Chapter 8
It’s been six days since he walked out of my life.
Six days since he shattered it all.
Six days since he kissed me like forever and left like a thief in the dark.
A full moon watched me bleed out under it, alone.
And now Pandora is busy flirting through digital windows while Penn is curled up on the cold tiled floor, unravelling like a badly stitched secret.
Carrie’s been blowing up my phone almost as much as the parade of men slipping into Pandora’s DMs with their sleazy charm and paper-thin promises.
It’s a thin line between pathetic and punchline, somewhere between a bad joke and a virus.
A few of them are genuine.
Most? Not even close.
But either way, there’s no happy ending waiting on the other side of their ‘Heys.’
The guilt hits me every time I open the app.
Like I’m cheating on Blake.
Like I’m living two lives: one in a digital circus and the other in a silent, suffocating grief.
I wanted to tell him everything. Share this silly experience with him. Ask him which photo to use, which bio sounded less desperate.
But I can’t.
Because he left.
And now the only place I see him is in dreams, I wake from clawing at sheets that no longer smell like him.
I’m curled into the corner of the love seat that once sat in my grandparents’ sunroom.
My phone vibrates against my thigh.
I twist the glass of cider in my hand, the ice clinking like tiny bells of distraction.
I wonder, for the thousandth time, why he left.
Why he gave up.
Could I have stopped it? Was there a word, a moment, a something I missed that might’ve kept him here?
How do you hurt someone you promised a lifetime to?
He said it wasn’t my fault.
But I saw it.
I felt it.
In the way his eyes changed when he held our baby.
The way his shoulders caved under the weight of goodbye.
I carried her for nine months.
Breathed her in.
Dreamed of her laughter.
And then everything went wrong.
He held her against his chest and kissed her still face, and I watched the man I loved collapse without a sound.
There was blame behind his tears. Exhaustion. Loss.
And a hate that maybe wasn’t for me but settled in the space between us like rot.
I lift the cider to my lips and catch my reflection in the glass.
I don’t like what I see.
A girl drinking like it’s going to numb what’s already been carved into her bones.
Holding a glass like a trophy, celebrating self-destruction.
Another sip. Then another.
I reach for the Marlboros.
Flick the box open.
Pull one out with my teeth.
The scent hits me like a memory I wasn’t ready to remember.
Sixteen.
Laid out on the back of his beat-up hunting Ute, deep in the thick New Zealand bush, birdcalls chimed with the rhythm of our in-love hearts.
He was gutting a deer.
I was stealing one of his smokes.
We thought that was love.
And maybe it was.
Everyone said it wouldn’t last.
Said we were reckless to settle too young.
To build a life before we’d seen the world.
But we didn’t listen.
And now look.
Maybe if we had…
Maybe if we’d waited…
Maybe I wouldn’t be here—
Alone.
Drinking.
Smoking.
Talking to ghosts.
I blow the smoke out slowly, watching it curl into the air.
Then a breeze picks up, and I catch it—
him.
That familiar scent I used to fall asleep beside.
A hug I can’t have.
Warmth turned cold.
The back gate creaks open.
My eyes drag from the rim of my glass to the man standing in the garden.
Blake.
Flowers in hand.
Grief in his eyes.
My heart hits the floor.
Sweat beads along my spine. Goosebumps crawl up my arms.
I shut my eyes.
He’s not here for me.
Those flowers—they’re not for me.
They’re for her.
I’m still here.
Still in his hoodie.
Still drinking like I can drown the ache.
Still wishing he was just coming home from work, ready to pull me in and kiss my forehead the way he used to, tasting of beer and bar smoke.
Still pretending we’re just one shower away from fixing everything.
From the hot steam, the whispered “come wash the day off with me”, the way his hands would wake every part of me back to life.
How did we go from midnight showers and laughter
to empty beds and silence?
“Smoking now, are you?”
His voice is quieter than I remember.
“Seems to be that way,” I murmur, taking a drag.
The ember glows bright against the dark.
The fairy lights we strung through the trees once upon a time cast a honeyed light around us—like nothing broke.
He moves past me, down the path we laid together, to the little garden with the white cross.
Her name painted in purple, bookended with butterflies—yellow and blue.
He starts placing the flowers into the vase, one at a time, carefully. Like it means something. Like he means something.
“Why’d you tell her about us?” he says.
I blink.
“Why do you do that?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Change the subject.”
My voice is bitter, cigarette smoke lacing every word.
I pull my knees to my chest, curling smaller. Colder.
Because I fucking miss him.
Because a week ago I would’ve kissed him just for existing.
Now I don’t even know if I’m allowed to look at him.
“This isn’t about the cigarette, Blake.”
“Then what’s it about?”
I laugh.
It sounds like a bruise.
“You ask like you don’t know.”
“Because I don’t,” he says.
Another laugh.
Another wound.
He rolls his eyes, and for a moment, if we weren’t broken into a thousand unspeakable pieces, I’d drag him to the grass and let our bodies speak the words we can’t say.
“You walked out, Blake.
No goodbye. No warning. Just vanished.
And now dollface knows. Carrie knows. And she’s been up my ass with questions ever since.”
“She didn’t know?”
“No.
Not until you let it slip in front of her.”
I shrug, but my insides scream.
“Maybe that’s the answer right there,” he says, as if this isn’t gutting me. “Maybe the perfect couple just had too much pressure. Maybe it was too much to carry.”
He says it like truth. Like gospel.
Like a man who already rewrote the story.
“Maybe I was bored.
Maybe you changed.
Maybe you stopped fitting into the life we built, into the magazines and the sparkle and Carrie’s chaos.”
He says it like it’s all on me.
Like the weight of losing her didn’t cave my chest in.
Like grief didn’t build a house inside me I haven’t been able to move out of.
I scoff.
Pick up my glass.
Step toward him.
Then stop when I see it...
That look in his eyes.
The quitting time look.
The one that tells you you’re not worth fighting for anymore.
“Oh, your eyes said it was quitting time long before your lips ever broke my soul, Blake.”