Chapter Eighteen
Lydia
The sound of the paint roller filled the room like static.
Back and forth. Back and forth. A steady rhythm. Clean white paint primer smoothed over old beige, hiding scuff marks, water stains, and cracks that hadn’t been patched in years. It was methodical. Predictable. Something I could control.
Which was why I’d been painting for nearly three hours straight.
My arm ached. My neck was stiff. My stomach was twisting with the kind of hollow, acidic feeling that usually meant I’d skipped dinner without realizing it.
But I didn’t stop.
Couldn’t.
If I stopped, I’d start thinking.
And I knew exactly where my thoughts would go.
Back to him.
The way he kissed me like he’d been starving for it. The way his hand had slid into my hair like he needed something to hold on to.
The way he’d looked at me afterward… like I was a problem he couldn’t solve.
And the words.
God. Those words.
"I don’t know how to want you without resenting you for it."
I’d replayed them repeatedly in my head, trying to decide if I’d heard wrong or if there was some deeper meaning I’d missed.
But no. He’d said it. Clear as day. As if wanting me and hating the way I’d changed his life were somehow inextricably linked.
Like, my very existence here was the problem.
Like, I was the problem.
I pressed the roller harder into the wall, catching the edge of the trim, paint dripping where it wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t care. The brush had long since been abandoned. I was working angrily now. And sad. And furious at myself for being surprised.
I should’ve known better.
Men like Callum didn’t open doors, not really. They kept everything locked up and guarded, and when you finally slipped inside, they slammed the door shut behind you and pretended they hadn’t asked you to come in the first place.
I exhaled and stepped back, hand on my hip, staring at the half-finished wall.
The apartment was quiet. Too quiet.
Melanie would’ve had music playing by now. Something upbeat. She would’ve cracked a joke about my posture or started singing a parody version of a Taylor Swift song until I laughed.
But she was gone.
And I was alone.
The quiet sank in like a weight, and with it came a sharp, stabbing realization that had nothing to do with Callum.
I missed my mom.
I missed her so much I couldn’t breathe.
It hit me hard and suddenly, like grief had been circling all day, just waiting for the right moment to lunge and attack.
I sank to the floor, legs folding beneath me like I was made of straw. The paint roller clattered onto the drop cloth beside me, and I just felt…broken.
A shell of a person with no way to fill the void of what I’d lost.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered.
The words echoed in the empty hallway.
It wasn’t about Callum. Not really. It was everything. The building. The responsibility. The loneliness that clung to the edges of every accomplishment. The fear that I was failing her…that I was taking everything she’d left me and spinning it into a disaster.
“I wish you were here,” I said quietly.
And then, for the first time in weeks, I cried.
Not just a few tears. Not a tight-throated blink-it-away moment. Full, body-shaking sobs that came from somewhere deep inside. The kind of grief that doesn’t ask for permission. That just takes.
I cried for the nights I used to come home and find her sitting at the kitchen table with a tea bag steeping in lukewarm water and a magazine she’d never finish. I cried for the way she used to hum while folding laundry. For the voicemail, I’d played a hundred times before accidentally deleting it. For the way she’d believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
For the fact that she wasn’t here to see any of this.
The paint, the building, the apartment—the tiny threads of life I was trying to stitch together again.
She would’ve loved it here.
She would’ve had the whole town wrapped around her finger by now. Would’ve started a knitting group or a breakfast club. Would’ve flirted shamelessly with the butcher, offered unsolicited advice to Riley, and told Callum to knock off the brooding, or she’d hit him with a rolling pin.
I laughed through a sob.
It hurt.
God, it hurt .
But once the tears came, I didn’t stop them.
I let myself fall apart, because I hadn’t yet.
Not really.
Not since the funeral.
Not since I’d stood in front of the mirror in a black dress that didn’t fit right and told myself to be strong, to be calm, to smile when people said she was in a better place.
I’d carried that strength into this move.
Into this town.
Into every interaction with a man who wanted to pretend I didn’t belong here.
But tonight, I wasn’t strong.
I was just a daughter who missed her mother so much that it felt like her ribs were cracking open.
When the sobs finally slowed, I wiped my cheeks with the edge of my sleeve and leaned back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.
My throat ached. My eyes burned. But I felt… lighter, like something had shifted. Not healed, but released.
She wasn’t here.
But I was.
And maybe that counted for something.
I took a breath. Another.
Then I reached for the roller again.
Because even in the middle of the hurt, even in the hollow ache of losing her…
I was still here.
And I was going to keep building.
Even if the man I’d let too close didn’t believe I should.
Especially then.
Because I wasn’t just doing this for myself.
I was doing it for her, too.
I was still sitting on the apartment floor when the knock came.
Soft. Two quick taps, a pause, and then one more.
