Chapter 7
Thursday, I stayed home.
I didn’t go to the office.
Didn’t check emails.
Didn’t answer Carrie.
Because I couldn’t face her rage or the world’s noise. I couldn’t even look at my own face in the mirror.
Instead, I slept too much, cried even more, screamed into pillows like some unhinged banshee, and sent god help me so many messages to Blake.
Desperate ones.
Sad ones.
Bitter ones.
Pathetic ones.
Ones I can’t take back.
No replies.
Just silence.
Friday, I got out of bed.
A small victory.
I showered. Another one.
I even brushed my hair or at least attempted to.
I ate.
Watered the flowers in her garden, her garden, our little girl’s garden. Her favourites were just starting to bloom. I watched a single daisy uncurl itself, as if it had no idea the world could be cruel.
Then I walked to the corner coffee shop, the one that didn’t serve heartbreak on the side. The one where I could pretend to be okay.
Salted caramel latte. Three shots. Two pumps. Because honestly, this bitch needed a coffee that would slap her in the soul.
Croissant and Cinnamon scroll with cream cheese frosting and freeze-dried raspberries and a peach tea.
Because feelings apparently taste better when drowned in sugar and heart disease.
I sat in the sun at the window seat, the one no one ever asks for but me. Pulled out my black fountain pen and wrote in the journal I now carried like a damn security blanket.
Half of my heart has always been his, and now I’m just laying here in pieces on the floor.
One deep breath. One careful sip.
Then, the app.
That app.
The one I’d been avoiding like a flaming STD or an ex with something to prove.
The icon blinked like a neon sign. I tapped it.
Jesus, take the wheel. What in god’s name was I doing?
To anyone watching, I probably looked like some freshly wounded twenty-something trying to crawl back into the game, an innocent girl lost in a sea of fish emojis and unsolicited dick pics.
But they didn’t see what was real.
They didn’t see the war.
I wasn’t browsing for love.
I wasn’t scrolling for connection.
I was writing a damn article.
A deep dive into the twisted rabbit hole of online dating. An exposé. A behind-the-scenes peek into how modern romance has become nothing more than gamified heartbreak. I was undercover. Totally. Completely. Professional. Not Desperate.
I say that with the kind of confidence only a woman who cried into her croissant could fake.
The app greeted me with a prompt:
Before we dive into writing your online dating profile, we want to go over a few important things you need to remember. First, always keep the end goal in mind. The goal is to find the perfect person FOR YOU.
I choked slightly on my latte. Not enough to cause a scene. Just enough for a little death inside.
Right. The perfect person for me.
I glanced around the café. Everyone had their heads down. Scrolling. Typing. Smiling. Frowning. Laughing into the glow of their screens. Little universes, all pretending to connect.
I dropped my gaze back to the phone.
This doesn’t mean it’s a competition to find the “best” person out there. It’s a search for the person who will make you the happiest.
Mmmm. Sure.
I had that person.
And he walked out without even a damn explanation.
So yeah, I’m thrilled.
Secondly, remember: there is no such thing as the perfect profile. Only the perfect profile for YOU.
God. They really like that FOR YOU theme, don’t they? Like slapping a Band-Aid on an amputation.
I snorted. A little too loud. A guy two tables down looked up and then went back to swiping. Probably rejected another girl for having her dog in the profile pic.
Right, Penn. Back to it.
More instructions. More pep talk.
Your headline is your “catchphrase.” The hook. The thing they see before they see YOU.
Jesus. No pressure.
I stared at the blinking cursor. Mocking me. Daring me.
Catchphrase. Right. Okay. Sure.
“Is it worth being sad about it?”
That’s what the app prompted me to think about. That’s what it wanted me to ponder before telling the world who I was.
I took another sip and leaned into it. Fine.
Introduction:
Only love can take this long. Only love can do me wrong. Can you be my knight? Because I would do it again, even with the pain. Because pain is beautiful.
It was so me. So ridiculous. So raw. So poetic. Or maybe pathetic. One of the Ps.
Hi, my name is Pandora.
An inspirational woman seeking an inspiring man.
Mid-twenties.
Reads too much.
Writes more than she should.
Might be writing this for a magazine. Might be faking it entirely.
I paused.
Can I say writing for a magazine is poetic?
I mean, it’s kinda poetry. Right?
God, Penn. Just. Type. The. Thing.
Okay. I love books.
Poetry.
The beach—that’s my church.
I’m not entirely sure if I’m here for love or just a good time. So hello, fellow singles. Let’s mingle. ??
Click.
Done.
I leaned back in the chair, letting my eyes drift across the café. People watching was cheaper than therapy. And quieter than Carrie.
Everyone was plugged in, tuned out, looking for something in someone else’s highlight reel.
And me?
I was here with my latte and red velvet regret, trying to remember what life looked like before Blake’s hands knew every curve of my body, before we buried our daughter, before silence became our new form of communication.
Had I ever really seen anything clearly?
Or was I just lost inside the us that used to be Blake and me?