Also gone.
Hopefully now living its best life in a shelter where no one gives a damn about“aesthetic.”
The new couch is mine. I picked it. Deep, moody green. Oversized. The kind of couch you could sleep on for eight hours and still wake up thinkingdamn, that was cozy.It’s bold. Loud. The visual equivalent of flipping off Chloe’s shrine to beige minimalism.
Every time I sit on it, I want to remember this:I don’t have to perform anymore.
Not in relationships. Not in my own damn living room.
I glance around, imagining how the space will feel once it’s fully mine—plants I won’t kill, books I’ve actually read, maybe even a ridiculous espresso machine I’ll never learn to use butneedfor the hell of it. I’ll start cooking again. Or get a dog. Or become one of those guys who owns throw blankets for reasons other than sex appeal.
The buzzer rings.
I nearly faceplant over my own feet getting to the intercom.
“Come on up.” Way too enthusiastic. I sound like I won the lottery instead of bought new furniture.
The delivery guys are fast and unfazed. They maneuver the couch through the tight doorway like it’s just another day at the office, which I guess it is. To me, though?
This is Christmas.
No—this is Reclamation Day.
Dropping onto it, I sink into the cushions. I’m being swallowed by the best kind of monster. The kind that feeds you chips and beer and gives you back your personality.
A slow smile creeps across my face, the kind that comes from finally,finallydoing something for myself.
Freedom feels like velvet. I run a hand over the fabric. And smells faintly of new beginnings.
I want to celebrate. I want to shout it from the rooftop of my building—or at least from the top of this new damn couch.
Because a couch isn’t just a couch—not when the last one had Chloe’s perfectly manicured fingerprints all over it. Not when every corner of this place used to smell like her shampoo and that overpriced pine and patchouli candle she swore “set the mood.”
Now it smells like leather and sawdust and manhood.
Mylife.Mychoice.
And for the first time in a long time, I’m actually myself again.
I want to tell someone.
Rorie, the Silver-Tongued Siren Who Might Be My Professional Undoing, drifts across my brain like a whisper.
She’d laugh at this, make some snarky comment about me choosing furniture that doesn’t scream: “CEO of Sad Beige, Inc.”
She’d lean back, swirl her wine, and ask something like, “Does this couch pair well with brooding?”
That little minx has invaded my network, my meat market—and somehow still managed to take up permanent residence in my brain.
Especially since last night?—
Her eyes, her laugh, the way her breath caught when I told her my touch would be anything but casual.
And that kiss.
Slow and wrecking. Her fists curled in my shirt like she needed more, while I held back, letting every brush of my lips ask instead of take. Her warm mouth opened, answering me in ways words never could.
I’m still unpacking that. Still figuring out if I’m on a slow slide into something I’m afraid to name yet… or if I’m finally waking up.
