Chapter 18
Time doesn’t slow down just because you’re falling apart.
It barrels forward, dragging you with it.
Olive’s twins are home, healthy, wide-eyed and impossibly loved. Her days are a blur of diapers and soft lullabies, of whispered vows still waiting to be spoken under the cottonwood tree.
And me? I’m unraveling in silence.
The wedding is less than a month away now. I know the date by heart. I circled it in my planner in pink ink weeks ago. Back when I thought maybe helping Olive plan something beautiful might ease the ache in my chest.
It didn’t.
If anything, it made it worse. Each fitting. Each centerpiece decision. Each sweet little favor wrapped in twine and calligraphy is another tiny cut.
And I keep bleeding.
Quietly. Efficiently. Without complaint.
I stay late at the bar after events, pretending to help clean up so I can cry in the storage room for exactly five minutes and then pull myself together all while avoiding Will.
I go home to a dark apartment. The plants are dying. My laundry’s in piles. My fridge is mostly condiments and leftover takeout I never eat.
I tell Bonnie I’m just busy.
I tell Sam I’m tired from work.
Even Nash has stopped texting.
I don’t tell anyone that I stare at the ceiling most nights wondering if I’m ever going to feel like a real person again.
Will hasn’t reached out since the hospital.
Not a text. Not a call.
I see them sometimes—Will and Missy—around town. At the grocery store. At the farmer’s market. At his bar. Her arm draped over his. Her smile too wide, too proud. Like she won. Like I was the competition and never the choice. And maybe that’s what I can’t forgive.
Not that he didn’t choose me.
But that he let me believe he might.
The final dress fitting is in two days. Olive wants me there. She keeps saying things like ‘you’ve been such a rock for me’ and ‘I couldn’t have done this without you’.
And I smile.
Because that’s what rocks do, right?
They stay solid.
They don’t bleed.
Even when they’re cracking.
Two weeks before the wedding, I’m at the bar, pretending to sort through table assignments for the reception when Bonnie slides into the booth across from me. She doesn’t say anything at first. Just watches me quietly, the way people do when they’re not sure how much of you is still in there.
Then she says it.
Soft. Almost gentle.
“Will and Missy broke up.”
I freeze.
Not dramatically—no gasp, no shattering glass, no wide-eyed reaction.
I just… stop. My pen stills on the page. My eyes lift from the clipboard to Bonnie’s face.
“That so?” I ask, like we’re talking about the weather.
She blinks, clearly expecting more. “It happened last week. Nobody knows why exactly, but it sounds messy.”
I nod. “Huh.”
That’s all. Just huh. Because what do you say when the thing you once ached for finally happens, and there’s nothing left in you to want it anymore?
No hope.
No fire.
No flinch of possibility that maybe now he’ll come back.
Bonnie shifts in her seat. “I thought maybe you’d want to know.”
“I appreciate it,” I say. “I’ll have to adjust the seating chart.”
And I mean it. But I also don’t feel it.
She hesitates, then reaches across the table, covering my hand with hers. “You used to light up, Phern. You’d come in and the whole room would shift. I haven’t seen that in a long time.”
“Just been busy with the wedding,” I lie.
Bonnie squeezes my hand. “I better get back to work.”
I nod, watching her go.
Will and Missy broke up. And I am too far gone to care.
That’s the only explanation for why I order a drink at the bar from Bonnie. And then another. And then another.
It doesn’t numb the pain. Not really. It just turns the volume down on everything screaming inside me. Blurs the sharpest edges. Dulls the ache to something bearable. Manageable. Survivable.
I pull out my notebook, the one I’ve been using for the wedding. It’s full of scribbled names and timelines and table placements. Fake smiles pressed into the page like dried flowers.
I flip through absentmindedly, sipping whatever number drink I’m on now. Whiskey, maybe. Or tequila. I stopped paying attention somewhere around glass three.
My pen falls out. A folded page slips loose.
I know what it is before I unfold it.
My fuck-it list.
Things I swore I’d do someday. Things that used to make my blood feel like fire.
Silly things, like getting laid in Vegas.
Deeper things, like falling in love without fear.
I stare at the list, finishing the last sip of my drink. Then I laugh. It’s bitter and hollow, and it scrapes up my throat like glass. None of these things are ever going to happen to me. Not after everything I gave was thrown back at me like it was nothing.
Slowly, I crumple it into a tight, useless ball. It drops from my hand and rolls off the barstool, landing on the floor like it’s just another piece of trash.
Fitting.
I’m on my sixth drink when I feel someone beside me.
A hand on my back. Too familiar.
