Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
I’m not crazy.
This is crazy, Rosie. You—you’re crazy.
But there were things that Brad wasn’t meant to see, to know. Things that were never meant to get back to him. And it’s not like we hadn’t talked about forever. Five months in, he suggested it. We were on the couch, our fingers lazily interlacing, when he said, “I could sit like this forever. Just you and me.” I held my breath, expecting him to walk the comment back, like all my boyfriends had before, any time they stumbled into discussions of the future, any time they sounded more serious about me than they’d intended. But Brad doubled down. “Couldn’t you?” he asked when I didn’t answer. And then, in a moment of vulnerability, he added, “Don’t you want that for us? To be together forever?”
I kissed him sweeter, then deeper, than I ever had, and when our lips separated, I answered: “Yes.”
After that, I started leaving my things at his apartment, instead of relying on an overnight bag. A toothbrush in his medicine cabinet. Face wash beneath the sink. A loofah in the shower. Change of clothes in his bottom drawer. Every time he noticed another item, he looked, if only for a second, like the men I’d loved before: cornered and concerned. But he never said anything, never told me I’d gotten the wrong idea, that my stuff, my life, wasn’t welcome beside his.
Around that time, I was working a bridal convention and chatted with a woman from a new event space that was already booked two years in advance. When I practically swooned at her description of the venue—converted from a former library and leaning heavily into the theme—she asked if I was dating anyone (yes), if it was serious (forever is serious, so yes), and encouraged me to schedule a tour; If you like what you see, it’s best to get your name in now , she said with a shrug. But my visit ended up being much less casual than she’d made it sound. There was paperwork involved, asking for both my name and the groom’s, for our preferred aesthetic, the estimated size of our party. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I filled it out, but still: I felt an unprecedented thrill, listing Brad as my fiancé.
What I didn’t know was that the owner of the venue was married to Brad’s friend from work. A couple days later, at happy hour, the friend congratulated Brad on “the engagement,” told him his wife would love to host our wedding.
Brad sped from the bar to my apartment. He burst inside and demanded an explanation, his face flushed, his eyes wide and wild. My own cheeks flared with heat as I scrambled to sound reasonable. I told him I’d toured the venue for work so I could recommend it to customers or warn them away. I did it “undercover,” I said, to get the full effect, and I only used his name as the groom because it was the first that came to mind. Still, I promised to call the owner the next day to come clean and apologize.
We left it at that. But over the next few weeks, I felt Brad drift. He scrolled through his phone on the couch while I waited for him in bed; he was slower to text me during days spent apart, if he even texted at all; he forgot to cancel our dates when he ended up working late, so I’d be sitting at my front window, hair curled, waiting for his car to pull up.
In all those moments, I swallowed down the hurt I felt. I pretended I was fine, that I hadn’t noticed the changes, because I was afraid if I pushed him on it, I’d only push him further away. Instead, I held on to the words he said to me in the beginning: You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You’re so special . Held on to the question he’d asked me, not even a month before: Don’t you want that for us? To be together forever? I clasped my hands around the hope of it—that, in asking me that question, he meant he wanted me forever too.
But then, only three weeks after the venue debacle, Brad walked in to find me wearing the dress.
I’d first put it on earlier that day at Just Say Yes. It’s a thing we do sometimes—try on new inventory, snap photos for social media—but the second the satin and lace slid against my skin, its beaded bodice glittering, I knew I needed the dress.
Not wanted. Needed.
I’d tried on dozens before, but in this one, I saw myself as I never had: radiant. Like it was me, not the lights above us, that made the gown shimmer. It was such a contrast to how I’d felt the last few weeks—dull and diminished, easily overlooked. But in that dress, I commanded attention. I glowed.
Even Marilee saw it. “Wow,” she breathed. “It was made for you.” She stepped back, took all of me in. “Look what it does to your eyes. They’re like lightbulbs.”
