10. Brittney
— ? —
Brittney
Mom’s living room smells like coffee and the lavender sachets she keeps in the couch cushions.
Saturday morning light slants through the windows, catching dust motes that spin lazy circles in the air.
I’m curled up on the sofa with a plate of scrambled eggs, watching Mom water her African violets and pretending I’m not thinking about the car that was parked at the end of the block until three in the morning.
The doorbell rings.
Mom sets down her watering can. Her shoulders go tight in a way I recognize - the way they used to when Dad’s family would show up unannounced, all judgment and sideways comments about the size of our house.
She opens the door.
Elise stands on the porch in diamonds and a cream-colored suit that probably cost more than Mom’s car. Mikayla hovers behind her, phone already in hand, dressed like she’s headed to brunch at a country club.
“We need to discuss this situation.” Elise’s voice is the carefully modulated tone she uses for charity events and difficult employees. “May we come in?”
Mom doesn’t move. Doesn’t step aside. Just plants herself in the doorway like a wall.
“No.”
Elise blinks. I don’t think anyone’s said that word to her in decades.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No.” Mom’s voice is flat and hard. “You want to talk to my daughter, you do it on the porch where the neighbors can see. I don’t let snakes in my house.”
I set down my plate and move to stand behind Mom.
Through the screen door, I can see Mrs. Patterson across the street pretending to water her lawn while watching with undisguised interest. Mr. Cohen from three houses down has stopped walking his dog entirely, just standing on the sidewalk with his phone out.
Good. Let them watch.
Elise’s smile doesn’t waver, but something hardens behind her eyes.
“This is unnecessary drama.” She adjusts her handbag on her shoulder, a subtle gesture that draws attention to the diamonds on her wrist. “I’m simply trying to have a civilized conversation about my son’s marriage.”
“Civilized.” Mom laughs, and it’s not a kind sound. “That’s rich, coming from the woman who put another woman’s pearls around her son’s wife’s neck. At her own anniversary party.”
“Those pearls are a family heirloom. I have every right to-”
“To humiliate my daughter in front of a room full of people?” Mom steps forward, and Elise actually takes a half-step back. “To spend years making her feel like she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t pretty enough, wasn’t enough enough for your precious son?”
“I was trying to help her improve.”
“You were trying to break her.” Mom’s voice goes quiet, which is somehow worse than the shouting. “And the worst part is, you almost did. But she’s stronger than you gave her credit for. She’s stronger than all of you.”
I put my hand on Mom’s shoulder. She reaches up and squeezes my fingers without looking away from Elise.
Mikayla shifts forward, phone still in hand. “This is ridiculous. Mrs. - I’m sorry, I don’t actually know your last name-”
“That’s because you never bothered to learn it.” Mom’s eyes cut to Mikayla like a blade. “You’ve been circling other women’s husbands and calling it friendship for months, and you don’t even know her mother’s name. Tell me again how you’re the civilized one.”
Mikayla’s composure flickers. Just for a second. She recovers fast, her lip curling into a sneer.
“I’m not going to stand here and be insulted by-”
“Then leave.” Mom gestures toward the street. “The sidewalk’s right there. No one’s stopping you.”
Elise takes a breath. Regroups. I can see her cycling through strategies, discarding the ones that won’t work, landing on something new.
“Enough of this circus.” Her voice goes smooth, reasonable. “Brittney, darling. This-” She gestures at the worn furniture visible through the screen door, the family photos on the wall, the garden full of vegetables and mismatched lawn ornaments. “Is this really what you left a penthouse for?”
“Yes.” I step past Mom onto the porch. “Turns out I prefer houses with actual warmth in them.”
“You’ve made your point. Come back quietly. We’ll spin it as a mental health break.”
“A breakdown.” My voice comes out flat. “That’s what you’re going with.”
“What else would you call it? Running away from a man who gave you everything?”
“He didn’t give me everything.” I can feel the neighbors watching, can feel the weight of their attention, and for once I don’t care.
“He gave me things. A penthouse and credit cards and a closet full of clothes I didn’t pick out.
But he didn’t give me him. He didn’t give me his attention, or his time, or his voice when it mattered. ”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m being honest. There’s a difference.”
Mom steps up beside me, arms crossed over her chest.
“You’re on my property, insulting my daughter and my home.” Her voice is steady and cold. “You’ve got thirty seconds to leave before I show you what a breakdown actually looks like.”
