22. Dean
Dean
Dean let himself into the apartment, fumbling with the lock. The silence hit him—not just quiet, but empty . Fiona-less.
He should have just stayed at work. Instead of coming home to this. Without Fiona here, it wasn’t his home.
The living room looked exactly the same, but felt different. Like living in a stage set after the actors had gone home.
Dean poured himself a drink he didn't want and sank onto the couch. His phone sat on the coffee table, notifications piling up. Probably comments on the account. People asking where the new content was.
Fuck the account.
A flash of yellow sat on the table.
A sticky note in Fiona's careful handwriting: "Don't forget the milk. Love you. -F"
She must have written dozens of these over the years. Little paper hugs, tucked into his things like secrets.
He stared at the note until the words blurred.
She loved him.
Not the version of himself he performed for clients and colleagues. Not the sharp, cynical man who belonged at rooftop bars making cutting jokes. She'd loved the version of him that existed in their quiet apartment on Sunday mornings—messy-haired and unguarded.
And what had he done with that love?
Turned it into a weakness. Made her trust into entertainment for people who would never know the real Fiona.
His phone buzzed. Another notification.
Dean picked it up and opened the app. @shitfionasays stared back at him—up to 22.4k followers now. The latest post had 847 likes. Comments rolling in.
"This account makes my day "
"Your wife is unintentionally hilarious"
His wife.
His wife, who packed him lunches with encouraging notes. Who made his coffee too hot because she knew he liked it that way. Who looked at him like he hung the moon even when he came home tired and sharp-edged from his world.
She had trusted him with her softest parts.
He'd thought his cynicism made him sophisticated. Made him smarter than her earnest belief that the world could be kind, that people were fundamentally good, that small gestures mattered.
He'd cultivated that detachment like armor, rolled his eyes at her optimism, felt superior to her hope. But it hadn't been wisdom at all—it had been cowardice.
Fear that caring too much would make him vulnerable, that sincerity would make him look foolish.
So he'd chosen to mock what he was too scared to feel, turned cruelty into currency, and convinced himself that being jaded made him interesting instead of just empty.
Dean dropped the phone and pressed the sticky note against his chest, like it could somehow reach his heart.
The silence swelled around him—deeper now. He waited for the relief to come, for the noise in his head to quiet. But it didn’t.
Fiona wasn’t going to come walking through that door with her smile too big for her face, wearing mismatched socks and humming out of tune. She wasn’t going to slip a new note into his bag or curl up beside him like he was a safe place.
He had taken the best thing in his life and turned it into a spectacle.
And now she was gone.
Not angry.
Not even heartbroken.
Just done.
And that was worse than any fight.
Because if she had screamed, he might’ve believed they still had a chance.
But she'd walked away calm. Certain. Empty of hope.
Dean closed his eyes and remembered what it felt like to be her safe place. The way she'd melt against him, trust written in every breath. How being with her—holding her, loving her—was the only time he'd ever felt like enough.
He'd had everything. And he'd thrown it away.
There, next to the ceramic bowl where they used to drop their keys, was the ring.
Her wedding ring.
He picked it up.
It was small, delicate. Just a plain gold band.
Dean slid it onto his pinky finger. It caught just above the knuckle. Too small for him, absurd-looking.
He sat down on the floor. Back against the wall. Ring pressing tight against his skin.
The silence folded in around him.
She’d worn this every day. Through holidays and grocery runs and long nights grading papers.
It was supposed to mean forever.
Dean stared at the ring on his hand until his vision blurred.
This was what failure looked like. Not a dramatic ending—but a quiet, stupid little ring that no longer fit anywhere it belonged.
Dean sat on the floor of his empty apartment, Fiona's wedding ring tight on his pinky finger, and watched the light fade.
He tried to imagine what it would have felt like to Fiona.
To realize that every private thought, every silly confession, every moment of pure honesty had been catalogued and served up for entertainment.
To know that twenty-three thousand strangers had been laughing at you while you trusted completely.
Not just the public humiliation, but the private betrayal. Learning that the person you loved most, the person you felt safest with, had been collecting your vulnerabilities like specimens in a jar.
Dean thought about that night at the awards dinner. Fiona glowing with pride for his success. The way her face had changed. The confusion, then horror, then that terrible, empty calm.
She'd stood there in that banquet hall, realizing the man she'd married had been laughing at her—not with her, at her —for two solid years.
And not just Dean. No. Everyone Dean had paraded her in front of.
Every dinner party, every work event, every time she'd tried to fit in with his friends—they'd all been watching her like she was a character in a show they'd been following for years.
The remorse was suffocating. Dean doubled over, the weight of it crushing his chest.
He'd made her feel stupid. Small. Worthless. He'd taken everything beautiful about her and turned it into proof that she didn't belong in his world.
She'd loved him completely. And he'd documented that love like a nature photographer capturing the mating habits of some exotic, naive species.
Dean pressed his face into his hands, Fiona's ring cutting into his skin.
No wonder she'd looked at him like a stranger that last night.
She hadn't just lost her husband. She'd lost her reality. Her sense of safety. Her ability to trust her own judgment.
