Chapter 33
The boxes arrived on a Tuesday.
Three of them, flat and brown, stacked by the door where he used to leave his shoes. I had ordered them online, the same day I called the rental agency, the same day I decided I couldn't stay here anymore. They had sat in the corner for two days while I pretended I didn't see them.
But Tuesday morning, I woke up and the light was grey and the apartment was quiet and I could still smell him on the pillow. So I got up, pulled the boxes open, and started packing.
I wouldn't cry. I had stopped crying days ago. There was nothing left.
I hadn't meant to wait so long. Every time I looked at them, I found a reason to do something else. Answer an email, make a call, stare at the ceiling until the sun went down. But the movers were coming tomorrow, and I couldn't put it off anymore.
I started with the kitchen.
The spatula he had used, the one with the worn handle that he always reached for first.
I dropped it in the box without looking at it.
The coffee mug, the big one he said held the perfect amount of caffeine.
I wrapped it in newspaper and placed it in the box, careful, methodical.
The dish towel he had thrown over his shoulder a hundred times, the one that still smelled faintly of garlic. I buried it at the bottom.
The living room was worse.
The blanket we had shared on the couch, the one he had wrapped around me when I fell asleep during movies.
I folded it and set it aside, not in the box.
I would throw it away later. The bookshelf, where he had traced his fingers over the spines while I made dinner, asking me which ones were my favorites.
I packed the books without sorting them, without reading the titles, without letting myself remember the sound of his voice.
The bedroom.
I stood in the doorway for a long time, my arms crossed over my chest, my feet rooted to the floor. The bed was unmade, the sheets tangled, the pillow still dented from where he had laid his head. I hadn't washed them. I hadn't been able to.
I thought about the first night he had slept here, his body warm against mine, his arm draped over my waist like it belonged there.
I thought about the way he had looked at me in the mornings, sleepy and soft, before the walls came up.
I thought about the way he had said my name, like it was something precious, like I was something worth keeping.
It had all been a lie.
I pulled the sheets off the bed and shoved them into a trash bag. The pillows followed. The blanket he had stolen from me, the one I had bought years ago at a street fair. I threw it all away.
The hoodie was still in the corner, where I had thrown it days ago. I picked it up. The fabric was soft, worn, faded from too many washes. It smelled like him. It smelled like me. It smelled like us, like the life I had built in this apartment, the life I had imagined in the new one.
I carried it to the box.
My hand hovered over it for a moment, the hoodie dangling from my fingers, and I thought about all the things I had thrown away in my life.
My father, who had walked out when I was a child and never looked back. Oliver, who had taken three years to show me who he really was. Anne, who had smiled at me while she destroyed everything I trusted.
I had thrown them all away, eventually. Or they had thrown me away. It was hard to tell the difference anymore.
I folded it and placed it in the box. I didn't think about why.
I thought about Oliver. About the three years I had given him, the trust I had placed in him, the way he had thrown it all away like it meant nothing.
I thought about Anne, the friendship I had cherished, the secrets I had shared, the betrayal that still made my chest ache when I let myself think about it.
And I thought about Caspian.
He had walked into my life like a storm and left like one too, destroying everything in his path and disappearing without a backward glance. He had taken my trust, my home, my heart. And he had left me with nothing but a note that said don't forget to eat and three hundred dollars on the counter.
I had been so stupid. So naive. I had let myself believe that someone could actually want me, actually stay, actually care. I had let myself fall in love with a man whose real name I didn't even know.
But I was done with that now.
I was done with giving and giving and getting nothing in return. I was done with trusting people who only wanted to take. I was done with waiting for someone to stay when everyone, everyone, had always left.
My father was the first.
I was seven years old, sitting on the stairs with my knees pulled to my chest, watching him pack a suitcase.
He didn't look at me. Not once. He just folded his shirts and placed them in the bag and zipped it closed like he was going on a business trip, like he would be back in a few days, like he wasn't leaving forever.
I remember the sound of the front door closing. The way the lock clicked. The way my mother stood in the kitchen doorway with her hand over her mouth, not making a sound, just shaking. I remember thinking that if I was quiet enough, still enough, good enough, he would come back.
He never came back.
And I learned, at seven years old, that love was something people left behind when it stopped being convenient.
Oliver was next.
Three years of my life. I had given him everything — my time, my money, my loyalty, my heart.
Saved for months to buy him a watch he didn't deserve, because I thought he was worth it.
And then I found them, and the gift bag had slipped from my hand, and the watch had fallen to the floor, and I had stood there watching the two people I loved most in the world destroy everything I had built.
He didn't fight for me. He chose her.
And I learned, at twenty-something, that love was something people took when they wanted it and threw away when they found something shinier.
Anne was supposed to be my sister. We had shared secrets and clothes and dreams. She had held my hair back when I was sick. And then she had climbed into bed with Oliver and still texted me the next day asking if I wanted to go shopping.
So why would Caspian be any different?
Why would anyone stay?
I thought about all of them, one after another, a parade of people who had looked at me and decided I wasn't worth staying for. My father. Oliver. Anne. Caspian.
The only common denominator was me.
I pressed my hands against my face and took a breath. I wouldn't cry. There was nothing left.
Maybe I wasn't meant to be loved. Maybe I was the kind of person people used until they found something better. Maybe there was something fundamentally wrong with me, something that made people look at me and think, she's not worth the effort.
I had tried so hard. I had given so much. And still, they left.
