Penn
The envelope stares back at me like it knows what it’s about to do.
Thin. Innocent. Lethal.
The kind of thing that could sit untouched on a desk all day and still change your entire life once you tear it open.
The world hums on around me. Keyboards. Coffee machines. Laughter that sounds more like static. And I just sit there, staring at a piece of paper that might be the final nail in something I didn’t know how to stop grieving.
Blake.
The name still tastes like salt and smoke. Like the first boy who made me feel infinite and the last man who made me feel invisible.
For a second, I think about not opening it.
Just sliding it into a drawer and pretending I never saw it.
But that’s not how ghosts work.
They linger until you face them.
So, I tear it open. The rip is too loud. Too final. And there it is. His signature strong, arrogant, unapologetic at the bottom of a document that reduces a decade of love, betrayal, and hope to legal paragraphs and cold ink.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
My stomach turns. I don’t cry. Not yet.
Instead, the room goes sharp. Bright. Every sound amplified the click of a pen, the sigh of the air conditioner, the hum of the lights like a swarm of bees.
I can’t breathe. It’s like the paper sucked all the oxygen from the room.
I slide from the office chair and crawl into the darkness under my desk pulling my knees up around me and cradle them like a small child.
“Penn.”
I hear Carrie’s voice before I see her. She slips in quietly, drawn by the sound of my sobs, she always knows where to find me when I’m breaking. Panic and pain don’t wear new faces on me. They’re always the same mask.
“What did he do this time?” Carrie’s voice cuts through the static, low and careful, as she pries the crumpled napkin from my fists.
My knuckles are bloodless white, locked tight, trembling. The papers on my desk blur in and out of focus divorce documents, legal, clinical, final. But it’s the napkin that kills me.
Folded. Creased. His handwriting crawling across it like a ghost that still knows how to wound.
A single question. A request, written in ink that smudges where my tears fell, Can we move Gracie? To the seaside cemetery he and his mother found. Like it’s a matter of logistics. Like she’s luggage. Like it’s easy.
I can’t speak. I can’t even breathe.
Carrie reads in silence. Her eyes track line by brutal line, her expression shifting concern first, then disbelief, then something closer to rage. Her fingers tighten around the napkin, and her jaw trembles.
When her gaze lifts to me, it’s wet. Furious. Heartbroken.
She looks from the words to my face. Back again. Over and over. As if she’s trying to make sense of how someone could love you once, build a life with you, and still cut this deep.
And then she cries. Not loud. Not dramatic. But the quiet kind the kind that guts you wordlessly, because it means she feels it too.
I don’t move. I just sit there in the wreckage glass walls closing in, the city a blur beyond them. And I swear I can feel myself bleeding out right there on the floor of my office not from a wound you can see, but from the kind that never really stops.
“He didn’t”
“He did.”
“Penn.”
“Carrie.”
“Wow.”
“Oh yeah.”
The exchange is broken whispers over shattered voices, wonder threaded with disbelief, pain bound in awe at his audacity.
Gracie is a name we never say aloud. She’s our silence, our sanctuary, and our shared wound, a ghost we couldn’t grieve together. Her loss wrecked us both in ways we didn’t have the language to speak, and we swore, back in that cavernous dark, that we’d never let go. But here we are. And he did.
“Fuck that shit, Penn.” Carrie’s voice is sharp, protective she’s the kind of best friend who’d wear handcuffs like diamonds if it meant punching someone out for you. She lost Gracie, too. She knows this pain.
“So, what now? You’ve got a plan, right?”
She ducks under the desk, joining me in my hideout, and snatches up her phone. Two rings in, her assistant answers nervous energy practically fizzing down the line.
“Tequila. Two glasses. Lime juice. Ice. Now.” She hangs up without ceremony. Seconds later, her phone lights up again. “What?” she barks.
“Um... I don’t know where you are...”
Carrie looks at me. I shrug. “Penn’s office. Under the desk.”
I erupt into laughter so loud it startles us both. Carrie squints at me.
“What?”
“You.”
“What about me?” “You just screamed at your assistant, told her we’re under my desk, wanting tequila. She already thought you were a bitch. Now she thinks you’ve gone full crazy.”
