My hand shook so badly I had to set down the pot before I dropped it.
I knew that phrasing. Knew the rhythm of those words, the particular way he always started. Sweet first, almost gentle, like he wasn't the same person who'd once slammed my head into a wall because I'd smiled at a waiter.
Another buzz.
Unknown Number.
Why are you ignoring me?
And there it was. The shift. The accusation underneath the question, the warning dressed up as confusion. I'd seen this pattern a hundred times. The charm, then the concern, then the anger. Always in that order. Always escalating.
Evan had found me.
For a moment I just stood there, frozen behind the counter, the café noise washing over me like I was underwater. Customers laughing. The espresso machine hissing. Carla and Diane debating something at their usual table. Normal sounds from a normal world that suddenly felt very far away.
Six months of hiding. Six months of looking over my shoulder, of using a different name, of convincing myself that this time I'd finally disappeared.
None of it mattered. He'd found me anyway.
I met Evan Harris when I was sixteen years old, and I thought he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
He was a senior, I was a junior, and he had this way of looking at me like I was the only person in the room. My father had left when I was seven, and my mother worked double shifts just to keep us afloat, so I'd spent most of my life feeling invisible. Then Evan came along and made me feel seen.
I didn't notice the warning signs at first. Or maybe I did, and I just didn't want to believe them.
The way he got jealous when I talked to otherguys. The way he always needed to know where I was, who I was with, what I was doing. The way his compliments started to feel like corrections.
You'd look prettier if you wore your hair down.
You shouldn't laugh so loud, people are staring.
Why do you need to hang out with your friends when you have me?
By the time he hit me the first time, I was already so deep in that I didn't know how to get out.
It was always my fault, after. I'd made him angry. I'd pushed him too far. I'd done something wrong, said something wrong, been something wrong. And then he'd cry and apologize and promise it would never happen again, and I'd believe him because I needed to believe him, because the alternative was admitting that the boy I loved was a monster.
I was eighteen when I finally left him. He'd shown up at my house drunk, drunker than usual, pounding on the door at 2 AM while my mother called the police. Something in his eyes that night had scared me in a way I couldn't ignore anymore. The next day, I changed my number, stopped going to the places he knew I'd be, and refused to be alone until he finally got the message.
He called for weeks after. Showed up at my school. Left notes on my car. But then he enlisted in the Army, shipped off to basic training, and slowly, finally, the calls stopped.
And then I met Mateo.
Mateo, who never raised his voice, who never made me feel small, who looked at me like I was amiracle instead of a project. Mateo, who asked before he touched me, who told me I was brave for leaving, who held me when I woke up from nightmares and never once made me feel weak for having them.
Mateo showed me what love was supposed to feel like.
We had three years together. Three years of learning to trust again, learning to believe I deserved softness. He proposed on a Tuesday, no special occasion, just because he said he couldn't wait anymore. We were going to get married in the spring. We were going to have kids and grow old and prove that the worst thing that ever happened to me didn't get to define my future.
Then the warehouse collapsed, and Mateo was gone, and I learned that the universe didn't care about what I deserved.
I went to Denver after the funeral. I'd been teaching second grade at West Valley Springs Elementary, had loved those kids, but I couldn't face the classroom anymore. Couldn't stand in front of seven-year-olds and talk about futures when mine had just collapsed. So I quit, left town, and got a job at a restaurant instead. Something mindless. Something that didn't require hope. I rented a small apartment and tried to remember how to breathe without Mateo.
And then, eighteen months ago, my phone buzzed with an unknown number.
Unknown Number.
Miss you.
