16. Dean
Dean
The sound of the front door unlocking nearly made Dean drop his mug.
He froze for a second, standing barefoot in the kitchen, half a slice of cold pizza in one hand, tea steeping in the other. The door swung open. Fiona stepped inside.
His heart lurched. Relief hit him so hard it was dizzying.
She came back.
He moved quickly—too quickly—across the apartment, trying not to look like he’d been pacing for hours, trying to play it cool. “Hey,” he said, too casual. “I was starting to worry. Thought maybe you got lost in Sweetwater.”
Fiona didn’t answer. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even take off her shoes.
She walked past him without a glance.
Dean’s stomach flipped.
“Do you want tea?” he called after her, following. “I’ll make you some tea. I thought… I mean, I figured we’d talk.”
Fiona turned the corner into the bedroom.
Dean stopped short in the doorway as she pulled a suitcase from the back of the closet. She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask. Just opened drawers, started folding.
Not talking. Packing.
“Wait—what are you doing?” Dean asked, the words coming out as half a laugh. “You just got here.”
Still, she didn’t answer.
“Fiona,” he said more firmly, stepping into the room. “Seriously. You disappear for days and now you’re just… what, grabbing your stuff like this is a dorm move-out?”
She zipped one side of the bag. “I’m taking what’s mine.”
Dean’s chest tightened. “So that’s it? You’re just leaving?”
“I’m not staying,” she said, voice even.
Dean felt like he was watching this happen to someone else—some other man whose wife was methodically dismantling their life together. The sounds in the room went muffled, like he was underwater.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, come on. This is just a fight. It got blown out of proportion. We can work through this.”
Fiona walked to the bathroom, collected her toiletries with surgical precision.
“Fi,” he said again, softer this time. “Look—I know I messed up. But you’re not perfect either. You overreacted. You shut down. You’re not even willing to have a conversation.”
That made her pause. She turned toward him, eyes tired but steady. “You honestly think I’m overreacting?”
Dean felt himself floating above the scene, watching his own mouth move, hearing his own voice like it belonged to a stranger. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be real.
Dean’s mouth opened, then closed.
She nodded once, like she expected that.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus. You’re seriously going to burn our whole marriage down over a few jokes? Some captions? It wasn’t serious. I made people laugh. ”
“You made me feel like a fool,” she said quietly.
“People liked you. The account was popular because you’re?—”
“Because I was stupid,” she cut in. “Because I trusted you. Because I told you things that mattered to me, and you made it into a joke.”
“It wasn’t malicious,” Dean said, too fast. “You have to let me explain the nuances of it to you.”
She didn’t answer him.
The silence stretched between them like a chasm. Dean felt like he was falling, weightless and terrified.
“So that’s it? You’re not even going to talk with me—you’re just… done?”
Fiona folded her last shirt and zipped the bag. “You don’t get to humiliate someone and then demand they stay to make you feel better about it.”
She moved past him, pulling the suitcase behind her.
At the front door, Fiona stopped. She looked down at her left hand for a long moment, then slowly worked her wedding ring off her finger. The simple band Dean had chosen because it reminded him of her—classic, beautiful, real.
She held it out to him.
"Fiona, don't do this."
"You made me feel safe. I believed that. I believed you." Her voice was soft, final.
Dean stared at the ring in her palm like it might bite him. Taking it would make this real. Make this permanent.
"You can't—we haven't even tried to fix this. You can't just?—"
She reached for his hand and pressed the ring into his palm, her fingers cool against his skin for just a moment. The gold was still warm from her body.
"You turned me into a joke, Dean. For years . You made me into a joke for strangers to laugh at." Her voice was steady, matter-of-fact. "I can't forgive that. I won't."
"But I love you," he said, the words coming out broken and desperate.
Fiona studied his face for a long moment. Then, quietly: "But did you ever like me?"
The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Dean already regretted showing up. It was supposed to be a distraction. But all he could think about was Fiona. His marriage. His fuck up.
