And I didn’t put anything back.
Grace and I bought winter coats that doesn’t leak wind through the seams.
I even funded a four-month emergency buffer—which is a calm, grown-up way of saying we won’t panic if work slows down.
Then I did something I’ve never done in my life.
I put $5,000 into a three-month CD.
Not survival money. Future money.
Which required me to research rates with the slightly unbridled optimism of a woman who has never, not once, had a reserve account.
A woman whose savings balance, seventy-two hours ago, rounded to the nearest nothing.
For the first time in eighteen months, my personal spreadsheet isn't a red-flagged emergency.
It's a plan.
An actual, forward-facing, color-coded plan with projections that don't make me want to crawl under the desk and breathe into a paper bag.
Instead, I’m standing. That counts.
Because now I have room.
Actual room—in my breathing, in my chest—to feel what I’ve been trying to suppress about one Weston Prescott.
And I’m going to use it.
It’s been three days since Anguilla.
Our texting has mutated into something I wasn't prepared for—not the tentative check-ins of new acquaintances, not the performative flirtation of people who are still pretending.
Something sharper.
A running commentary on each other's lives that assumes access, assumes interest, assumes permanence.
He texts like someone who notices everything but files it away in some internal database.
I text like someone narrating her own disaster reel in real time.
Together it works. Especially on a Wednesday.
ME:I’m at work, catching up on paperwork and calls. You?
WEST:Waiting for the game to start. USA through. Undefeated in preliminary play. Direct bye to quarterfinals.
ME:When is it starting? And is it Sweden or Latvia?
WEST:Thirty minutes. USA vs Sweden. I need them to win by at least two.
ME:You gambling now?
WEST:Relax. Just a little wager with a couple of longtime friends in Colorado.
I try not to read too much into our hockey conversations, but that doesn’t stop the small ache of knowing West is in New York watching other men play the sport his body is still built for.
He doesn’t say that.
