8. Brittney
— ? —
Brittney
Sandra Williams runs the Caldwell Street Neighborhood Association the way generals run military campaigns. She’s seventy-three years old, five foot two, and capable of making grown men cry with a single well-placed question.
I know this because I’ve watched her do it twice in the past fifteen minutes.
“The last architect who came in here wanted to put a Starbucks on the corner.” She’s standing in front of my presentation boards, arms crossed, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“Told me it would ‘revitalize the community.’ I told him to revitalize his attitude and come back when he’d actually talked to someone who lived here. ”
Helena shifts beside me, but before she can step in with something diplomatic and professional, my hand is up. Apparently we’re doing this. Okay then.
“I grew up three blocks from here.” My voice comes out steadier than I expected. “My mother still lives in the blue house on Caldwell Street. The one with the garden that’s too big and the porch that needs repainting.”
Sandra’s eyebrows rise. She doesn’t interrupt.
“I spent years in rooms full of beautiful expensive things, feeling like I didn’t belong in any of them.
” I pull up my drawings on the screen behind me - the community center, the gathering spaces, the windows I designed to catch the afternoon light.
“I know what it means to finally have a space that says ‘you’re allowed to be here.’”
The room is quiet. Sandra studies me over her reading glasses. Thirty seconds. Sixty.
“Show me the entrance again.”
My heart hammers, but I pull up the elevation drawing with steady hands and point out the wide doorway, the ramp that curves gently instead of jutting out at an angle, the overhang that will keep people dry during summer storms.
“My aunt has a walker,” I add. “Every building she goes into, she has to plan three steps ahead. I designed this entrance so she wouldn’t have to think about it.”
Sandra is quiet for a long moment. Then she nods.
“We can work together.”
Helena’s hand lands briefly on my shoulder as we leave. She doesn’t say anything, but her grip is firm.
The article comes out not long after - a small piece, back pages, buried between an ad for kitchen cabinets and a profile of someone’s rescue greyhound. But still: my face. My name. My building.
I stare at the photo for longer than I should. Me, standing in front of blueprints, dust on my cheek, eyes bright. I look like someone who belongs somewhere. I look alive.
When did I stop looking alive? When did the light go out of my eyes? Was it gradual, or did it happen all at once? Did anyone notice? Did I notice?
My brain offers no answers, just the familiar urge to make a list of all the times I should have seen it coming. I tell my brain to shut up and pin the article to my corkboard instead.
***
Shawn
The penthouse is too quiet.
I’ve been telling myself that for a long time now. The silence used to feel like peace - the absence of conflict, the smooth surface of a life running exactly as it should. Now it feels like accusation. Like the walls are holding their breath, waiting for her to come back so they can exhale.
She’s not coming back.
I can’t sleep. Haven’t been able to since she left. The bed is too big without her in it, the sheets too cold, the darkness too complete. I keep reaching for her in the night and finding nothing but empty space - the particular shape of absence where her body should be.
Three nights ago, I woke up at 2 a.m. with her name on my lips, my hand already reaching across the mattress. When my fingers found cold cotton instead of warm skin, I lay there for an hour, just staring at the ceiling, cataloging every way I’d failed her.
The list is long. I’ve started keeping it in my head, running through it like a rosary when sleep won’t come.
The time she asked for five minutes and I said “not tonight.”
The time my mother called her “the little project” and I changed the subject.
The time she showed me her acceptance letter and I asked her to pass the salt.
The time. The time. The time.
There are hundreds of them. Years of “not nows” and “we’ll talk laters” and promises I made with my mouth while my eyes were already on my phone.
Years of choosing comfort over her. Years of letting my mother sharpen her tongue on my wife’s skin while I smiled and nodded and told myself it was just how Mom was.
I knew. That’s the thing I can’t escape. I knew what my mother was doing. I knew how Mikayla looked at me. I knew Brittney was drowning, and I watched her go under and told myself she was fine because her being fine was easier than admitting I was the one holding her head beneath the water.
Tonight I’m standing in the bathroom doorway at 2 a.m., staring at her shampoo bottle like it holds answers.
