Silence.

"Fine. Don't want to talk? Forget it." I walked into the bedroom and shut the door.

He followed me in, grabbing my arm. "Juliana's in the hospital. I went to see her. She had an appendectomy. She's all alone in Graystone City with no one to take care of her. What was I supposed to do, just ignore that?"

I turned to look at him.

"Your birthday comes every year. She's only having this surgery once."

He said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

All at once, I didn't want to fight anymore. I was tired. So goddamn tired.

"Okay." I nodded. "Go take care of her. You should."

He hadn't expected me to say that. He just stood there, frozen.

That night I slept like the dead. No dreams.

The thing that truly killed whatever was left in me came in April.

I'd been having stomach pains for a while. I didn't think much of it—figured it was just a bad stomach.

The morning of April tenth, the pain bent me double. Clay was still asleep.

I shook him awake. Told him I needed to go to the hospital.

He glanced at his phone. "I've got a meeting this morning. Can you take an Uber? I'll come find you after it's done."

I said okay.

I went alone. Registered alone. Paid alone. Waited for the results alone. The doctor held my chart, his expression grim. "You're pregnant, but it's ectopic. You need surgery immediately."

I couldn't move.

"Where's your family?"

"In a meeting."

The doctor frowned. "We need a family member to sign the consent form. Call someone. Now."

I called Clay. No answer.

I sent a message: Ectopic pregnancy. Need surgery. Get here now.

Read. No reply.

I waited forty minutes. The nurse came to check on me three times. In the end, I signed the consent form myself. Walked into the operating room alone.

Lying on that table, I stared up at the overhead light. It was blinding, searingly bright.

If I die here, I thought, what would he be doing? Sitting in his meeting? Or sitting with her?

The surgery went fine. I didn't. A nurse wheeled me back to my room, got me settled, and left. I lay in bed shivering, unable to speak.

At eight that evening, Clay showed up.

The second he pushed the door open, I knew where he'd been.

He'd changed his clothes. He'd left the house that morning in a blue dress shirt. Now he was wearing a white T-shirt. His hair was freshly washed too—I could smell the shampoo from across the room.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, the meeting this afternoon was really important, my phone was on silent, I didn't hear it—" He walked toward me, reaching for my hand.

I looked at him. "Where were you today?"

"The meeting, I told you, that project—"

"Clay."

"You're not wearing the same clothes you left in."

He froze.

"You changed. Your hair's wet." I held his gaze. "Where were you?"

He said nothing.

"Today's her birthday, isn't it?"

The color drained from his face.

"You remembered her birthday. You made sure you were there to celebrate it with her. And while I was lying on an operating table, your phone was off." My voice was steady. Perfectly steady. Like I was talking about someone else's life. "Clay. We're done."

"Lydia, just listen to me—"

"Get out."

After I was discharged, I moved in with a friend.

Clay came looking for me a few times. He'd stand outside the entrance to my friend's apartment complex, just standing there for hours. I never went down.

At the end of May, I went back to the apartment we'd shared to pack my things. When I opened the door, he was there.

He'd lost a lot of weight. His jaw was covered in stubble, and the skin beneath his eyes was bruised a deep purple-black.

"Lydia." He stepped in front of me. "Let's talk."

"About what?"

"There's nothing between me and her. We're just friends—"

"Just friends." I laughed. "You spent her birthday with her. I was having a miscarriage, and you were by her side. That's what you call 'just friends'?"

He went quiet.

I pushed past him and walked into the bedroom to pack. He trailed behind me like a child who knew he'd done something wrong.

"I know I messed up. I really do. You can hit me, yell at me, anything. Just don't leave, okay?"

I ignored him.

"I cut things off with her. I mean it. She quit yesterday. We'll never talk again. Will you come back? Please?"

I zipped the last piece of clothing into my suitcase, pulled it upright, and turned to face him.

"Clay, do you know what I was thinking on that operating table?"

He stared at me.

"I was thinking that if I died right there, that would be fine. Nobody was waiting for me anyway."

His eyes went red.

"Don't cry." I grabbed the handle of my suitcase. "You don't deserve those tears."

What happened after that, I heard from other people.

After Juliana quit, she moved to another company. Clay went after her, waited outside her new office building, and got chased off by security.

He took an extended leave. Drank every day. Made a major mistake at work and got demoted.

A friend told me that when he was drunk, he'd mumble my name over and over, calling himself a bastard, saying he deserved it.

I listened. Felt nothing.

Not hatred. Just nothing.

That light on the operating table had been so bright, it burned something out of me.

It was June now.

I'd started a new job, far from that apartment. My new coworkers didn't know my past. All they knew was that I was single and didn't like talking about relationships.

Yesterday a guy from the department next door added me on social media, said he wanted to get to know me.

I accepted. Didn't really chat.

It wasn't that I didn't want to start over. I just wasn't in a rush.

I had to let the scar heal first.

Clay texted again yesterday. A long message. I deleted it before I finished reading.

He asked if we could meet one more time. Said he was sorry.

There was nothing to be sorry for.

