1. Derek
They say your life can change in an instant. That’s only the part people notice—the moment the slope gives way. No one talks about the hairline cracks that spread for weeks or months or years underneath, invisible until it’s too late.
Mine didn’t change in an instant. It failed. One crack, then another, until the whole thing let go and I was tumbling too fast to brace. When everything finally stopped, I was buried under the wreckage. Some scars you can see. Others you carry where no one else can find them.
I had loved Mackenzie Porter since we were sophomores at Ponderosa High School—a decade of my life wrapped up in one person. She’d been there through all of it. The D-1 scholarship. Getting drafted by the Chicago Frost. We were supposed to get married that summer. Another milestone checked off, another thing we’d do together.
Or so I thought.
I had gotten sick at weight training on a nondescript Wednesday. A dodgy chicken salad I had picked up for lunch. I had Ubered home, one hand clamped over my mouth the entire time, breathing through my nose and praying I wouldn’t humiliate myself in some stranger’s Camry.
I was in such a rush to get upstairs and collapse next to the toilet that I hadn’t noticed Mackenzie’s car in the driveway. Or the other familiar car parked down the block—a gunmetalgray F-150 with the Chicago Frost sticker peeling off the back window.
My stomach was in open rebellion when I heard it at the top of the stairs. Rhythmic thumping from the bedroom. Unmistakable.
The door to the master bedroom was closed. Mackenzie should be at work. She was an aesthetician, so her schedule shifted depending on how booked she was and whether she was working Saturdays. But it was Wednesday just after 2 p.m. She usually had appointments until 6 p.m.
I froze, ears straining. Maybe I had imagined it. Maybe it was bleeding through the narrow gangway that separated us from the neighbors—the Cohens were in their 70s but who knew?
But the sound came again. Louder. Closer. Definitely from our bedroom.
I don’t know what possessed me to turn that knob. Some stupid, desperate need to prove myself wrong. To walk in and find her watching some ridiculous reality show with the volume too high, or on a FaceTime call with her sister Mariana, laughing too loud about nothing.
Mackenzie was not at work. And she was not alone.
She was on her hands and knees on our bed—the one with the navy duvet we’d picked out together at Pottery Barn—being fucked from behind by my best friend Cooper James. His hands gripped her hips. Her hair was a mess. Her face was flushed, mouth open, eyes half-closed in a way I recognized, a way I thought belonged to me.
The second her eyes met mine, everything stopped. Time didn’t slow—it shattered.
“Wait, Derek!” She flung herself sideways onto the mattress, scrambling for the sheet.
Cooper stumbled back, hands up like he’d been caught doing something illegal. “This isn’t what you think it is!”
That was when I threw up. All over the hardwood floor we’d had refinished last spring. All over the stupid jute rug Mackenzie said would “tie the room together.”
I bolted.
Behind me, Mackenzie was shouting my name. Cooper was cursing, fumbling for his clothes. But I was already flying down the stairs, feeling sick and dizzy, my vision swimming.
That’s when Aspen appeared.
My loyal Aussie mix came trotting up from the living room to investigate all the commotion upstairs. In my haze of tears and nausea and rage, I hadn’t seen him starting to climb.
He was right there. Directly in my path.
I tried to step over him—some desperate instinct to avoid sending him tumbling—but my foot caught air instead of the next stair. My knee buckled. Then I was weightless, the ceiling spinning past my vision, Aspen’s startled yelp echoing in my ears.
Pain exploded through my leg. My head cracked against something hard.
Then nothing.
???
When I woke up, the world was sterile white and beeping. Fluorescent lights. The smell of antiseptic. A dull, throbbing ache radiating from my knee up through my entire leg.
I blinked against the brightness, my head pounding, and slowly turned.
Mackenzie sat in the chair next to my hospital bed, wearing one of my Chicago Frost hoodies—the navy one with the logo across the chest. Her eyes were red rimmed and puffy. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun. She looked small. Tired. Wrecked.
