Thirteen
The first thing Brielle hears is the shriek of a cartoon theme song vibrating through the house at a volume that feels personally offensive.
The floorboards hum faintly beneath her ribs.
A second later comes the rapid thud of little feet on hardwood, followed by the violent slam of a kitchen drawer and a dramatically outraged:
“Mooooom!”
She closes her eyes again for half a second.
Not because she’s annoyed.
Because the contrast almost makes her laugh.
The world didn’t stop turning last night.
The kids still need breakfast.
Someone is probably about to pour syrup directly onto the counter.
Life, apparently, continues.
She stays where she is for another moment, sunk deep into the warm crater of the mattress, quietly cataloguing the strange new shape of her body.
Not ruined.
Never ruined.
Rewritten.
Every muscle hums with aftermath. Her thighs ache all the way down to her knees, the ghost of hands still lingering against her skin. The soreness between her legs is sharp enough to make her grin into the pillow.
Behind her, Jason is either asleep or pretending to be.
His arm lies heavy across her waist, solid and familiar, the kind of weight she feels even when he’s not touching her at all. His breathing brushes steadily against the back of her neck, slow and deep.
Grounding.
Certain.
She stays there until another shriek erupts from downstairs, followed immediately by the unmistakable sound of someone climbing onto the kitchen counter against explicit instructions.
Reality fully returns.
Brielle carefully slips out from beneath Jason’s arm. He makes a low sound behind her—half asleep, almost a protest—but he doesn’t pull her back.
The absence feels intentional.
Trusting.
Her feet hit the rug and she immediately feels the ache in her hips, the stiffness in her lower back, the lingering soreness threaded through her entire body.
And beneath all of it—
satisfaction.
The deep, exhausting satisfaction of being completely unraveled and somehow more whole afterward.
Her hoodie lies crumpled on the floor beside the bed. She drags it over her head inside out without bothering to fix it, catching the lingering scent of coconut, sweat, and something darker she refuses to examine too closely because she already knows exactly where it came from.
The sleeves swallow her hands.
The hem brushes the tops of her thighs.
She gathers her hair into a messy knot and jams a mismatched clip into place before stumbling toward the hallway mirror.
The woman staring back at her looks slightly feral.
Mascara smudged beneath both eyes.
Lips swollen and bitten dark.
A red mark blooming above her collarbone like evidence she forgot to hide.
Brielle steps closer.
Not horrified.
Curious.
She tugs the neckline of the hoodie aside just enough to expose the bruises darkening at her hips and the faint imprint of teeth near her shoulder.
Proof.
Not shame.
Never shame.
She runs one finger lightly over the mark at her collarbone before letting the fabric fall back into place.
For years she thought desire was something dangerous if it got too loud.
Something women survived by shrinking around.
Now she looks at herself and sees someone expanded instead.
Alive in a way she hasn’t been in years.
Another crash sounds from downstairs.
Then:
“MOM I THINK THE WAFFLE MAKER IS SMOKING.”
Brielle bursts out laughing.
Full-bodied.
Unrestrained.
She takes the stairs two at a time just to see if her body can handle it.
It can.
More than can.
By the time she reaches the kitchen, she’s grinning so hard her cheeks hurt.
?
There is nothing dignified about the Monroe kitchen at 7:18 a.m.
One kid is pounding a plastic spoon against the table hard enough to qualify as psychological warfare, demanding “the good cereal,” which apparently means anything with marshmallows in it.
The other sits silently dismantling a banana one string at a time, dropping each peel strand directly onto the floor like a tiny domestic terrorist.
Milk has already been spilled twice.
Maybe three times.
A graveyard of damp paper towels litters the counter beside an abandoned coloring book and a single sock no one claims ownership of. Somewhere behind all of it, the toaster oven timer keeps beeping in increasingly desperate intervals while nobody acknowledges its existence.
Jason stands at the coffee maker with his back to the chaos like he’s evolved beyond it.
Jeans.
Gray T-shirt.
The flannel she likes best, sleeves rolled to his forearms.
His hair is still damp from the fastest shower in recorded history.
He moves through the kitchen with practiced efficiency, setting out two mugs before pouring them both black. Then, without thinking about it, he drops a single sugar cube into hers.
One.
Always one.
The precision of it hits her harder than it should.
Brielle steps fully into the kitchen and instantly feels strange in her own body again.
Not wrong.
Just… heightened.
Every sensation feels too sharp this morning.
The ache in her hips.
