“Because you’re right,” Astoria said quietly. “This was always going to end. We both knew that. We just let ourselves pretend otherwise.”
Miller stared at her. This wasn’t the same woman who’d opened up to her about Valerie’s abuse, who had trembled in her arms, who had whispered things in the dark that she’d never told anyone. This was someone else, someone who was armored for defense and already retreating behind walls Miller couldn’t climb.
“Astoria, please.”
“You should go.” Astoria’s voice was steady,toosteady. “You came here to end this, so end it.”
The words hung in the air between them. Miller felt tears burning behind her eyes and blinked them back, refusing to cry, refusing to fall apart while Astoria stood there like a statue.
She wanted to cross the room, take Astoria’s face in her hands, and make her see that this was killing Miller too. That she wasn’t choosing this because it was the easy way out. That walking away from Astoria was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
I’m falling in love with you.
The words pressed against her teeth, desperate to escape. She swallowed them down.
What good would it do to speak them? Astoria had already made up her mind to not fight or argue or give Miller anything to hold onto. She was letting her go, and Miller couldn’t tell if it was because Astoria didn’t care enough to fight or because she cared too much to ask Miller to stay.
“Goodbye, Astoria,” she whispered.
Astoria nodded. Her face was pale, and her expression looked as if it were carved from stone. “Goodbye, Miller.”
Miller forced herself to turn and walk toward the door, even though everything inside her body was screaming at her to stop. Her hand was on the handle when Astoria’s voice stopped her.
“Miller.”
She looked back. Astoria stood exactly where Miller had left her, silhouetted against the dark windows. She looked smaller somehow, fragile in a way Miller hadn’t seen her before.
“Thank you,” Astoria said softly. “For doing this in person.”
Miller’s throat closed. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and stepped out into the night. She made it to her car before the tears fell, and she made it three blocks before she had to pull over.
The tears had started in Astoria’s driveway and hadn’t stopped. They blurred the road, the streetlights, the dark shapes of houses. She was driving blind, her hands shaking on the wheel, and some distant part of her brain recognized that she was going to kill herself or someone else if she didn’t stop.
She pulled onto a side street, put the car in park, and left the engine running. She pressed her hands over her face and sobbed in the dark. It wasn’t pretty crying. It wasn’t quiet or dignified or the kind of grief you could tuck away and manage. It was ugly, gasping, the kind of mourning that came from somewhere deep in her chest and ripped its way out. She cried until her throat ached and her eyes burned. She cried until there was nothing left.
Then she sat in the silence and stared at the dashboard.
She’d done the right thing. Of that, she had no doubt. Valerie was poking around and their affair was a loaded weapon waiting to go off, and staying with Astoria would’ve destroyed them both. Miller did what she had to do to protect them.
But it didn’tfeellike protection. It felt like she’d carved something essential out of her own chest and left it bleeding on Astoria’s floor.
The clock on the dash read 9:47 p.m. She’d been sitting there for almost twenty minutes. Miller wiped her face with the back of her hand, checked her mirrors, and pulled back onto the road. The drive home passed in a blur of stop signs and traffic lights. She didn't remember any of it.
Her apartment was dark when she got home. She didn't turn on the lights, just locked the door behind her, dropped her keys on the counter, and walked to her bedroom without bothering to get undressed.
She lay in the dark on top of the covers, still in her work clothes, and stared at the ceiling.
The apartment had never felt this quiet or empty before. She'd lived here for three years and had always liked the solitude, the space that was entirely her own. But tonight, it pressed in on her like a weight.
She should eat. Her body felt hollow, but the thought of food made her stomach turn. She should shower and wash away the smell of Astoria’s home on her. She should sleep. Tomorrow, she’d have to get up and go to work and pretend she was fine.
Instead of getting up to eat or shower, Miller closed her eyes.
She thought about Astoria standing by those windows, the way she hadn't fought, the way she'd just let Miller walk out the door.
Astoria’s words,thank you for doing this in person, replayed in her mind. Astoria had said it like Miller was a colleague delivering bad news. Maybe Miller had imagined the connection, the vulnerability, the moments when Astoria had looked at her like she was something precious. Maybe Astoria had been playing a role the whole time, the way she played roles in boardrooms and courtrooms and everywhere else.
But she didn’t believe that. She’d felt what was between them and had seen Astoria cracked open after years of keepingeveryone out, but Astoria didn’t fight tonight. Miller didn’t know what that meant.
