powered by renewable energy?

Everything.

She kept the structure in her head — from general to specific, dig up the background, identify the main thesis, break it into subpoints, outline arguments, and draw conclusions. What she lacked was academic, economic French — when all you have is conversational language, half-forgotten at that, it’s not easy to snap back into it.

She didn’t want to ask Thomas for help, but he could at least edit the text. He’d clicked his tongue, pointed out mistakes, and he’d softened it with a joke. Because he made those mistakes too. Because he’d once had to learn Québecois phrasing and quirks himself.

Beaulieu found issues as well — mostly structural — but praised her. Took the piece. As usual, he hinted that submitting so late wasn’t ideal. Izzy exhaled, went downstairs for coffee — it would only work for an hour, that was enough to get home, and then shut down.

She still couldn’t get used to working so long on a single text. In the news, everything was faster: take the story, write, file. Several times a day.

The coffee machine refused to work. Izzy, out of frustration, kicked it. Nothing happened. She let out a low growl at the ceiling, and trudged back upstairs.

“Izzy, so? Did they take the piece?”

She was so deep in her thoughts that she didn’t hear Thomas call her.

Didn’t even notice he was right there.

They jerked apart instantly, as if that touch would burn.

Izzy wanted to apologize, but the words got stuck somewhere in the air.

For a few seconds, she saw past his bright outer shell — caught a reflection of her own eyes.

Frightened. Broken.

Thomas stood across the corridor, watching her for a long moment. As if he had seen something too. Noticed the crack — huge, barely covered by a tarp of detachment.

Then it was like someone turned the lights back on. Defense snapped into place, every piece of armor reassembled. Hastily — but who would notice?

Thomas noticed.

And Izzy noticed.

The realization made her want to hide — and, at the same time, to test whether she was right.

But Izzy ran away.

leap / the soul’s bottomless abyss

Thomas

Thomas kept replaying the moment Izzy flinched away from him by the coffee machine. As if from a strike.

He should’ve gone after her. Should’ve said something. Apologized. It would’ve been clumsy, sure, but better than standing there, pressed against the wall. He had the distinct sense he’d seen something he was never meant to see. Something not meant for him or anyone. Something Izzy had buried so deep, she probably didn’t let herself remember it.

Except his own buried fear had surfaced too.

He hadn’t even meant to get that close. It just… happened. Probably, still under the influence of that stupid talk with Antoine. But Izzy had been standing there, lost in thought by that broken coffee machine, and it hadn’t even crossed his mind that he might scare her.

One step too many — and she was gone.

No explanation.

When Thomas returned to the newsroom, she wasn’t there anymore. For a moment, he considered going after her, maybe catching up in the park, but decided it would only make things worse. Would it? What had happened between them — that abrupt recoil, the way they’d scattered in opposite directions — felt like something else entirely.

For the first time, Thomas had seen something in Izzy that felt familiar.

Sharp. Painfully so. And at the same time, loud, calling, demanding attention.

Sometimes you don’t need to study a person closely to understand that something inside them is off.

At first, he thought about texting her. Then imagined her actually answering. Explaining. Opening something up — a problem, a wound, a piece of the past. And then he would have to respond in kind.

And he knew Izzy didn’t need that.

Neither of them did.

It was easier this way — staying at a distance. From people. From each other.

He stared at their chat for a long time.

Then texted Lucy instead.

Tommy 19:19

I like Izzy

Lu 19:22

We established that already

Like really?

Tommy 19:24

Lu, I’m serious

“What happened?” Lucy called immediately, as always.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Thomas checked the time and grimaced. It was well past midnight in Lyon.

“Talking to you,” she muttered. “Hold on.”

There was the rustle of sheets, hurried footsteps, and a quiet click of a door.

“Okay. I’m in the bathroom. Talk.”