"That's the point." She picked up the empty casserole dish and headed for the door, then paused with her hand on the knob. "Miles?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you." Her voice was soft. "For telling me. For letting me in."
She left before I could respond, and I stood in my mother's kitchen surrounded by half-packed boxes and the terrifying, exhilarating possibility that maybe I didn't have to do this alone.
My phone buzzed. A text.
Charlotte
Tomorrow. 7 AM. Don't you dare pretend you forgot.
I stared at the message, a strange warmth spreading through my chest.
Miles
I won't
I typed back.
Miles
I promise.
It was the first promise I'd made in months that I actually intended to keep.
7.Charlotte
Iwas smiling at my phone like an idiot when the knock came.
Miles had texted me twenty minutes earlier, a photo of scrambled eggs that looked genuinely edible, captioned"Day 3 of not burning things. I think I'm getting the hang of this."I'd sent back a string of applause emojis and the words"Proud of you,"and he'd responded with"Don't get too excited. The toast was a casualty."
It was such a small thing. Such a normal, ordinary exchange. But after weeks of his walls and silences, every text felt like a gift. Every stupid joke about burnt toast felt like proof that he was letting me in, one inch at a time.
The knock startled me out of my happy little bubble. I padded to the door in my socks, assuming it was Mrs. Patterson from 3B wanting to borrow something, or a delivery driver with a misrouted package.
I glanced through the peephole.
And the world went quiet.
Drew.
My ex-husband stood on the other side of my door, looking like he'd been dragged backward through the last year of his life. His usually crisp button-down was rumpled, the collaraskew. His face was pale, carved with exhaustion, dark shadows bruising the skin beneath his eyes.
He was holding a bouquet of grocery-store carnations wrapped in cellophane, gripping them stiffly away from his body like they might explode.
They were already wilting, which felt a little on-the-nose as a metaphor.
My hand froze on the deadbolt. It had been over a year since the divorce was finalized. Over a year since I'd last seen him in that sterile lawyer's office, signing papers that ended seven years of marriage. In all that time, not a word. Not a text, not an email, not even a cowardly letter slipped under my door.
And now he showed up on my doorstep, looking like death warmed over, with cheap flowers?
"You have got to be kidding me," I muttered to the empty hallway.
I almost didn't open it. I could have stood there in the silence, waiting for him to give up and leave. But the anger was a live wire demanding an outlet. I needed to look him in the eye. I needed him to see that I was still standing.
I yanked the door open.
