Her path is that of popcorn and empty chocolate wrappers, bare toes braving the cesspool of carpet stained with soda and hot sauce. It smells like laundry detergent, unwashed clothes, and there's a pungent undertone of mouthwash. The sink in the bathroom is dripping inconspicuously, like static it clings along the fringes of the room, barely audible, but occupying the vacant space. Empty pizza boxes and foil wrappings are singularly the only decor, the fragrance of cheese packets mingling with the greasy cardboard, abandoned among unpaired socks.
Casualties of the packing remain untouched: old shirts crumpled amongst the bed sheets, jeans that had been outgrown, underwear with too many holes. She finds a container full of tic tacs on the bedside table that were never opened, and empty bottles of shampoo scatter the bathroom counter. A decrepit tube of toothpaste lies discarded on the floor beside the toilet. The gooey white substance has conquered its prison and coated the cap so that when she picks it up her fingers are assaulted by the sticky paste and stink of mint.
If memories could talk, this room would sing: a cacophony orchestrated from years of their companionship. The door hinges would creak with their off-key singing, the wood panels would shake at one in the morning from their video game marathons, widows would rattle from shrieks eclipsed by feathers as he chased her about the room, swinging pillows and taking cover behind a ripped beanbag. The clicking of disposable cameras would echo through the cracks in the paint and the sound of his snoring would flutter the cobwebs collecting in the corners and her sighs would find solace in the shadowy recesses inside cupboards. The memories of their whispers would litter the carpet like pizza crust skeletons, and the sound of his voice in the morning would match the croak of the shower sputtering to life. She remembers the sound of their arguments like the yanking of the blinds as they rolled up too quickly: the violent ascension and the jerk of the cord, the plastic clashing with the glass, before it fell silent and relapsed into comfort again.
Rain taps the roof and she hums something ridiculous so she won't feel alone. Her tiny feet lapse into his rain boots left by the closet, the rubber insides curving to the contours of his feet instead of hers. She shifts to where his toes once fit; the place where they wore the soles down. He is closer this way.
She breathes deep and fills her lungs with the air of a thousand days they spent curled in the musty blankets, the dip of the mattress- barely fitting them both, her socks rubbing against his ankles and scratch of his unshaven cheeks along the crown of her head. She breathes, yet the feeling of relief never permeates. She supposes the sensation of drowning is not something that can be lifted. She wants to be ripped from the water, is tired of realizing she is not whole, but broken, the shock coming so swift and sudden she inhales water and chokes.
The clock on the nightstand is stuck and blinks the same numbers as if it forgot how to function.
She wiggles her toes inside the boots, disrupting the alinement of their feet, to remember she is not Jon, but Arya. To remember Jon has left her alone in this old room bursting at the seams with their past to which she is the only participant and it feels wrong without him here, too. It is imprinted with their lives; she is the audience, watching the show as it plays out before her in this room that smells of him and already knowing how the final act will end.
It ends with him walking from this old room and into a car that will drive north and keep going until she cannot see the back of his head in the passenger seat.
Arya is not Jon and she glances at the clock which is still stuck on the numbers lit green and blinking for no one to see because no one will be in this room again. At least not anyone who matters. No one who matters will make memories in this room made of his serious eyes and her ripped cuticles, because all that matters is gone and Jon is gone. The numbers are still stuck and so is Arya. She is stuck in the rings of rust around the shower drain and the crooked curtains and drawings made of their breath along the window panes, written messages on the mirror and she will never be unstuck.