She left it behind. Grabbed everything else - her father’s photograph, that acceptance letter I never asked about, the boots she’s had since college - but she left the shampoo. I pick it up. Unscrew the cap. Breathe in the ghost of her.
Citrus and something green. Herbal. The smell of her hair when she’d lean against me on the couch, back when she still leaned against me, back when I was someone worth leaning on.
I set the bottle down too hard. It clatters against the marble, and the sound echoes through the empty penthouse like a gunshot.
This is pathetic. Standing in my bathroom at 2 a.m., half-hard from the smell of shampoo, thinking about a woman who left me because
I deserved to be left.
Because I did deserve it. That’s what I can’t stop thinking about.
Every single day she stayed was a gift I never earned and never acknowledged. Every single day she loved me was a day I should have gotten on my knees and thanked whatever god exists for giving me something I didn’t deserve.
Instead, I treated her love like furniture. Like something that would always be there, requiring no maintenance, no attention, no care. I took the best thing in my life and put it in a corner and forgot to water it, and now I’m standing in an empty bathroom wondering why it died.
My phone buzzes. I almost ignore it, but the notification catches my eye - a design blog I don’t remember following. Her face.
The article is small, but the photo stops my heart. She’s standing in front of blueprints, dust on her cheek, grinning at something off-camera. There’s ink on her fingers and light in her eyes and she looks-
She looks alive.
She looks like she did in our first apartment, when she’d stay up past midnight sketching buildings that didn’t exist yet, and I’d have to physically carry her to bed because she’d forget to sleep.
“Five more minutes,” she’d mumble against my chest, even as I was laying her down. “I almost have it.”
“You can have it tomorrow.”
“But-”
I’d kiss her quiet. She’d forget about the sketch. We’d forget about everything except the way her body fit against mine, the sounds she made when I found the right spot, the way she’d whisper my name like a secret she was trusting me with.
When did I stop being someone she trusted with secrets?
When did I stop being someone worth trusting at all?
I stare at the photo on my phone until the screen goes dark.
My chest aches. Lower, something else aches too.
Christ, I want her. I’ve always wanted her.
I just stopped showing it somewhere along the way - stopped reaching for her in the morning, stopped pulling her into empty rooms at parties, stopped looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I got comfortable. I got careless. I got so used to having her that I forgot to keep choosing her.
And now she’s building a life without me.
I look at the photo again.
Dust on her cheek. Light in her eyes. Beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with designer dresses and everything to do with finally being free.
Free of me.
I set the phone down and don’t sleep at all.
I read every word of the article. Read it again. Study every photo. The ache in my chest gets worse with each one. A community center. For her mother’s neighborhood. The place she grew up. The life she had before I convinced her to build something with me. She’s building something without me now.
The thought should make me feel noble. I should want her happiness, even if it’s not with me. That’s what love is supposed to be, right? Wanting the best for someone, even if the best isn’t you.
But I’m not that good a person. I’m not that selfless. I look at that photo and all I can think is: that should be my face she’s grinning at. Those should be my hands covered in ink from helping her. That light in her eyes should be for me.
My phone rings. Mom. I answer without thinking, and she’s already mid-sentence - they’re turning her into some kind of success story, come to the house, we’ll manage how this looks. Manage. That’s my mother’s word for everything. Then I hit the red button while she’s still talking.
The silence afterward is deafening. My hands are shaking. I set the phone down carefully, like it might explode. I just hung up on my mother. The world doesn’t end. The penthouse doesn’t collapse. Nothing happens at all, except the silence gets a little louder.
***
I find the photos that night. A box at the back of the closet, behind suits I haven’t worn in months. Our wedding album, still in its silk wrapping. I can’t remember the last time I looked at it. I open it.
Her face. Younger. Glowing. Looking at me like I was everything she’d ever wanted. The ache in my chest becomes something sharper. Something with teeth.
I turn page after page. Our first dance, her head on my shoulder, my arms wrapped around her like I was never going to let go.
The cake cutting, both of us laughing because I got frosting on her nose.
The moment at the altar when she’d laughed because I fumbled my vows.
I was nervous that day. Terrified, actually.
Standing there in front of everyone, realizing that this incredible woman had agreed to build a life with me.