Couldn't risk bumping into Ben in our building, allowing him access to me if he wanted it.
Worse, I couldn't risk seeing him with Lisa. With the child she gets to make with him.
The night he told me, I left the house with the precision of a woman setting her own house on fire. I took only my phone, keys, and wallet.
Then, half-blind with tears, I wandered the streets until the city blurred into streaks, and I realized I'd end up as one of those tragic local-news stories if I kept going:Twenty-something woman found in a dumpster without a heart.
So I went to Sea Cliff—melodramatic, I know—but I thought maybe if I went back there, I could rewind time, find a different meaning in everything that happened in between.
To my surprise, I sat there for an hour, and it wasn't working. I kept recalling the moment Ben asked if I wanted him to kiss me and cried about how I am, in fact, the one who messed it all up.
An hour into my disintegration, Lu called me, and I couldn't pretend—I ugly cried, which made her call me a cab and have the driver ring the doorbell because she assumed correctly that I was too low on oxygen to think, and I'd probablyjust stand in front of her house the whole night.
She opened the door with a wine bottle in her hand, and Lu decided to paint my portrait. Apparently, one day, when life's too good, when happiness feels like it's overflowing, I'll need this captured heartbreak to ground me and keep me grateful.
I hope she's right...
Now it's afternoon, and I'm drinking my first coffee in five years, a jittery revolt buzzing through my veins.
It feels almost sacrilegious, like lighting a cigarette in church. Or saying,look, I can undo even the parts of myself I thought were permanent and tied to him.
Still, his bracelet sits on my wrist as proof I'm lying.
And damn it, I've washed my clothes at least five times and they still smell like him.
Because his scent is not in my clothes, it's in my veins.
I'd have to wash him from my soul.
In two weeks, I rewrote the ending of my book three times. My editor is begging me to stop bleeding on the page, but I can't. It's like pressing your tongue to a sore tooth—compulsion, punishment, comfort.
Sometimes I cry until my throat tastes rusty, and that's Lu's cue to crank up the music so loud it bangs against the door that I keep closed most of the time.
That was our deal. I'll stay here if she lets me deal with this heart infection on my own.
I live mostly horizontal now, in my little sanatorium of heartbreak—my body lethargic on the bed, my mind running on double.
I thought I'd known emotional pain before, but this? This has stripped me of every joy to exist, and whoever's survived it, you deserve a badge and a crown and maybe even a ceremony for being a survivor because holy fuck.
At least Lu's world throws me off my grey rhythm with its unusual vibrancy lately.
Sophia spends most of her days here, and Micah just happens to join them on every occasion. They're a holy trinity of insanity—Sophia the angel, Micah the devil, and Lu the conductor who somehow makes it all work.
Anyway, I need to get out of the room.
Clutching my empty mug, I shuffle into the kitchen and stop dead.
Micah is naked on the sofa. Not half naked, not tastefully towel-wrapped. Fully naked.
One leg draped over the edge, glass of wine in hand, eyes half-lost like he's the personification of Adonis.
Across from him, Sophia perches on the armchair, sketchbook propped on her knee, pencil moving as she sketches him.
"Okay," I say, voice flat as a dead line. "Sure. Just another completely normal morning in the house of artists and exhibitionists. Hey, guys."
I quickly move to the sink, trying to avoid Micah mid-exposé.
Micah glances over and smiles. "Morning, sunshine. Coffee? Or just here to admire the view?"
