I look at her, then back at him, my voice calm but final.
“Don’t act surprised, Mom. He’s always been a dick.”
And then I walk out, coat still unbuttoned, February air biting hard against my skin as the door shuts behind me.
Back in my SUV, I sit for a moment with the engine off, silence pressing in heavy.
Two goodbyes in one night—one to the man I married, one to the father who never really knew how to love me without conditions.
My chest aches with the weight of both.
Finally, I start the car, headlights cutting through the cold, and I drive away from the house that is definitely no longer my home.
THIRTY-TWO
LEO
The hangover wakesme right before the doorbell does.
It sits behind my eyes like a hot coin—press, throb, press. When the chime goes off, it punches through that coin like a gong, pain ricocheting around my brain.
I peel one eye open and immediately regret it, tasting last night on my tongue—whiskey, toothpaste, and… why do my nostrils burn? Did I throw up and shoot whiskey out my nose?
The doorbell rings again.
“It’s Saturday,” I croak to no one. “Cease and desist.”
I grope around for my phone, don’t find it, shove off the blanket that’s acting as my warm, fluffy hiding place, and swing my legs out of bed. Boxers, that’s it. No T-shirt, no socks. My mouth is dry as a desert and the floor is so cold my arches rise in protest.
The bell goes again. Long press this time.
“All right,” I mutter, staggering down the hall. My head does the thing where it pulses in time with my footfalls, like there’s a subwoofer buried under my hairline.
I smear the back of my hand over my mouth—drool, fantastic—and catch sight of myself in the hall mirror. Bedhead like I’ve been electrocuted. Eyes the color of bad coffee.
I squint at my reflection and, out of long habit, deadpan, “Still a sexy motherfucker,” and then open the door.
Stephanie.
“What the fuck,” I say, not even bothering with hello, “are you doing at my house at thisungodlyhour on a Saturday?”
I’m standing in the opening to my house, hand resting on the knob and forearm on the frame, so when she attempts to step in from the cold and I don’t budge, Stephanie stops and stomps her foot like a petulant child.
“Leo,” she huffs. She’s bracing against more than the weather, hands shoved into the pockets of a long coat, cheeks pink from the air. “I need to talk to you.”
“Not right now, you don’t.”
I start to shut the door. She plants a palm against it and leans in.
“Leo, please.”
Great. Now I’m a half-naked asshole wrestling with his ex-wife on his own stoop at six in the morning. The neighbors are probably peeking through their blinds, judging the prick who won’t let that poor woman inside from the cold.
Who am I kidding? Nobody’s watching this. They are all asleep. Like normal people, this early on a Saturday.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, which does nothing helpful for the coin behind my eyes, and inhale air so cold it scrapes.
“Look,” I say, exasperated. I just need this woman to leave, right now, so I can go back to sleep. “I promise, we’ll talk. We can talk about whatever the fuck you want to talk about. Just not at six in the morning, on a Saturday, when I’m hungover and my head has a pulse and I’m in a terrible mood and I don’t even have any fucking clothes on, okay?”