I pictured Brad, then, standing at an altar, his own eyes brightening at the sight of me. I pictured a portrait of us, one to replace the stand-in I’d perched on my parents’ hutch, one where we’d be facing each other, me in that dress, him in a tux, our gazes twined and twinkling.
I purchased the sample. Took the dress home that day. Stood in it at my bedroom mirror, holding the gown closed in the back—unable to fasten its delicate buttons on my own—and smiled at myself until my cheeks grew sore.
If only Brad hadn’t gotten out of work early that afternoon. If only he’d texted first and I’d had a warning. But he was buzzing from a successful presentation in front of his CEO. He headed straight to my apartment to celebrate, used the key I’d given him (though I’d never received one in return), and stepped into my room, already undoing his tie. I didn’t hear him come in—I’d been blasting Florence I see his, frozen in that moment, lips curled with revulsion.
I dropped the hand that held the gown together, the fabric in the back now gaping, almost grotesque, like a fish split up the middle.
“I’m going to return it!” I blurted, a lie I realized, two seconds too late, was a mistake. There had still been a chance, maybe, to convince him that this, too, was just for work—I’d been test-driving a new designer, prepping an Instagram post. But now he knew the gown was mine.
“This is crazy, Rosie. You—you’re crazy.”
He tripped over himself to get out the door, flinging more words over his shoulder: “I can’t, this is too much.” But I didn’t give up. Even when Nina was there, holding me on my floor, her sweater itchy against my still-bare back, I was leaving Brad voicemails, texting him explanations, begging for a second chance.
Please, come back. Let’s talk.
It’s not what you think, I promise.
The dress just spoke to me.
I couldn’t bear for it to end with a misunderstanding. Not when, in the beginning, it felt like no one had ever understood each other as well as we did. I couldn’t endure his silence. Not when we’d once had so much to say to each other—even living, at the start, on separate continents—that our video chats wore down the batteries in our devices.
For weeks, I tried to reach him, reach back to who we’d been in the past. It was only once I gave into it, finally set down my phone, finally faced the pitch-black cave of my future, that Brad acknowledged my existence.
I miss your face. Come over?
I knew then that he understood; I wasn’t delusional, wasn’t planning some wedding he hadn’t consented to yet. And when he kissed me that night in his doorway, hungry for me in a way he hadn’t been in weeks, I knew that the distance, the silence, was over, that we’d go back to the way we were meant to be. Electric. Inseparable.
Brad seemed to know that too. My toothbrush was still in his medicine cabinet, kept like a promise, and in the morning, as we kissed goodbye, he made another: We should do this again. I’ll text you.
On the second day of waiting for that text, I baked him his favorite cookies. I was already making a batch for our seamstress’s birthday—oatmeal raisin were her favorite too—but I baked extra for Brad, still giddy from the night we’d reconnected, and dropped them off at his house so he could find them when he got home from work. Instead of leaving them on his front steps, where squirrels might claw at the plastic wrap on top, I pulled open his garage door and placed the plate on the concrete floor.
Left you a surprise , I texted, and though I waited all day for a response—a picture of him digging into the cookies, an invitation to come share them with him—nothing came.
For five more days, my phone sat silent by my side. I turned off notifications from everyone except for him, because the false alarms, the false hope, became more than I could take. I convinced myself that something had happened to him, because you don’t text someone you miss their face, don’t kiss someone like you’re starving for their taste, don’t nuzzle you’re amazing against their neck as you’re peeling off their clothes, and ignore their every text and call.
But then there was the pint glass, shattered on my kitchen floor. The shard cutting my palm. The frantic drive to check on Brad. Blood on my steering wheel. Blood on his front steps.
“I’m not crazy,” I tell my parents now.
“Nobody said you are,” Dad says. “But I think we should probably call Rich Silverstein.”
My head snaps up at the name. His college roommate. The lawyer.
“For what?” I ask, still stuck in my memories, unable to think of that man in any other context than the one involving Brad.
