“Like, what, you want me to stay at a hotel tonight?”
He’d stared at me a long moment.Talk to me, Beckett. Yell at me! Scream at me! Fight with me.
Fight for me.
For a second, there was something in his eyes.
But then…
He turned.
Grabbed the suitcase he hadn’t unpacked yet and…
He left.
And me? I cleaned. I organized. I scrubbed every surface until the house gleamed.
Only after I checked on the boys did reality hit.
Damn you, Beckett.
And that’s when I’d finally cried.
I stare at myself now in the salon mirror.
That night felt like the end of… everything. Not just the end of our marriage, but the end of our family. The end of friendships, our home.
Our life.
Oh, God. It felt like the end ofme.
The stylist is finished combing out my hair. “Just a trim?” she asks, polite, friendly.
I meet her eyes in the mirror and make a snap decision. “No,” I say. “I want something different. Layers. Bangs. I don’t know—go wild.”
Kelsey—according to her name tag—lifts her brows, suddenly interested. “Color?”
“Surprise me.”
She fingers through my hair, thoughtful, then disappears. When she comes back, she’s carrying a bowl of something that looks like purple cake batter and smells faintly of chemicals and citrus.
Before I can second-guess myself, she’s sectioning my hair, folding it into neat squares of foil with focused efficiency. No turning back now.
Comb. Paint on color. Wrap the foil.
The rhythm is oddly soothing.
The day after Beckett left, I downloaded every book I could find to help me take back control.The Single Parent,How to Sleep Alone in a King-Sized Bed, It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken…
Too many, probably.
Of course, I read them all.
And that’s why, sitting under a dryer now, I know that it takes an average of eighteen months to two years to feel happy again after a divorce.
One month for every year of marriage.
Healing isn’t linear.