The rooftop bar was too loud. Music pulsed under the chatter, ice clinked in glasses, and laughter came in waves—always a touch too sharp. Dean sipped his drink and let the conversation swirl around him.
Cam was already half-drunk, retelling some story about a pitch gone sideways.
Dean nodded along. Smiled when expected.
Then Roxanne said, “So. Where’s the ball and chain tonight?” She smirked like she meant it in an ironic way. Plausible deniability.
He thought about deflecting, but he didn’t have the energy.
“Gone,” he said shortly.
Cam raised an eyebrow. “Like… gone gone?”
“She left me,” Dean muttered, then tried to laugh like it was a punchline. “Packed a bag and left me.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Jared let out a low whistle. “Damn.”
“Yikes,” Roxanne added, not sounding remotely sorry.
“I mean,” Cam shrugged, “it was probably coming, right?”
Dean turned to him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Cam held up his hands. “Just saying. It was cute at first, the whole quirky-teacher-Disney-princess thing. But long term?” He chuckled. “You should be with someone a bit more sophisticated.”
Dean’s hand stiffened around his glass.
Roxanne leaned in. “I always wondered how you did it, honestly. Like—no offense—she’s sweet and everything, but doesn’t it get… tiring? The crying? The little notes?”
Laughter around the table.
Then Jared said “I’ve got a friend you’d like. PR director. Sharp as hell. More of your intellectual equal, you know?”
Dean stood up.
Cam frowned. “Hey—where you going?”
“Home,” Dean said. His voice came out hoarse.
“Come on, man. Don’t be soft. We’re joking.”
But that was the problem.
They were always “joking”.
And Fiona had never been in on it.
He looked around the table—at the polished smiles, the expensive shoes, the brittle, brittle people—and wondered how he’d ever thought this was the world he wanted to belong to.
He didn’t say goodbye. Just walked out into the cold night air.
Dean walked without direction, letting his feet carry him through the rain-slicked streets. The city blurred around him—neon signs reflecting in puddles, the distant hum of traffic, people hurrying past under umbrellas.
Eventually the museum loomed in front of him, its stone facade lit by spotlights that made it look both ancient and eternal. Dean stared up at it, remembering.
Fiona had wanted to see the dinosaur exhibit. It was their third date, and she'd mentioned it casually—how she'd never been to a natural history museum, how she'd always wondered what it would be like to stand next to a T-Rex skeleton.
"Really?" he'd said, trying to hide his smile. "You want to go look at old bones?"
"Don't make fun of me," she'd said, blushing. "I know it's childish."
It was wonderful. It was exactly the kind of thing Dean had loved as a kid, before he'd learned that wonder was something to be embarrassed by.
He’d taken her on a Saturday morning. Fiona had been like a child herself, reading every placard, gasping at the size of the brontosaurus, taking pictures of herself next to the triceratops.
She'd grabbed his hand when they walked through the planetarium, squeezing his fingers during the show about black holes.
"This is incredible," she'd whispered in the dark, her face tilted up toward the projected stars.
And Dean had felt it too. That sense of awe, of being small in the best possible way. He'd wanted to tell her how much he loved it, how seeing her joy made everything feel new again.
Instead, he'd made jokes. Called it "retro." Talked about it the next week at the office. Made sure everyone knew he was there ironically, that he was too sophisticated to genuinely enjoy something so earnest.
But he had enjoyed it. More than he'd enjoyed anything in years.
Watching Fiona discover things. Watching her light up with genuine curiosity. Being with someone who wasn't afraid to be delighted by the world.
He'd been terrified that his friends would see him with her and think he was soft. Uncool. Too sincere.
So he'd hidden behind irony. Behind detachment. Behind the careful distance that let him enjoy Fiona's wonder while pretending he was above it.
