34. Dean
Dean
Dean sat at his kitchen table with the notepad, pen clicking methodically in his hand. The apartment was too quiet, too clean. No Fiona humming while she graded papers. No stack of her library books growing precariously tall on the counter.
Just him and his guilt and a growing list of ways to make her life better from a distance.
Grocery delivery service - she hates shopping after work
Car maintenance - oil changes, tire rotations
School Open House next Thursday – help with setup?
He paused, pen hovering over the paper. How pathetic was this? Sitting here trying to solve his soon-to-be ex-wife's problems with money and logistics.
But he couldn't stop.
Because now—now that it was too late—he finally understood what being a husband actually meant. Not the performance version he'd been executing for two years. Not the photograph- ready date nights and expensive gifts designed to make other people envious.
Real partnership. Real protection. Real care.
If he had her—if he was living in an alternate reality where he hadn’t broken her heart irrevocably—he'd run her baths after difficult days. He'd defend her to his friends instead of serving her up as entertainment.
His friends. That was the real joke. Cam and Roxanne and their polished cruelty, their smug little smirks. None of them had reached out. Not when everything imploded. Not when he torched his job. Not even a “you okay?” text. Because they hadn’t been friends—they’d been spectators. Co-conspirators.
And the fact that he hadn’t seen that until it was too late? God, it made his stomach turn.
It just proved how badly he’d needed Fiona all along. Not just to soften him, not just to soothe him—but to wake him. If he couldn't have her in his arms, in his bed, then he needed her voice in his head. The clarity she carried. Her compass.
He didn’t have to guess anymore about what kind of man he wanted to be. He could just ask himself: What would Fiona respect? What would she be proud of? And then do that. Over and over. As long as it took.
Next oil change due in 3,000 miles, Winter tires - she always forgets
If he had her now, he’d love her the way she'd deserved to be loved all along.
But someone else would notice her. Someone would see how hard she worked, how much she cared about her students, how beautiful she was when she talked about things that mattered.
Someone would offer to take care of her.
Dean's stomach clenched.
Some guy would ask her out for coffee. Would hold her hand during movies. Would listen to her talk about her classroom with actual interest instead of mining it for content.
Someone who'd never heard of @shitfionasays. Someone who'd see her kindness as a gift instead of a weakness.
The pen cracked in his grip.
The idea of Fiona with someone else made him want to punch through glass.
Some other asshole would get to wake up next to her. Would get her sleepy morning voice and her terrible bedhead and the way she always stole covers. Would get to be the person she texted when something funny happened. Would get her trust, her vulnerability, her beautiful heart.
The heart Dean had taken and hadn’t protected.
He'd planned to spend an hour brushing up on education jargon—just enough to write a polished copy deck for the school district website.
That had been three hours ago.
His screen was covered in tabs now. Articles about learning gaps. Teacher forums full of panicked threads about behavior plans and literacy benchmarks. A white paper from Stanford about cognitive load in 10-year-olds. Another about the trauma teachers absorb like sponges because no one else will.
He leaned back against the foot of the bed, dazed.
This was what Fiona dealt with every day?
He clicked into a blog post and read through a minute-by-minute breakdown that made him feel physically tired. Reading groups. Differentiated instruction. Fire drills. Parent emails. Social conflict mediation. Lunch duty. Math assessments. Data entry.
And then the comments—hundreds of them. Teachers sharing stories about kids showing up hungry, or without clean clothes. About collapsing in their cars after work. About how no one understood what they did, except other teachers.
Dean stared at the screen.
He’d assumed he understood what Fiona did. He’d nodded along when she vented about budget cuts or standardized testing. He’d made supportive comments—“you’re amazing," or "they’re lucky to have you."
But he hadn’t really listened. Not deeply . Not with the same curiosity he gave to branding trends or conversion metrics or how long a user lingered on a landing page.
And he’d certainly never given it respect .
His stomach churned.
He’d thought of it as her little job . Meant it kindly. Patronizingly. Like he was indulging her. Like her work was sweet but not serious.
God, what an asshole.
Fiona didn’t have a little job. She had a calling. One that demanded more skill and stamina and selflessness than anything he’d ever done in his entire career.
Dean exhaled hard, rubbing a hand over his face.
Some days she’d come home tired. He'd assumed tough days meant a kid talked back or she'd had to grade too many papers.
Jesus. He'd been such an ass.
He remembered her excitement last month about some kid finally reading at grade level. Dean had nodded and made some generic encouraging noise.
Reading at grade level.
The article he'd just finished explained what that actually meant—comprehension, confidence, the foundation for every piece of learning that would come after. For a kid who'd been struggling, it was everything. It was his future unlocking.
And Fiona had done that. Fiona had seen something that no one else had, had stayed after school to work with him, had probably spent her own money on books that might interest him, had celebrated that breakthrough like it was the moon landing.
Because to that kid, it was.
Dean leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. All those late nights she'd spent checking worksheets and planning lessons. All those weekends she'd worked on bulletin boards and classroom projects. He'd thought it was... cute.
He’d been married to someone who literally changed lives for a living, and he’d thought his job mattered more—because it paid more.
She was doing work that actually mattered—not selling people things they didn't need, not crafting messages designed to manipulate emotions for profit, but genuinely making the world better, one kid at a time.
And he'd patronized her for it.
Dean closed the laptop and sat in the dark kitchen for a long time, heart pounding with a feeling that was part awe, part shame.
And then he got up.
So many of her things were gone: her slippers from beside the bed, her warmth, her presence.
But Fiona's books still lived on the shelves in the apartment. The shelves were still full of her.
He ran his fingers over the spines. The Art of Teaching Reading.
Creating a Culture of Inquiry. Trauma-Informed Classrooms. The Whole-Brain Child.
Thick binders labeled with unit themes and months.
Tabbed and color-coded. Her notes in the margins, meticulous and warm at once—“good for Ben?” “Try this with Marisol’s group” “Add movement—Isaiah learns through motion.”
Dean pulled one out and opened to a random page. She’d underlined a section and written in purple pen: YES. Learning is emotional. A few sticky notes fluttered out and landed in his lap.
One had a checklist with stars next to names he recognized from her stories. Another was just a single sentence, circled twice: When in doubt, offer compassion first.
He sat down on the floor, notebook in hand, and began take notes.
The more he read, the more pages he turned, the more he saw of her—who she’d always been, right in front of him. Not a walking heart emoji. Not less than him. A goddamn marvel.
And he’d felt superior.
He dropped his head into his hands, fingers knotted in his hair.
Dean reached for another book, another binder, desperate for more. To understand. To stay close to her, even in her absence.
If he couldn’t be in her arms, then let him be in her orbit. Let him carry her work in his chest like penance.
And if he was very, very lucky, someday she might look at him and not see betrayal—but effort. Not repair. Not redemption.
But reverence.