The soreness in her thighs.
The lingering tenderness beneath her skin.
She notices everything at once:
cinnamon toast.
warm milk.
coffee.
sticky syrup.
sweat.
morning breath.
life.
She makes it halfway to the sink before she sees it.
The wine glass.
Still sitting exactly where she left it.
Three inches from the edge of the butcher block counter, perfectly upright amid the wreckage of breakfast prep and cartoon-induced chaos.
The condensation ring beneath it has dried pale against the wood.
And along the rim—
there it is.
The faded imprint of her lipstick.
Smudged.
Unmistakable.
The only visible evidence that last night happened at all.
Brielle stops moving.
One hand settles against the edge of the counter as something subtle shifts in the room.
The kids keep yelling.
The toaster keeps screaming.
But the air between her and Jason changes instantly.
He turns.
Sees her.
Sees the glass.
And for one suspended second, something dark flashes across his face so quickly she almost misses it.
Not jealousy.
Recognition.
He walks toward her carrying both mugs.
Doesn’t mention the glass.
Doesn’t mention Leo.
Doesn’t mention anything.
He simply places her coffee beside the wine glass so they sit side by side on the counter:
one emptied.
one full.
Aftermath and continuation.
Brielle stares at them both.
Then at him.
Jason’s expression stays calm, but there’s something quietly unwavering in the way he looks at her now, like he’s waiting to see whether she’ll erase the evidence or let herself keep it.
She reaches out before she can overthink it and drags one fingertip slowly around the rim of the wine glass.
Cold.
Sticky.
Real.
Jason’s voice stays low enough that it belongs only to her.
“Leave it.”
The certainty in his tone catches her off guard.
Not controlling.
Certain.
She glances up at him.
“I was going to,” she lies softly.
She absolutely wasn’t.
Something flickers across his mouth like he knows it too.
He steps in close behind her, close enough that she can feel the warmth of him against her back before he leans down and presses a kiss against her temple.
Such a small gesture.
It lands like a vow anyway.
Brielle exhales slowly.
The noise of the morning swells around them again—kids arguing, cartoons blaring, the espresso machine whining like it’s moments from death—but inside the tight circle of her attention, everything narrows to the counter in front of her.
The wine glass.
The coffee mug.
The mark her mouth left behind.
She looks at the lipstick stain one more time and makes a decision.
She leaves the glass exactly where it is.
For now.
?
There’s no time to dwell.
Not with lunches to pack, shoes to locate, permission slips to sign, and the apparently impossible task of finding the missing library book before school drop-off.
The cartoon theme song still rattles through the house at full volume, now layered with a vicious argument over which Paw Patrol dog is objectively the strongest—a debate being treated with the emotional intensity of international diplomacy.
Brielle moves through the kitchen slightly out of sync with herself, operating almost entirely on muscle memory.
Banana sliced.
Water bottles filled.
Homework signed.
Someone’s science project rescued from the bottom of a backpack before it becomes sentient.
She wipes milk from the counter only for grape jelly to immediately replace it in a sticky purple streak.
Everywhere at once.
Nowhere fully.
What surprises her most is Jason.
He doesn’t hover.
Doesn’t overcompensate with tenderness.
Doesn’t avoid her either.
There are no strange sideways glances, no visible panic, no sense that he’s internally trying to solve her like a problem he accidentally created.
If anything, he seems lighter.
Looser around the edges.
He moves through the chaos of the kitchen with a calm ease she hasn’t seen in years.
One-handed, he swings a backpack onto a squirming child while flipping pancakes with the other hand like he was born specifically for domestic warfare. He ties shoes. Wipes faces. Finds missing mittens with supernatural accuracy.
And every time he passes Brielle, he brushes against her somehow.
A hand at her hip.
Fingers grazing her lower back.
Quick.
Intentional.
Tiny reminders.
You’re here.
You’re real.
I still know you.
Every few minutes her eyes drift back toward the wine glass.
Still sitting untouched on the counter.
Still carrying the faded imprint of her lipstick along the rim.
The condensation ring has disappeared now, but the glass itself remains strangely untouched amid the breakfast carnage, lunch boxes, crayons, syrup bottles, and dirty dishes overtaking every available surface.
Jason moves around it carefully.
Not protectively obvious.
Just aware.
The kids slam sticky hands onto the counter inches from it and he redirects them automatically without ever touching the glass himself.
It becomes a fixed point in the center of the morning chaos.
A tiny monument to the night before.