Will.
“Come on, Phern,” he says softly. “Let’s get you home.”
I blink up at him, vision fuzzy and slow. The bar is empty now. Quiet. Lights low. My glass is nearly empty again. When did that happen?
I glance toward the clock behind the bar. The hands blur and shimmer before I can focus.
Two in the morning.
Huh.
“When did that happen?” I murmur aloud.
Will doesn’t answer. Just waits.
“’m fine,” I mutter, waving him off. “I can get home myself.”
But the words slur. My limbs feel disconnected from my brain. My heart’s still broken and beating at the same time, and somehow that feels like the worst part of all.
I stare at him.
This man who once made me feel like I was worth choosing.
Now he just looks at me like I’m something fragile he broke but doesn’t know how to hold. And I hate that it still makes me want to fall into him. Even now. Especially now.
Will reaches for my arm. “Phern, come on. Don’t do this.”
I pull back. Not harshly, just enough to make the message clear.
“I said I’m fine.” My voice is slurred but sharp, the kind of sharp that cuts the wrong person just because you’re bleeding too much to care.
He sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face. “You’re not.”
“Don’t pretend like you care now,” I snap. “Where was this version of you when I was drowning months ago?”
That hits him. Right in the gut. Good. Let him feel it. Let him carry just a fraction of what I’ve been holding alone.
“Phern, let me take you home.”
I laugh. It sounds wild and way too close to a sob. “What for? So you can walk me to the door and go back to whoever you’re kissing this week?”
He flinches. Again.
But still, he tries. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither was wanting you,” I whisper.
I push off the barstool and sway for a moment, catching myself on the counter. My legs are lead. My head swims. But I find my footing and I walk. I don’t look back.
“Phern—” Will’s voice breaks behind me.
But I just raise a hand. Not to wave. To end it.
“I’ve got me,” I say, not turning around. “That’s all I’ve ever had anyway.”
And then I stumble out into the night.
The air is cold and sharp and sobering in the worst way. The stars blur above me. My boots scuff the pavement as I walk, slow and uneven, toward a home that doesn’t feel like a safe place anymore.
Every step feels like a dare.
Every breath like punishment.
And still I keep going.
Because if I stop, I’ll break.
And if I break tonight, I don’t think I’ll come back from it.
The sunlight is brutal when it forces its way through the blinds.
I’m not in bed. I don’t even remember getting home.
I wake up on the floor, half on the rug, half on cold wood, with a blanket I must’ve pulled down from the couch sometime before the world went black. My mouth tastes like regret. My head pounds with every heartbeat. My phone’s face-down on the floor next to me, buzzing with messages I won’t read.
Everything hurts, but none of it feels.
I sit up slowly, the kind of slow that makes your stomach churn and your thoughts fall out of order.
Slowly, I drag myself into the kitchen, rinse out a coffee mug, pour water instead.
It tastes metallic and wrong. I don’t finish it.
I open the fridge, stare at the contents.
Takeout containers, half a bottle of wine, and a forgotten lemon.
I close it again.
The silence in the apartment is different now.
It’s mocking.
Too quiet, too aware of me. Like it knows I’m not just sad but sinking. Slowly. Quietly. Without grace or poetry. Just a girl alone in a mess of her own making, held together by mascara and stubborn pride.
I haven’t showered. My hair’s a disaster. My skin feels wrong.
But I sit at the kitchen table anyway, staring at the untouched notepad full of Olive’s wedding details. I should work on the seating chart. I should finish the vendor confirmations. I should do something.
Instead, I lower my head to the table.
And I cry. Not the kind of sobbing from the bathroom floor or the stairwell at the hospital. This is worse.
This is the quiet cry.
The one where you don’t even make a sound.
The one where your whole body folds in on itself and you don’t know if you’re mourning what you’ve lost or who you used to be.
This is what the bottom looks like.
And there’s no one here to pull me out.
The tears dry eventually. They always do. But the heaviness doesn’t lift. It settles deeper, like sediment, until I’m made of it. Until I can’t tell where the sadness ends and I begin.
I stop opening curtains everywhere in the apartment, not just the living room. The light feels too bright, too judgmental. Like it’s got questions I’m too tired to answer.
I ignore my phone. I silence it. Let it buzz against the countertop like it’s calling for someone else. Maybe it is.
I lie on the couch for hours. The TV plays things I don’t watch. My computer screen sits blank with a blinking cursor that feels like a taunt.
Bonnie texts. Sam calls. Olive leaves a voicemail that’s sweet and chipper and full of post-baby glow. I delete them all.