He'd taken the kindest, most genuine person he'd ever known and destroyed her.
The bar was too loud.
It was the kind of place you went to in order to prove you were better, were cooler, had a higher level of taste than most people. The kind of place Dean used to feel at home.
He sat at the corner of the booth nursing a drink. Across from him, Ava was curled into a throw. Roxanne nursed a martini, jacket collar turned up against the breeze. Jared and Cam flanked them, both drinking IPAs and talking loudly.
It was familiar. The air, the drinks, the banter. And it all felt wrong.
Cam looked over. “So? You gonna tell us where you’ve been hiding, or do we have to assume cult activity?”
Ava smirked over her glass. “He’s obviously been trying to win back Miss Mindfulness.”
Dean didn’t laugh.
“She’s moved out,” he said. “For good.”
Roxanne blinked. “Seriously?”
Cam winced. “Over the social media thing?”
“Should’ve gone private, man.” Jared said with a grin.
Dean didn’t answer. Just let the silence settle.
“She was a little touchy,” Ava offered, swirling her wine.
“She wasn’t touchy ,” he snapped. “She was humiliated. By me. And by all of you laughing like it was some fucking joke.”
Their heads turned. Not one of them looked particularly sorry—just startled. As if they were finally realizing he wasn’t going to play his part tonight.
Cam held up his hands. “Look, man, we weren’t trying to be dicks. It was all in good fun. You were the one posting the stories. We just followed your lead.”
Dean stared down at his glass. The ice had melted. The whiskey tasted like nothing.
How had he ever thought these people’s approval was more meaningful than Fiona’s love?
Fiona, with her bright eyes and her stupid dragon stickers.
Fiona, who packed extra snacks in her desk drawer in case her students forgot lunch.
Fiona, who paid for school supplies out of her own pocket, who cried at nature documentaries and laughed too hard at her own jokes and left the world a little softer wherever she went.
She had been real.
And these people? These sharks in soft sweaters and sharp opinions? They didn’t know the first thing about kindness. About honesty. About love .
He looked around the table.
These were his people. They were just like him.
Dean nodded slowly. “Yeah. I know.”
He looked up. Not accusing. Just wrecked.
“You didn’t ruin my marriage. I did.”
Silence. Heavy. Guilty.
He sat back for a moment. Let the silence stretch.
Then: “I’m done.”
Ava raised an eyebrow. “With what?”
Dean stood. “With this.”
He gestured to the table. The bar. The whole carefully designed tableau of success and irony and detachment.
“I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want to sit here and pretend it’s okay to treat people like jokes. I don’t want to be the guy who needs to mock something beautiful just because he is scared.”
Roxanne opened her mouth to say something, but Dean didn’t wait.
"You want to know the truth?" His voice got louder, drawing stares from other tables. "I do think baked goods maybe could solve everything. I like stupid pop music and cheesy movies and cloud formations."
His laugh was bitter, broken. "I spent my whole life pretending to be too cool for the things that actually made me happy because I was terrified that people like you would think I was a dork.
But you know what? She was right about everything.
About kindness mattering. About small gestures changing people's days.
About the world being beautiful if you just pay attention. "
He gestured wildly at their stunned faces. “I don’t want to be sophisticated. I don’t want to be detached. All it did was make me too much of a idiot to see that my wife was the smartest person in every room we walked into."
“I chose this,” he said. “Over her. It was the stupidest thing I could have ever done.”
He tossed a few bills on the table and turned to go.
He couldn’t have Fiona back.
But he could still become someone she might have been proud of.
Even if she never saw it.
Dean sat at the kitchen table, the yellow pad in front of him. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic below.
He wasn't itchy under his skin anymore.
He was just... lost. And clear, in a way he hadn't been in years.
The legal pad was already scarred with his previous attempts. At the top of the first page, thick black lines crossed out " CONTROL THE NARRATIVE " so violently the paper had torn. Below that, " Get Fiona Back " was underlined. The list underneath was a joke.
Those titles felt like they belonged to someone else now. Someone who thought love was a campaign to be managed, a problem to be solved with the right strategy and execution.
Dean flipped to a clean page.
But then he stopped. Pen hovering over the blank lines.
How do you make amends for humiliation? For betrayal? For turning someone's trust into entertainment?
He couldn't apologize his way out of this. Couldn't buy his way back into her good graces. She'd made that clear.
But maybe... maybe he could help the things she cared about.
Dean started writing:
Things Fiona Cares About:
Her classroom
Her sister Emma
Her cousin Marcy
He paused, thinking harder. What else? What mattered to her beyond the obvious?
Her dignity. Her pride.
She cared about not being seen as naive. Not being laughed at. Not being the butt of jokes she wasn't in on.
And he had systematically stripped that away from her. Post by post. Caption by caption. Like by like.
Shame burned hot in his chest—genuine, awful recognition of what he'd done to another person. To the person he claimed to love most.
He added to the list: Her dignity
Dean stared at the word. It was impossible. He'd already taken it.
He looked at the other items on the list.
It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.
But it was a start.