“What do you mean ‘for what’?” Mom says, incredulous. “You’re a suspect in a murder investigation.”
The sentence is like cold water on my face. For a moment, I’d actually forgotten about Morgan. Forgotten there was a whole other life I’d hoped to live that had nothing to do with Brad. Why haven’t I learned? Me and hope are a dangerous pair. I’m always cupping it like a firefly in my palms, surprised when I squeeze too hard and its light goes dark.
“I told you, I’m not a suspect.” I hold up my phone again, willing it to prove something.
“As a precaution then,” Dad says. “Maybe we should just have Rich take a look at those messages you sent the man. He said to reach out, if we ever need him again.”
I close my eyes, shake my head. This wouldn’t be the first time Rich Silverstein looked at my messages. He once pored over them in my parents’ dining room, reading every word I’d sent to Brad in the last month. Because I didn’t stop reaching out. Not even after I sobbed on his steps, my blood-streaked keys in my hand. Not even after he told me to go home, we were done, I was crazy. I kept texting, kept emailing, because I didn’t understand how quickly we went from forever to never.
There were stretches of days when I’d be strong, wouldn’t contact him at all, but then it would come to me: the words I was sure would inspire a response. Make him see I wasn’t crazy. I was just in love. In loss. In limbo. Because if he’d texted me out of the blue once before, who was to say he wouldn’t miss my face again? Wouldn’t, despite my “crazy,” invite me back into his bed?
I’m still so sorry about the way I showed up that night—bleeding and crying. I’m sorry about texting you this many times. But every time you don’t respond, I start to question every memory I have of us. Because just two weeks ago, you told me you missed me. You cupped my face in your hands and you kissed me all the way to your room. And I don’t know how to reconcile the two—intimacy and silence.
Rich Silverstein read those words. My stupid, futile words. Shame rushes through me, remembering how he printed them out and frowned at the pages, highlighting phrases as he read.
Dad had called Rich to consult about the response I finally did get from Brad, which came not as an email or text—but as a harassment prevention order.
Mom read my messages, too, sweeping up each page after Rich set it aside. “I don’t understand,” she said to me. “You’re a grown woman, Rosie. And Brad has clearly moved on. So why do you sound so—so desperate here? Why can’t you just let him go?”
I sat mute in my chair, staring into their living room, straight at the empty space beside the frames on her hutch. Time and time again, I failed to fill it permanently. Only left it looking blanker than it had before.
I saw Brad only once more after the order was issued: at the hearing—where his gaze swerved from mine; where his lawyer kept mentioning my blood on his stoop, even showed the judge photos of the drops I left behind, the cookies I left in his garage, and a copy of the paperwork in which I’d listed Brad as my fiancé.
My parents, there that day to support me, held hands the entire hearing, their knuckles whitening each time Brad’s lawyer spoke.
In the end, the judge sided with Brad. The order was extended. And Brad’s smile smacked me like a gavel.
When I returned from court, I crawled back into bed and stayed there as much as I could. At first by choice—cocooning against the grief and humiliation—and then, soon after, by necessity, when a simple shower was enough to leave me breathless, when my chest was so tight it felt like my lungs had shrunk.
I feel that way now, too, as Dad stares at me, waiting for a response. I rub my sternum with my knuckles, trying to loosen my airways, and I meet his gaze, which wells with worry.
“Fine, call Rich,” I tell him. “Let him know what’s going on, just in case. But believe me, if there was anything incriminating on Donor-Connect, I’d have been arrested by now.”
My parents don’t nod. Don’t show any sign of feeling assured. The lines between their brows only deepen, twin trenches of concern and—something else. Because the way they’re looking at me now is not so different from the way Brad did, that night on his front steps, that afternoon in my mirror. Not so different from Nina, either, a couple nights ago in her car. I see them doubting everything I’ve said, I’ve done. Even with their mouths closed, I see crazy on the tips of their tongues.