"No!" Lauren said quickly. "Dad, no. You've been planning this for years. I'm fine. I promise I'm fine."
"You're crying," her mother pointed out.
"I'm crying because it’s nice to see your faces,” Lauren said, which was at least partially true. “Don't come home early. Please just—enjoy the sunshine. Enjoy the rest of your trip. I'll be okay."
"We love you, honeybun,” her father said. His voice was gruff with emotion. "And we're so proud of you."
Her mom dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “You’ve always been stronger than you think, you know that?”
Lauren tried to smile.
When they finally hung up, Lauren sat in the quiet kitchen, holding her phone against her chest.
She was stronger than she thought.
The boxes were stacked neatlybeside the stairs—five years of their Christmases folded and sorted with care. Five years of glitter and glue guns and late-night crafting. Five years of unforgivable naivety.
They were supposed to be stored for next Christmas. But nothing in those boxes felt like it belonged to her future anymore. She wouldn’t let herself be that stupid ever again.
Instead, she pulled on her coat and grabbed her gloves. The air bit her cheeks as she stepped outside. Snow was falling in soft, lazy flakes that caught in her hair and melted against her skin.
She dragged the first box to the curb.
The cardboard edges dug into her palms, the weight awkward and uneven. She left it beside the trash can and went back for the next one.
Two trips. Then three. Then four.
She hesitated. There was something else she needed to get rid of.
Her legs felt wooden as she climbed the stairs, crossed the hallway, opened the bedroom door. She reached into the drawer where she’d stashed the lingerie—delicate, lacy, chosen with trembling hope.
She carried it downstairs and shoved it deep into the last box, burying it beneath a heap of tinsel and tissue paper.
What a fucking joke.
She pulled the box outside, her breath coming out in white bursts. Struggling with it until it sat with the rest of the trash.
The boxes looked strange sitting there in the snow: brown cardboard with neat labels, pieces of her heart packed away forever. The street was quiet. No one to see her little funeral for five years of devotion.
She stood, watching the snow drift down and settle over the boxes, softening their edges until they almost looked pretty again.
“I deserve better,” she said softly.
She said it again, louder this time, her voice louder. “I deserve better.”
She turned from the boxes, walked inside, and closed the door on them—and on him.
Her craft roomwas tucked away up in the attic—cramped under the sloped ceiling, hot in summer and cold in winter.
Even when Tom was planning their future together, designing their dream home, he'd been ashamed of her.
Lauren had been so blind.
This was her place. The place where she created with her own two hands.
And she was done apologizing for it.
She surveyed her kingdom as the glue-gun warmed. The pegboards lined with scissors and ribbons. The shelves crowded with mason jars full of buttons and beads. The baskets overflowing with fabric scraps and yarn in every color imaginable.