No more.
I couldn't keep opening my heart to people who would only crack it open and leave it bleeding. I couldn't keep hoping that the next one would be different, that the next one would stay.
Because they never did.
So I would stop hoping. I would stop trusting. I would stop giving pieces of myself to people who would only throw them away.
Work didn't leave. Work paid. Work gave me something to do with my hands and my head and my hours so I didn't have to think about the empty spaces where people used to be.
The Johnson project was demanding long hours, tight deadlines, the kind of pressure that made my head ache and my eyes burn from staring at screens too long. But it was exactly what I needed. Something to focus on. Something to pour myself into.
Sienna had noticed the change.
She didn't say anything at first. She just watched me with those sharp eyes, cataloging and calculating and waiting. But on the third day of my new routine, arriving early, leaving late, eating lunch at my desk, she stopped by my cubicle and leaned against the partition.
"You're different," she said.
I looked up from my spreadsheet. "Different how?"
"Sharper." She tilted her head. "Colder."
I didn't say anything.
"Are you okay?" she asked, and the question was so unexpected I almost laughed. Sienna Wilson, asking if I was okay.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just focused."
She looked at me for a long moment. "The Johnson project doesn't require you to kill yourself," she said finally. "Go home at a reasonable hour. Eat something that isn't from a vending machine."
And then she walked away, and I was alone again with my spreadsheets and the hollow ache in my chest that I was learning to ignore.
By Thursday, the apartment was empty.
Not physically, the furniture was still there, the couch and the bed and the table where we had eaten so many meals. But the life was gone. The walls felt bare even with the pictures still hanging. The kitchen felt cold even with the stove still standing.
I stood in the middle of the living room and looked around at the space that had been mine for years. I had painted the walls myself, chosen the curtains, arranged the furniture just so. It had been my sanctuary, my safe place, the one thing that was entirely mine.
And then he had walked in and made it his.
And now I couldn't stay.
The movers came on Friday. Two men who didn't ask questions, who just loaded the boxes and the furniture and the small things I hadn't been able to leave behind. I watched them from the doorway, my arms crossed over my chest, my keys already in my hand.
The new apartment was smaller. That was fine. I didn't need space for two anymore. I didn't need a bigger kitchen or a couch that fit long legs or a bed that had room for someone else. I just needed four walls and a lock on the door and a place to sleep between work and work and more work.
That night, I blocked his number.
I sat on the floor of my new apartment, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, and I opened my phone and stared at his contact for a long time.
Someone Very Important.
The name he had given himself. The name I had never changed.
I thought about the first time I had seen it there, how I had laughed and blushed and secretly loved that he had saved himself that way.
I thought about all the texts, all the times I had checked my phone hoping for a reply, all the moments I had fallen a little more in love with a man who didn't exist.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
Then I pressed delete.
The contact disappeared. The messages disappeared. The calls, the voicemails, the evidence of everything I had felt and everything I had lost — gone. Just like that.
I should have felt something. Relief, maybe. Or sadness. Or the sharp sting of loss.
But I didn't feel anything at all.
I set my phone down and looked around the room. The boxes were still there, still unopened, still full of things I didn't want to see. And then I spotted it, the one I had shoved into the corner, the one with the spatula and the coffee mug and the hoodie I had told myself I didn't care about.
I stood up, walked to it, and carried it to the trash chute.
I didn't open it. I didn't look inside. I just pushed it through and listened to it fall.
Then I went back to my unpacking.
Monday morning came too fast.
I stood in front of the mirror in my new apartment, straightening my blouse, pinning my hair. I looked the same as I always had light blouse, dark trousers, small earrings.
But something was different..
My eyes were harder. My jaw was tighter. The softness that had been there, the quiet contentment I had carried like a secret, was gone.
I looked like someone who had been broken and put back together wrong. Someone who had learned that trust was a trap and love was a lie and the only person who would never leave was the one staring back at me.
I grabbed my bag and walked out the door.
The office was the same. Grey carpets, fluorescent lights, the low hum of computers and quiet conversations. Sienna was already at her desk.
"You're early," she said.
"I couldn't sleep."
She looked at me for a moment, assessing, filing away whatever she saw. But she didn't ask. She never asked.
"The Johnson file is on your desk. Meeting with the client at ten. I expect you to be prepared."
"I'm always prepared."
She nodded once and turned back to her computer.
I walked to my desk, set my bag down, and opened the file. The Johnson project was big. Bigger than Arclight. More responsibility, more hours, more pressure. Exactly what I needed.
Work didn't leave. Work didn't lie. Work didn't promise to stay and then disappear in the middle of the night with nothing but a sticky note and a pile of cash.
I pulled out my phone and set it face-down on the desk. I didn't check for messages. I didn't hope for a reply. I didn't scroll through old texts and pretend they meant something they didn't.
I just worked.
That night, I walked home alone.
The new apartment was dark when I unlocked the door. No smell of food. No sound of movement. No man waiting in the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder.
I locked the door behind me. Deadbolt. Chain. Every lock I had.
I was done leaving the door open.
I heated up leftovers, ate standing at the counter, and washed the dishes immediately. Then I sat on the couch, new couch, smaller, no stains from his coffee cups, and opened my laptop.
The Johnson project needed a timeline. I would give it a timeline. It needed research. I would give it research. It needed late nights and early mornings and every ounce of focus I had.
I would give it all of it.
Because work didn't leave.
Work stayed.
And I was done being left.