Regret has carved itself into her face. The lines around her mouth. The furrow between her brows. The shallow drag of each uneven breath.
She isn’t rushing to finish. She measures each word, making sure it lands with its full weight. There is no urgency to move on, no quiet plea for me to make this easier for her. She just stands there, letting her own shame burn.
Because it matters.
BecauseImatter.
The thought is too big for my chest. It presses against my ribs, demanding more room than I have.I matter. As a person. Someone with a name, a history, a wound that someone is finally treating like it is real.
It feels like she is apologizing to someone she truly sees. Someone she respects. Someone she believes in.
She is apologizing tome.
I have never experienced this before.
Something deep inside me—a wall I didn’t know was still standing—shatters.
I hit the floor with a jarring thud.
My knees take the impact. My hands slam against the tiles. The pain is sharp and immediate, but it is nothing compared tothe pain in my chest, the pain that has been building for years, the pain that I have been swallowing and storing and hiding in the hollow where the cold lives.
The sob is ripped from me before I even feel the tears on my cheeks.
It is ugly. It is loud. It comes from somewhere so deep inside me that I did not know I had access to it. My whole body shakes. My shoulders heave. My hands curl into fists on the floor, and I press my forehead against the cold tile, and I weep.
I weep for the girl on the stoop.
I weep for the hunger that whistled through her hollow belly.
I weep for the cold that unpacked its bags between her ribs.
I weep for the mother who could not save her and the father who did not want to.
I weep for the wife who accepted a roof and called it everything.
I weep for the woman who has been hiding in the cracks, growing in the dark, waiting for a moment like this.
Maeve freezes for a second. Then she’s on the floor beside me, her knee brushing mine, the warmth of her body cutting through the cold fog in my chest. Her sweater whispers against my arm. Her hands hover over my back, searching for the right place to land.
“Oh my God—shit—did I completely mess this up?” Her voice is panicked, high with alarm. “I knew I should’ve forced Kieran to write the apology for me—”
I shake my head, desperately swiping at the tears with my hands. The tears will not stop. They keep coming, hot and relentless, streaming down my cheeks, dripping off my chin, spotting the front of my shirt. I cannot catch them all. I cannot make them stop.
“No. You didn’t. It’s just—” My voice splinters. The word breaks in half. “I was so sure you were going to fire me.”
The confession hangs in the air between us. Small. Embarrassing.
Maeve’s expression melts into something unbearably gentle.
“Fire you?” she says, her voice soft with disbelief. “Nora, I was going to ask if you wanted to be my roommate.”
I stare, uncomprehending.
Roommate?
“What?” I breathe.
The word comes out on a exhale, barely audible. I am not sure I said it at all.