She snorts, slaps my shoulder, then stares into my eyes with that ride-or-die fire.
“Shut up, will ya?”
And then, “Tell me whose balls we’re cutting off first?”
I rub my hands together, voice low.
“Oh, babe, I’ve got something better than roasted nuts on a stick planned for Blake.”
Carrie’s terrified assistant peeks into the office, clearing her throat. The air goes tight, thick with nerves that bounce off the glass walls. Carrie waves her over like a queen summoning her peasant.
“Pass it in and disappear.”
“Jesus, Carrie. Go easy,” I murmur.
She ignores me, then sings out in a syrupy, insincere voice, “Thank you, Eleanor. You may now leave for the evening.”
“Better?” she asks, already twisting the cap off the tequila.
“Let’s get wrecked and send him the nastiest messages ever written,” she grins, wiggling her brows.
I smirk. “Or…” I take a long pull of bitter lime and tequila, letting the burn drag through me like penance. “I’ve got a better idea. You know my catfish profile?”
Her eyes glimmer over the rim of her glass. “Uh-huh.”
“Well… shit. It’s gonna sound crazy when I say it out loud.”
“Spit it out, Penn.”
“I’m catfishing Blake.”
She chokes and coughs up the drink everywhere. My face. My hair. The damn desk.
“For fuck’s sake, Carrie.”
“You what?!”
“Exactly what I said. Me. Blake. Catfish situation.”
She’s staring at me, baffled. “I don’t get it.”
I sigh, looking out at the city lights like they’ll ground me.
“It started with the app. Some dumb article, his mates joined, coaxed him to join and then… I matched with him. And he messaged me. And I… replied.”
She pours more tequila without a word.
“How deep?” she finally asks.
“Deep enough for him to want to be my boyfriend.”
Her jaw drops. I nod. “I know.”
“You’re his wife.”
“Still legally.”
“You’re pretending to be someone else... to talk to your own husband?”
“Yeah.”
She blinks. “Holy fuck balls, Penn. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Same.” I pull my knees to my chest. “Carrie… over the last twenty-one days, I’ve become someone I don’t recognise.
I’m catfishing my husband. I’m falling for a guy who might be everything I’ve ever wanted, and it’s him, but I’m too fucked up to deal with it.
And my body still longs for him. My mind still wants to hear his voice. ”
She leans over and cups my cheek. Her palm is warm. Steady. Home.
“I loved him long before I even knew what love was,” I whisper. “And then he ruined it.”
“I know, baby. Don’t I fucking know. Fuck him. Let’s get drunk.”
She shouts, “Alexa, play S&M by Rihanna.”
As Rihanna’s voice spills through the office, Carrie yanks me to my feet. I drain my glass, grab the tequila bottle, and start singing into it like a mic. She’s on backup, dancing like we’re seventeen again, high on rebellion and heartbreak.
“Alexa, party playlist!”
Flo Rida’s Low slams through the speakers. We scream every lyric, shaking grief from our bones with every movement. But it’s still there, under the skin. The ache never really leaves.
“I hate him!” I scream, punching the glass. “I never wanted to fall in love!”
I collapse to the floor. My phone lights up. Blake’s name. I roar like something feral, something unhinged.
Carrie picks it up as it starts to ring.
“I wish he’d hit me,” I whisper. “If he’d just hit me, maybe I wouldn’t feel this broken. Bruises fade. But his words? They’re embedded. They’ve rooted in my brain and grown into something toxic. I want it out of me.”
“WHY?!” I scream, clawing at my face, sobs racking my body.
Carrie’s crying now, lip trembling, eyes full of rage and helpless love.
“You loved him longer than he ever deserved, Penn,” she says, voice low and shaking. “You thought you were the broken one. But you’re not. He is. You’re the strong one. You’re the goddamn storm.”
I pull myself up, trembling. Bottle broken. Heart shattered. I grab my bag and my fury.
“He’s going to see what he’s done,” I say, fire in my chest.
Carrie’s still on the phone. Still holding the line.
But I’m already gone.