He'd spent their entire relationship doing that. Loving her authenticity while being too cowardly to be authentic himself. Cherishing her openness while keeping himself carefully closed. Being moved by her vulnerability while documenting it for people who thought sincerity was something to mock.
Dean pressed his palms against the museum's stone steps, the cold seeping through his skin.
Dean knelt there like a penitent in a church, rain soaking through his dress shirt, pooling in his collar, sliding down the back of his neck. He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just let it happen.
Let the rain strip away the polish.
He thought about that museum day again. Fiona practically skipping from one display to the next, holding his hand without shame, her eyes huge with joy.
Her questions—real questions—about space and fossils and climate and extinction.
She hadn't tried to sound smart. She hadn't tried to impress anyone.
She’d just… been.
And he’d wanted to be worthy of that. But he hadn’t been.
Not then. Not after. Not ever.
Dean scrubbed a hand over his face, water mixing with salt.
He had taken something beautiful and made it content. He had treated his marriage like an anecdote. Like branding. Like a thing to be mined.
He had documented her curiosity. Her sweetness. Her idealism. The very things that made her Fiona.
He had turned her into a caricature to get laughs from people who didn’t even deserve to know her name.
He had built an entire persona—clever, detached, self-aware—on the bones of the woman who trusted him most.
And God help him, he’d been proud of it. He’d thought he was smart. Thought he was building a reputation. Thought people admired him for how “clever” he was, sharing “his wife’s quirks.”
They weren’t quirks. They were her.
And she had given them to him .
Not to the internet. Not to his friends. Not to his agency.
To him .
Dean let his forehead fall to the steps. Cold stone. Hard edge. Shame and grief curdled together in his gut like acid.
How many times had he quietly judged Fiona for being naive?
How many times had he seen her joy for fragility?
How many times had she made something better—his day, his world, his stupid cynical heart—and he’d just nodded and filed it away like raw material?
Fiona had deserved someone who guarded her joy like treasure. Who looked at her strawberry socks and dinosaur facts and schoolyard optimism and said, That is what makes you magic.
Dean sat back on his heels, chest hollowed out by shame.
The rain clung to the sidewalk like consequence. His breath fogged in the air. He walked, not toward home. Just… walked.
He passed a storefront and saw his reflection again. Did he look like someone whose wife had just left him? Or did he look like someone who had never deserved one in the first place?
Dean stopped, leaned his hands against the cool glass of a closed café. His forehead rested there too, damp and shame-heavy.
He hadn’t just posted a few funny stories. He hadn’t made “a dumb joke,” or “a harmless page.” He had architected an arena for humiliation. Framed her softness as spectacle, her trust as punchline. He’d turned intimacy into currency.
He knew how she curled her toes when she got excited.
He knew how she hesitated before answering a question because she always assumed the other person might be smarter.
He knew how long it had taken her to feel like she could belong in his world—and how quickly he’d weaponized that vulnerability when he realized it made other people laugh.
He’d watched those comments roll in and he hadn’t shut it down.
He had let the world laugh at her because it made him feel clever. Sharp. Superior.
And now?
Now he saw it.
He saw her—really saw her—the way he should have all along. Not as some whimsical footnote to his ambitious life, but as the only person in the room who had ever been real. Earnest in a world that treated sincerity like a weakness.
He'd been so sure she’d forgive him. That she’d understand. That her goodness would stretch far enough to cover even this .
But now, standing there on a wet sidewalk with rain soaking through his shoes, Dean finally understood:
Fiona shouldn’t forgive him.
He’d betrayed the one person who had seen magic in him before he’d earned it.
And no apology could change the fact that she had been truly vulnerable with him and he had taken those moments, that private, precious gift, and sold it to strangers for scraps of attention.
That wasn’t a mistake.
That was a choice.
And he had made it a hundred times.
If he wanted to be the kind of man Fiona once thought he was—the man she’d married with stars in her eyes and trust in her hands—he’d have to burn down everything that got him here.
And start again from ashes.