PROLOGUE
BETSY
“So, tell me about Devon.”
The therapist asks it like it’s a simple question. It isn’t. Devon isn’t simple. He’s a knot I never stopped picking at until my fingers bled.
Where do I even start? With Valentine’s Day, when he said flowers were a scam and dinner reservations were “too forced”? With my birthday—the text that came two days late, no call, no effort, just“You know I don’t do that stuff”as if that made it okay? Or maybe the time he introduced me at a party ashis best friend—while his girlfriend of two months stood beside him, wearing the necklace I helped him pick out.
I laugh—the kind that sounds like a hiccup caught in barbed wire. “Complicated,” I say, picking at a loose thread on my sweater sleeve until it unravels like my dignity. "That’s what I used to call him. But Devon’s not complicated. He’s as predictable as my aunt Marge’s tuna casserole at Christmas—reliably disappointing and leaves a bad taste.”
But once I start, I can’t stop, like a dam breaking after years of hairline cracks.
Like the nights he only called when something ended—midnight texts after another breakup, his name lighting up my phone at 2:37 AM while I lay curled on my side, already reaching for it before I was fully awake. His drunken voicemails, slurred and soft, telling me how no one gets him like I do, how I’m the only one who sees the real him. And the way he’d hold me like a secret in the dark, hands clutching me like I was oxygen, only to treat me like an afterthought by morning.
But when I needed him? When I was hunched over the toilet bowl for three days with the flu, shivering under three blankets? When my grandma had surgery and I sat alone in that mint-green waiting room for six hours, watching the second hand tick? When my car broke down on the side of the highway in February, with snow falling so thick that I couldn’t see the next exit, my fingers were too numb to work the zipper on my coat. Nothing. Not even a text asking if I made it home alive.
And here’s the part I hate admitting: I wasn’t always the side chick. Once, I was his girlfriend. His first real love. He was my first everything—my first crush, my first kiss, my first time. I thought that meant something permanent, something unshakable. I thought love was an equation: if you gave enough, if you were steady enough, if you loved harder than anyone else, eventually he’d see it. He’d choose you.
So I clung. I told myself we’d circle back, that one day he’d realize I was the one who truly loved him. That no one else would stay through his storms, forgive him, wait for him.
“And how does that make you feel?”
Like a fool. Like the girl waiting at the train station long after the train’s already left.
“He doesn’t want forever,” I say quietly. “He doesn’t even want me. He just doesn’t want me with anyone else. And I… I let him. Over and over. Like I’m addicted to being his back-up plan.”
The therapist’s pen stills. Her eyes lift, calm but sharp.
“Betsy… scraps aren’t a meal. Why are you settling for them?”
I don’t have an answer. Just the sinking truth that maybe I never will.
After a long, awkward silence, I finally murmur another regretful reply. “He wasn’t always like this.” I can’t stop making excuses for a man who I know doesn’t deserve it. “When we first met, he was different,” I say, staring at a water stain on the ceiling that resembles a heart if I squint just right. “He used to bring me coffee during finals week. Not just any coffee—my exact order with an extra shot and that vanilla syrup I love. He’d remember things I mentioned once in passing, like my favorite book or how I wanted to see Paris in the spring.”
“Oh, did he take you to Paris?” my therapist inquires, her eyes wide with surprise.
I shake my head. “No, I’m just saying he remembered what I dreamed about. I smile at the memory, tracing the pattern on the armrest. “For our three-month anniversary, he surprised me with this picnic on the roof of his apartment building. He’d strung these little white lights everywhere, and we danced to Ella Fitzgerald playing from his tinny laptop speakers. He couldn’t afford much then, buthe’d gone to four different bakeries to find those chocolate eclairs I mentioned loving as a kid.”
The therapist nods, her face carefully neutral.
“He wrote me poems,” I continue, my voice growing smaller. “Terrible ones, honestly. Full of mixed metaphors and forced rhymes. But he tried. That version of Devon tried.”
I stop abruptly, the warmth of nostalgia evaporating like morning dew. “But that was seven years ago. And I can’t keep living on memories that have gone stale.”
My fingernails dig crescents into my palms. “The thing is, I know exactly what he’s doing. He texts me at 1 AM, not because he misses me, but because he needs to know someone still wants him. He calls when he’s between girlfriends because I’m his emotional safety net. I’m... convenient.”
The word tastes bitter, like medicine without the promise of healing.
“Last month, I got that promotion I’d been working toward for two years. I texted him, excited to share my news. You know what he said? ‘That’s great, Bets. Hey, are you free tonight? Karen and I just broke up.’" I laugh, but it sounds hollow even to my own ears. “He didn’t even ask what the promotion was for.”
I look directly at my therapist now, something hardening inside me. "I’ve spent seven years being his emotional crutch while he gives me just enough attention to keep me hooked. I’m thirty-four, for God’s sake. I own my own firm. I have clients who respect me. Yet I still drop everything when he calls.”
My voice cracks. “Last week, I canceled dinner with my grandmother—my grandmother who is eighty-sevenyears old—because Devon was ‘having a rough night’ and wanted company. He fell asleep on my couch watching basketball before I could even tell him about Teeny’s health scare.”
I wipe at a tear that’s escaped despite my best efforts. “I keep a toothbrush for him in my bathroom, but he’s never once invited me to stay at his place. Not once in seven years.”
The therapist leans forward slightly. “What would it look like to set a boundary with Devon?”
