35. Fiona
Fiona
The floorboards creaked softly behind her, and Fiona glanced up to see Milo standing in the doorway, bleary-eyed and half asleep.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” she said quickly, brushing at her cheeks.
“You didn’t.” He padded into the kitchen in his socks and pajama pants, eyes scanning the counter. “I just woke up starving and remembered Emma bought the good granola.”
Milo didn’t push. He just poured cereal, then leaned back against the counter with the casual patience of someone who'd been waiting out other people’s silences his whole life.
“You okay?” he asked after a beat, not pressing the words too hard.
Fiona stared down at her hands. “I don’t know what I am,” she said. “Sad. Tired. Angry. Not angry enough.”
He took a bite of granola and spoke around the crunch. “You don’t need to know. You just have to survive the next five minutes. Then the five after that.”
She smiled faintly. “That your therapist talking?”
“No, that’s me after eating a weed gummy and trying to do taxes.”
Fiona gave a soft laugh. It startled her.
“Dean hugged me tonight,” she admitted softly.
“And you let him?”
She hesitated. “I asked him to.”
Milo just nodded, chewing slowly.
“You miss him,” he said softly. It wasn’t a question.
Fiona blinked, her throat tight. “Yeah.”
He rinsed his bowl and set it in the sink. “Just be gentle with yourself. Okay?”
Milo touched her shoulder as he passed.
Fiona sat with knees pulled to her chest. She knew she shouldn’t. Knew there was no good that could come from reopening the wound.
But she also knew herself.
Knew how it felt to press at bruises just to prove they were still there.
She reached for the phone and typed the handle in without hesitation: @shitfionasays
The name alone made her stomach flip, a muscle memory of humiliation. She braced herself for the images. For the same carousel of cruelty she’d scrolled through once before—caption after caption putting her down, mocking her.
She braced herself to be the joke again.
But when the account loaded?—
The posts were gone.
For a moment, she thought there was a glitch. That her signal had dropped. The follower count now hovered just under twenty-four thousand.
But below that, where there used to be hundreds of posts—stolen thoughts and private vulnerability—there was just one.
A single post.
She clicked it.
For the past two years, I ran this account without my wife's knowledge or consent...
She blinked, the words blurring and un-blurring again.
It wasn’t defensive. It wasn’t clever.
It wasn’t even particularly well-written.
But it was honest.
He didn’t try to justify it. Didn’t try to soften what he’d done.
He named it.
Cruelty. Betrayal. Performance.
He named her, too. Not as a caricature this time—but as a person. As someone extraordinary.
A sob punched out of her without warning. She covered her mouth like it might keep the sound in.
It didn’t.
Her whole body was trembling—grief, anger, confusion, and something she didn’t want to name.
Something dangerously close to hope.
She read the post again. Then a third time.
An apology could never undo what he had done to her. No matter how much she wished it could be. But it was something.
She locked the screen and pressed the phone flat to her chest, like that might steady her breath.
He’d torn her open in public.
Now he was apologizing in the same way.
But what could he ever do that would be enough?