Chapter 2
Nika
When I woke up, Finley had already left for work.
I stared at the empty side of the bed for a moment, then at the ceiling. Gone was the soft kiss before he left—that small, stupid thing I hadn’t realised I’d been missing until it stopped happening. The pang of sadness hit before I could redirect my thoughts.
I wasn’t even sure what I was sad about. What we used to be, maybe. What I’d thought we were heading toward. Not what we actually were now.
Roommates with occasional missionary sex.
I reached for my phone.
The morning light was grey and thin through the curtains, the kind that made everything feel slightly unresolved. I pulled the duvet up to my chin and opened my photo library, scrolling back through months of my own life like a stranger flicking through someone else’s album.
Trees. Flowers. A pigeon on a wall. Buildings. A cat sitting on a bin bag looking absolutely disgusted with the world. More flowers. A dog I’d photographed through a café window because it was wearing a tiny raincoat.
Human photos were few and far between.
I kept scrolling.
The months peeled back and I hit last summer—the pictures still bright with actual sunlight, actual colour. Finley and I at a barbecue, both squinting into the camera. Me laughing at something I couldn’t remember anymore. I looked happy. I thought I had been.
That was around the time he started making suggestions.
Subtly, at first. Then less so.
Wear something a bit sexier when we go out. Those shoes are a bit frumpy, aren’t they? You have nice eyes—have you ever thought about contacts?
Who wanted to poke their fingertip into their own eyeball every morning? Not me. I’d tried once in my teens and nearly had a breakdown in a Boots changing room.
But I’d tried. Because that’s what I did. Someone expressed disappointment in me and I folded myself smaller to fix it, stretched myself thinner to accommodate it.
He’d made me feel inadequate and I’d responded by trying harder.
Same as always.
I put the phone down on the duvet and looked back up at the ceiling.
At least it was Friday.
I checked the time, decided I had enough of a window before my late start, and called my mum.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Nika, how are you, sweetie?”
Something in my chest loosened at the sound of her voice. I smiled before I’d even opened my mouth.
“Hi, Mum. I’ve got a late start, thought I’d give you a call.”
“At least I have one daughter who cares,” she said, with the grumble she reserved for Sara.
“I did the same thing when I was her age.”
“You were much more sensible.”
I winced. Sensible. The word landed like a small, blunt thing. It wasn’t meant unkindly—it never was with her—but it made me sound incredibly boring. A beige sort of person. Reliable. Functional. Easy to overlook.