I was the one who spent five years before I finally saw him for what he was.

Oh, right. I forgot to mention.

The blood on the operating table that day. There was a lot of it. The doctor said if I'd come in half an hour later, it could have been life-threatening.

Clay didn't know any of that.

He didn't need to.

The day I moved into the new apartment, I threw away that strand of hair.

It had been tucked inside my journal for almost six months. By the time I pulled it out, it had turned yellow.

I held it up to the light by the window, then opened my fingers and watched it drift into the trash can.

Like closing a chapter for good.

The new place was small, barely four hundred square feet, but the windows faced south.

In the afternoon, sunlight poured in and pooled on the floor. I stood there watching that patch of light for a long time.

My phone rang.

Mom.

"Lydia, honey, Chloe Chavez's daughter told me you moved?"

"Yeah."

"What's going on with Clay? Aren't you two engaged?"

I leaned against the windowsill. The sun warmed my back.

"We broke up."

"Broke up? Why? You've been together five years. You bought a place together—"

"Mom." I cut her off. "He was seeing someone else."

Silence on the other end. A few seconds.

"That son of a bitch." My mother's voice changed completely. "You sit tight. I'm coming to Graystone City tomorrow. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind."

I almost laughed.

The first time Clay came to the house, my mom had held his hand and said, "What a good boy. I'm trusting you with my Lydia." Now he was a son of a bitch.

"You don't have to, Mom. I'm fine."

"Fine? You lost a baby and that's fine?"

I froze.

How did she know?

"Chloe Chavez's daughter is a nurse at that hospital. She told me. Lydia, something that serious and you didn't tell your family?"

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

"That's enough. Don't worry about it. I'll be there tomorrow."

The call ended.

I stood by the window, staring at the sky outside. My eyes stung without warning.

It wasn't self-pity. It was the feeling of someone having my back. I'd gone so long without it.

When my mom arrived, she brought six homemade buns, a jar of hot sauce, and my dad's savings.

She slapped the savings down on the table. "Take this. Find a better apartment. This place is too small to breathe in."

"Mom, I have money."

"Your money is your business. This is my heart." She sat on the edge of my bed, glanced around the room, and sighed. "You've lost weight."

I didn't say anything.

"Has he come looking for you?"

"Yeah."

"What'd you say?"

"Didn't see him."

She nodded. "Good. A man like that isn't worth the air he breathes."

I looked at the gray streaks in her hair and suddenly remembered being a kid, coming home after getting bullied. She'd said the exact same thing then. Don't bother with them. They're not worth our time.

That night, she slept in my three-foot-wide bed. We were packed in so tight neither of us could roll over, but she slept like a rock. I lay there listening to her breathing and didn't sleep at all.

Somewhere around dawn, things became clear.

For my mom's sake, if nothing else, I had to keep going.

At the end of July, I switched jobs.

Clay knew the address of my old company. He'd show up downstairs every few days, just lingering. I didn't want to see him, so I quit.

The new company was on the east side of the city, a digital media startup. The pay was two thousand less a month, but the team was young and the energy was good.

On my first day, HR walked me around the office. When we passed the tech department, a guy looked up and glanced at me.

"This is Lydia Fox, new hire in content operations."

"Hey." He nodded, then dropped his gaze back to his screen.

I didn't think much of it and kept following HR down the hall.

I found out later his name was Valentine James. Tech department team lead. Two years older than me.

Not bad-looking. Quiet. But when he looked at you, his eyes were bright.

Mid-August, the company organized a team dinner.

I didn't want to go, but my manager said new hires needed to show face at these things and practically dragged me there.

A whole table of people, loud and rowdy. I sat in the corner, head down, picking at my food.

"Let me guess. You got dragged here too?"

I looked up. Valentine sat down beside me, a bottle of Coke in his hand.

"You too?"

"I'm not big on crowds." He poured me a glass. "But they said if the team lead doesn't show, nobody relaxes."

I smiled a little.

That night, he talked to me for a long time. He told me he was from a small town in the Midwest, had been in Graystone City for five years, spent three of those years coding before getting promoted to team lead last year. He told me he had a cat named Deuce, because of the two stripes on its tail.

He told me he wasn't great with people, which was why he was still single.

When he said that last part, he was looking right at me.

I dropped my gaze and pretended I didn't catch his meaning.

In September, the company landed a big project. Overtime became the norm.

One night past ten, I was the last one out. The elevator doors opened, and Valentine was inside.

"This late?" he asked.

"You're here this late too."

He smiled. "I live upstairs. Whether I'm working overtime or not, I leave around this time anyway."

The elevator descended. Floor by floor, neither of us spoke.

When we reached the lobby, I stepped out. He followed.

"Hey," he called after me. "Where do you live?"

I gave him the general area.

"That's pretty far. The subway's done running by now. How are you getting home?"

"I'll grab a cab."

He checked his phone. "Cabs are hard to get this late. Want me to give you a ride?"

"I'm fine."

"I'm not a creep." He smiled. "It's on my way. I'm just two stops past your place."