Not a stranger’s knock.
It was the kind of knock that asked for permission instead of demanding attention.
I scrubbed my face with the sleeve of my paint-smeared shirt and glanced at the open door to my apartment just a few feet away. I’d forgotten to close it when I brought out the new roller tray.
The knock came again—this time paired with a voice.
“Hey, Lydia? It’s Riley. I, um… saw your door open. Just wanted to check in. You okay?”
I closed my eyes briefly, took a breath that didn’t quite settle in my chest, and called out, “Yeah. I mean… sort of.”
Another beat of silence. Then, gently, “Can I come in?”
I looked down at myself, with splotches of white paint on my arms, hands, and legs. My shirt was rumpled and stained, and my eyes were probably red-rimmed and puffy. I looked like a cautionary tale in a home improvement store commercial.
But still… I nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Come on in.”
Riley pushed the door open slowly, her head poking in first. Her hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, and she wore a sweatshirt with a faded Don’t Talk to Me Until I’ve Had Coffee logo stretched across it.
When she saw me on the floor, she didn’t gasp, frown, or give me that oh, honey look people do when they don’t know what to say. She just stepped inside, looked at the roller tray, the streaks on the wall, and the tired sadness on my face, and sat beside me.
Cross-legged. Casual.
Like she’d been planning to join me all along.
We sat like that for a while.
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t ask.
She just waited.
Until I finally said, voice hoarse, “Sorry. I know this is a little dramatic.”
“Nah,” Riley said. “You should’ve seen me when my last relationship ended. I bought a gallon of terracotta paint, started crying halfway through the first wall, and ended up with an entire bathroom that looked like a haunted desert.”
I huffed out a laugh. It sounded broken, but it was a laugh.
“Terracotta,” I said. “Bold.”
“Unfortunate,” she corrected, grinning. “And for the record, I didn’t even like the guy that much. But sometimes it’s not about them , you know? Sometimes it’s about everything you’ve been holding in that decides, welp, now’s my moment. ”
I nodded slowly.
She got it.
She knew nothing about my mom, Callum, or the mess inside me—but she understood enough .
And sure, I even had a dud of an ex I needed to shake loose, but he was the least of it. I’d learned a lot about that relationship. When my mom got sick, he became absent, and I didn’t have enough energy to care.
“You want tea?” she asked after a moment. “I brought some just in case.”
She pulled a thermos out of her oversized tote bag like Mary Poppins meets emotional support barista.
I blinked. “You carry tea around with you?”
She shrugged. “Only when I have a weird feeling. I saw your light on and the door cracked, and I don’t know… something told me you weren’t okay.”
She handed me a small thermos and I accepted it with both hands, grateful for the warmth.
It smelled like chamomile and something sweet—maybe vanilla?
“I wasn’t okay,” I admitted, voice soft.
“Want to talk about it?”
I shook my head, then paused. “Actually… yeah. I do.”
I told her about the paint and how it reminded me of starting over. I told her about how grief sneaks up on me—how it doesn’t knock, it just shows up and settles in my chest like a squatter, and the next thing I know, I can’t function.
I told her about missing my mom.
Not the dramatic stuff, but the quiet things—the way she folded her dish towels a certain way and hummed old Abba songs when she baked. The way she always left handwritten notes in the lunch bag I brought to work, even when we lived together after college. At the time, I cringed, and now they were treasures.
“I didn’t cry after the funeral,” I said, voice cracking. “Not really. I just… packed up her things. Called the lawyer. Sold the car. I handled it. I was fine. ”
Riley didn’t interrupt. She just sipped her tea and let me keep going.
“I came here thinking this would help me move forward. I thought throwing myself into something new would give me purpose. And it has… in some ways. But sometimes it feels like all I’ve done is carve out a quiet place to feel the weight of what I lost.”
I looked down at the thermos in my hands.
“Until today,” I added. “I just… broke.”
Riley reached out and squeezed my arm. “It’s okay to break.”
“I know. But I hate it.”
“Of course you do. Breaking sucks. But you know what’s worse? Pretending you’re not already in pieces.”
That got me.
Tears welled again, fresh and hot, but I didn’t apologize this time.
I just let them fall.
She sat with me through the silence that followed, the kind of silence you only get between women who know what it’s like to carry too much.
Eventually, she stood up and stretched.
“Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna take a long shower, wash the paint off, and cry if you need to. Then you’re gonna come back here, and we’ll eat something carby and cheesy and probably microwaveable. And then we’ll decide if we want to keep with the white primer or start on the color.”
I let out a wet, sobby laugh. “Thank you.”
“It’s what friends are for.”
I stood too, slowly, and gave her a long look.
“Thank you, Riley.”
She met my eyes. “Anytime. Seriously. You’re not alone here.”
And for the first time in weeks, I believed it.