I turn toward the window. A silver hatchback idles in front of our townhouse, engine running, and there’s a woman in the driver’s seat. Not an Uber driver or some bored stranger doing a favor. She sits too comfortably for that, angled toward our place, one knee turned in his direction, glossy brown hair spilling over her shoulder, her smile soft. She’s young and pretty, with a mouth that curves like she’s used to being adored, as if she’s never had to beg anyone to look at her twice.
She’s waiting for him.
“Who’s that?”
Louis doesn’t answer immediately, which betrays the truth.
“You already moved on.” It’s not a question. My throat is closing. “How long?”
“It’s not what you think?—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out sharp enough to surprise us both. “There’s literally a woman parked outside our home waiting to collect you and your pre-packed suitcase. How long, Louis?”
He stands. Smooths the front of his T-shirt with both palms, a gesture so unbothered that I want to throw something at his head.
“A couple of months.”
The floor drops out. Which means every time he told me he was working late with a new client, every time he said the shoot ran over, every time he rolled away from me in bed and said he was just tired, he was already gone. I was sharing a bed with a ghost who smelled like cologne and lies, and I didn’t noticebecause I was too busy being grateful that someone wanted me at all.
My chest squeezes, and the room seems to close in around me as if I’ve spent too long not paying attention, too sure of what was mine, while someone slipped inside and stole everything. Ripped it away quietly. Cruelly. And now I’m standing here with the wreckage in my hands, trying to understand how this happened. How I didn’t notice the door was already open.
“I need the ring back, Claire,” he states, breaking through my thoughts.
I stare at him through blurry eyes, and I’m unsure what I’m supposed to feel right now. “What?”
“The engagement ring.” He holds out his hand. Palm up, fingers open. “It wouldn’t be fair to keep it. Not when we both know what this was.”
A proposal I cried happy tears through. Three heats he held me through, promised me he’d be there every time, and he told me I was his.What this was.Past tense and already boxed up and zipped shut, standing by the door.
I yank at the ring on my finger. It takes two tries because my hands are shaking, and he watches me struggle without reaching to help. I drop it into his palm. He closes his fingers around it, then slides it into his pocket without glancing at it.
He walks away and picks up the suitcase.
“I hope you nail the interview today,” he says from the doorway, and the smile he gives me is the worst part. Gentle. Pitying. “You always do better when you’re not in your head so much.”
Then he’s through the door. I watch through the window as he crosses the lawn, opens the trunk of the car, swings the suitcase in. He walks around to the passenger’s side, then gets in. The brunette leans toward him and says something. He laughs, short and easy, and then the car pulls away from thecurb. He doesn’t turn around. Not once. Not to check if I’m watching or to see if I’m still standing.
He left me the way you leave a parking space.
My knees buckle, and I catch myself on the windowsill. The tears come fast, blurring the room, turning the morning light into a smear of gold. My stomach cramps so hard I double over, one hand pressed to my abdomen, the other gripping the sill while the floor tilts and my breath comes in short, shallow gasps that don’t reach my lungs.
He promised me a future and told me I was his. He photographed the food for every page of my cookbook, spent hours getting the light right on my grandmother’s chowder recipe, and he did all of that with one foot already out the door.
I press my forehead against the cold glass. Am I going to be sick? I might be sick. My stomach churns and my skin is clammy.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter, and I move to check it, some idiotic part of me thinking it’s Louis, admitting he’s made a stupid mistake.
Except, it’s my driver, and I cry.Five minutes away, Ms. Darling.
I can’t do this interview. I absolutely can’t do this.
But I canceled twice before because my chest got tight and my vision blurred, and I told Katie, my agent and bestie, that I wasn’t ready. She understood both times, but the producer’s patience has a limit, and this is it. If I don’t show up this morning, the spot goes to someone else and it doesn’t come back.
I rush to the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror is a disaster. Mascara tracked down both cheeks. Lipstick bitten off. Eyes red, swollen, a face that belongs to a woman who’s been crying, which is accurate but unhelpful.
His toothbrush is gone. His razor. The expensive moisturizer he kept on the third shelf. He’s been clearing himself out in increments, taking a piece at a time, while I stood right here brushing my teeth every morning and didn’t notice. My gaze travels across the half-empty shelf, the gaps between my things where his used to be, and the anger arrives all at once like a wave that’s been building.
I sweep my arm across the shelf. Everything crashes to the floor. My cleanser, my toner, a bottle of something French that was a birthday gift from him, all of it shattering and clattering against the tiles. It doesn’t help. I want to scream, so I do, just once, sharp and raw, into the empty room, and then I stand there panting in the wreckage and the silence and the total absence of the man who was supposed to join me at the studio today.
