My apartment is exactly the way I left it—a blanket folded over the arm of the couch, a half-drunk glass of water on the coffee table, one of my color-coded notepads open on the kitchen counter with a list of talking points I didn’t end up needing. It should comfort me. Instead, it makes the evening feel like a hallucination I somehow dragged home on my skin.
I kick off my heels, toes protesting the freedom,and bend down to scoop them up with fingers that won’t stop trembling. My necklace snags my hair when I reach for the clasp, and for a second, I want to yank it hard enough to snap the chain. Instead, I force myself to take my time, nails careful at the nape of my neck, because control is all I have when everything else is spinning.
My dress catches the lamplight when I pass the full-length mirror in the hallway. I don’t look directly at my reflection, just seeing a blur of a woman who looks like she belongs on the arm of someone like him.
She doesn’t look like the girl who cried in a bathroom stall at nineteen because a boss suggested she’d be more “effective” if she made certain donors feel special. She doesn’t look like the woman who built an entire career around never giving anyone a reason to say she slept her way into it.
Inside, my chest feels scraped raw, every old wound tonight pressed against awake and throbbing again.
By the time I make it to my bedroom, my hands are shaking so hard I have to sit on the edge of the mattress. My dress pulls tight across my thighs, the expensive fabric suddenly too much against skin that still remembers the phantom warmth of his hand.
“You protected yourself. You protected your job. Your future. You made the smart choice,” I tell the dark room. My voice sounds wrong in the quiet, too close to breaking.
I reach for the zipper at my side, the soft rasp loud in the silence. The dress slides down, pooling at myfeet. I sit there in my strapless bra and shapewear from hell, everything held together in all the ways that don’t matter. Everything that matters most feels like it’s coming apart.
I press my palms to my eyes as my throat tightens. If I can push back the tears, maybe they’ll stay. The pressure only makes them spill faster. One slides hot and uninvited down my cheek. Then another. And another.
I don’t sob or shake. I’ve never been the person who falls apart out loud. Instead, I curl my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around them, and rest my forehead against bare skin, letting the tears fall silently into the hollow between my legs.
On the dance floor, his hand in mine steadied me when my whole body wanted to bolt. In the hallway, his voice was the only thing that cut through the panic. In the car, I watched him fold himself down to make room for my fear, even as it carved pieces out of him.
I told myself walking away was the safe option. So why does it feel like I just sawed off a limb and handed it back to him with a smile?
His voice ricochets through my skull, low and steady and so sure it cracks something soft inside me:If this is where you walk away… just know I’m not done. I’m giving you space, but this is not goodbye.
I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, but the words don’t fade. They settle in my chest, heavy and aching, colliding with the truth I’ve been clinging to all night:This can’t be real.
It can’t. It isn’t allowed to be. Because if it is, then I didn’t just walk away from a complication. I walked away from the first person who ever saw all the sharp edges and didn’t flinch.
A fresh wave of tears burns down my cheeks as my shoulders shake, a tiny tremor I clamp down on with whatever tension I have left. I bury my face deeper against my knees until my breath comes in shallow, uneven pulls.
“It can’t be real,” I whisper to the dark, the words scraping past a raw throat. “It can’t.”
The city hums faintly beyond the window. No one answers, because no one is here to hear me bargaining with my own heart like it’s a hostile witness.
Under the noise of my denial, something quieter pulses, stubborn and merciless.
You’re lying.
I see the truth in every flash of tonight that plays behind my eyes. The way his hand fit at the small of my back. The way his laugh loosened the knot in my chest. The way he stood beside me with Bennett instead of in front of me like I needed saving. The way he looked at me like I was the story, not the spin.
It already is.
The thought lands like a bruise blooming behind my ribs. I suck in a sharp breath that hurts all the way down, a new ache layered over the old ones. I stay there, legs tucked up, forehead pressed to my knees, letting myself feel every jagged piece of what I just did. The lost, furious, helpless want that refuses todim, even now that I’ve slammed every door in its face.
Eventually, the tears slow. My lungs remember how to pull full breaths. The room steadies, shapes resolving back into furniture—dresser, lamp, the framed degrees on my wall, no one can say I didn’t earn. I drag my hands down my face and sit up, my spine protesting after so long curled in on itself.
With my eyes swollen and my throat raw, I reach for the tissues on my nightstand, blow my nose, and dab my cheeks, erasing the physical evidence of falling apart.
Piece by piece, I put myself back together.
I unclasp my bra and toss it onto the chair. I pull on an oversized T-shirt, the cotton soft and worn thin. I twist my hair up into a messy knot that will be a disaster in the morning but keeps it off my damp cheeks now. I pad to the bathroom and splash cool water over my face until the worst of the puffiness fades.
In the mirror, a different woman stares back. Barefaced, red-eyed, still shaking around the edges, but upright. I hold her gaze and force my breathing to even out. In. Out. In. Out. The way they taught me in therapy, when everything felt on fire and control was the only extinguisher I trusted.
Tomorrow, there will be emails. Recap meetings. Glowing coverage about the gala’s success. Photos online—me on Kyle’s arm, smiling up at him like nothing in the world could touch us. I’ll have to manage it. I’ll have to face him.
The thought presses hard against my sternum, but instead of folding, I straighten my shoulders another fraction. I know how to rebuild walls. I’ve been doing it my entire life. Brick by brick. Story by story. Until no one can see past the version of me I decide to show them.
