I hadn’t seen him in three months, but his love lingered like sunlight in an empty room. It was everywhere—subtle, patient, impossible to ignore.
Every morning, a new bouquet waited on my office desk. Not extravagant ones—he knew I’d see through that—but small, careful arrangements. Lavender on Mondays, tulips on Thursdays. There was never a note, but I knew they were from him.
Breakfast arrived at my door before I woke. Smoothies, pastries, sometimes the exact omelet I used to pretend I didn’t like just to hear him insist I did. Dinner came at night, warm and perfectly timed, as if he still knew my schedule by heart—because he did. And because he also knew the only thing I could cook was pancakes—mushy in the middle, burnt on the outside, and permanently fused to the pan like an art installation on poor life choices.
Technically, it was his apartment. But he never tried to come back, never once crossed the invisible line I’d drawn. He loved me from a distance, and somehow that was both everything I’d asked for and exactly what was breaking me.
I kept discovering sticky notes hidden, ones I hadn’t noticed before. They weren’t just the bossy commands he used to leave scattered around like reminders from a fussy professor—Eat this. Drink water. Don’t stay up too late. Now there were softerones tucked between the pages of my planner, in my closet, behind the bathroom mirror. Notes that felt like tiny, stubborn love letters refusing to let go.I love you. You’re my light. You’re beautiful. You’re wanted.Little yellow ghosts of him, haunting me in the gentlest way possible.
And every evening, just as the sun began to fall, my phone would light up with a picture. Asunset. Never the same one twice. Sometimes taken from wherever he was staying, sometimes from the university campus, sometimes from a place I couldn’t recognize. No captions, no explanations, just that quiet exchange across this endless gap—his world turning gold.
Then, this morning, an envelope arrived. Inside were the official divorce documents from Dalal—their signatures inked and permanent. I stared at them for a long time, the weight of it all pressing against my chest. It should have comforted me, but the truth was, I was still angry. Angry that he’d lied, that someone else had touched the pieces of himself I thought belonged to me, that he’d broken my heart and then somehow made it so damn hard to stop loving him. Because each flower, each meal, each fading streak of orange sky was a reminder that love could exist even after everything else had fallen apart—that even when we tried to sever it cleanly, it found new ways to stay alive.
Every night, I’d crawl into his bed wearing his clothes and try to convince myself that I didn’t miss him, that the sheets no longer smelled like him, that my heart wasn’t waiting for the sound of his key in the door.
But love, I’d learned, didn’t listen to reason. It just stayed, patiently waiting for the moment I’d finally stop pretending that solitude was strength and admit that all I really wanted was him.
When I wasn’t wallowing in my own pathetic misery, I was throwing everything I had into getting my maternal wellness initiative off the ground—a project that had quickly mutated intoTheTariq Postpartum Institute, complete with a tiny (but real) building, my name on the door, and enough paperwork to make me question every life choice I’d ever made.
We’d had a bigger turnout than I expected—dozens of women, some with tired smiles and others with tears they couldn’t hide. Mothers who didn’t glow. Mothers who looked at their babies and wondered why joy hadn’t arrived with the epidural, who felt broken by it all, who didn’t instantly bond. Mothers drowning under the weight of postpartum depression while the world expected them to smile. Women who walked into motherhood full of hope and found themselves grieving the life they left behind. Their hearts were full, but their hands trembled with doubt. They loved their babies, but they felt lost, guilty, alone.
It made me equal parts happy and hollow. Happy that something I’d built was working, that maybe I was doing some good in a world that too often forgot about women once they became moms. And hollow, because the success was proof of just how many of them were hurting.
Still, it gave me purpose. It gave me something that wasn’t lying husbands, scorned ex-wives, angry best friends, or a mother who’d perfected the art of hating me with gentle consistency.
And somewhere in the middle of reminding them not to lose themselves, I realized I’d been quietly handing myself the same lifeline.
When medical schools called you in for an interview, the first question was always the same:Why do you want to be a doctor?And although everyone’s answers were dressed up differently, they all orbited the same idea:I want to help people. I want to save lives. I said it too—beautifully rehearsed, perfectly polished—but it wasn’t the truth. I didn’t become a doctor out of selflessness. I became one out of defiance. Out of spite. Out ofa deep, aching need to prove myself to a woman who’d spent her entire life making me feel unworthy of love and success. And because of that, I couldn’t stop wondering whether thewhybehind my choice somehow contaminated thewhatI achieved. If the origin of my ambition determined whether I belonged in the life it led me to.
But I was beginning to understand something that finally loosened the knot in my chest: Goodness could grow from imperfect motives. The ending could redeem the beginning. The outcome of a choice could rewrite the reason we made it. I didn’t choose medicine to help people, but helping people was the most meaningful thing I had ever done.
“Woohoo, Earth to Dr. T.”
Kevin’s voice cut through my thoughts like a pebble skimming the surface of a too-still lake. I blinked and looked up from the chart I hadn’t read a single word of. He stood in the doorway, arms full of bright color—another bouquet, and a ribboned box balanced on top.
“I come bearing another apology delivery,” he announced. “Fromhe who must never be named.”
I sighed, holding out a hand. “Give me the chocolates. You can add the flowers to the ever-growing Garden of Regret over there.”
He set the blooms down beside their fallen comrades—roses, lilies, tulips, a tragic love story told entirely in petals—and handed me the box. “You do realize you have to water these, right?”
“Why bother?” I bit into a truffle. “Everything dies eventually. Flowers. Friendships. Marriages.”
Kevin whistled. “Yikes. I liked you better when you were throwing staplers.”
I popped another chocolate into my mouth. “You’re welcome to stay while I rediscover that version of myself.”
He plopped into the chair across from me. “Look, I know I’m just your underpaid minion and personal lunch-fetcher—happily, of course—but if you ever need to talk...”
“I only do girl talk with girls.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Cool, I can be a girl. Give me five minutes and a scrunchie.”
That made me laugh, reluctantly. After a lengthy minute of consideration, I asked, “Do you perceive me as someone who secretly wants to be alone?”
“No.”
“Do you perceive me as someone who doesn’t give people second chances?”