Mikayla laughs. It’s a bright, brittle sound that sets my teeth on edge.
“How charming. The help is threatening us.”
Something shifts in Mom’s eyes. Something dangerous.
“The help.” She says the word like it’s coated in acid.
“The help raised a daughter who built her way out of nothing. Who went back to school with nothing but a library card and a bad attitude. Who designed buildings that actually matter to actual people, instead of spending her time sniffing around another woman’s marriage like it’s an open buffet. ”
“What did you raise, Elise?” Mom turns back to Shawn’s mother, and her voice is almost gentle now, which makes it worse. “A son who can’t make a decision without his mommy’s permission? A son who watched his wife disappear for years and never said a word? A son who-”
A car door slams.
Footsteps on the sidewalk.
Shawn appears at the edge of the yard, no tie, eyes red, looking like he drove straight here from wherever he’s been not-sleeping. His shirt is wrinkled. His hair is a mess. He looks like a man who’s been taking himself apart piece by piece and hasn’t figured out how to put himself back together.
“Mom.” His voice comes out harder than I’ve ever heard it. “Enough.”
Elise turns, and for just a moment, relief flickers across her face.
“Shawn, thank God. Talk some sense into-”
“No.”
The word drops like a stone into still water.
“You don’t get to come here.” He’s not looking at his mother anymore. He’s looking at me. “You don’t get to threaten her. You don’t get to show up at her mother’s house and try to drag her back to a life that was killing her.”
“I’m trying to help-”
“You’re trying to control.” He steps onto the lawn, and Elise takes a step back.
I’ve never seen her retreat from anything.
“This is on me. All of it. I let you make her feel small for years because it was easier than fighting you. Because I was too much of a coward to choose my wife over my mother.”
His voice cracks. He doesn’t try to hide it.
“That ends now.”
I watch him face down his mother, and something hot and inconvenient flares in my chest.
This is adrenaline, I tell myself. Fight or flight. The body doesn’t know the difference between danger and… whatever this is.
But my body isn’t listening to reason. My body is watching Shawn Ross - shoulders squared, jaw tight, voice steady as steel - finally choosing me in front of witnesses. My body is remembering what it felt like to be wanted by this man. What it felt like when all that intensity was focused on me.
Not now. Not like this.
He looks at me. Just a glance, checking that I’m okay.
The eye contact lasts maybe a second.
I feel it everywhere.
The neighborhood has gone completely silent. Mr. Cohen’s dog whines, and he shushes it without looking away from the scene unfolding on Mom’s lawn.
Elise stares at her son like he’s speaking a language she doesn’t understand.
“She’s made you weak.” But her voice isn’t steady anymore. There’s something underneath the diamonds and the perfect posture - something that looks almost like fear.
“No.” Shawn is still looking at me. Only at me. “She made me see.”
She made me see.
I hold his gaze. My heart is doing something complicated in my chest, something that involves hope and anger and grief all tangled together.
I see you too, I think. I see you trying.
Mikayla steps forward, phone raised.
“This is ridiculous. Shawn, think about what you’re doing. Think about how this looks. Your mother is just trying to-”
“Put the phone away, Mikayla.”
His voice goes cold. I’ve never heard him use that tone with her. I’ve never heard him use that tone with anyone except difficult board members and people who try to cut in line.
“And stay out of my marriage.”
Her composure cracks. The mask slips, just for a second, and underneath it I see something raw and ugly - the face of a woman who’s been playing a very long game and just realized she’s losing.
“You can’t be serious. After everything I’ve done for you-”
“What have you done for me?” He turns to face her fully, and she takes a step back. “Undermined my wife at every opportunity? Made her feel like a stranger in her own home? Sent texts about her to my mother while you were sitting at her table, eating food she made?”
Mikayla’s eyes dart to me. I keep my face blank.
“That’s not - I was just-”
“You were just waiting for her to break so you could step into her place.” Shawn’s voice is quiet now, which is somehow worse than the shouting. “That’s what you were doing. And I let you. Because it was easier than looking at what I’d become.”
He turns back to his mother.
“Take her and go. Don’t come back unless I invite you.”
Elise’s hand drifts to her throat. For the first time since I’ve known her, she looks uncertain.
“Shawn-”
“Go.”
They go.
Mikayla’s heels click an angry staccato down the sidewalk. Elise follows more slowly, her spine rigid, her chin high. But I see the way her hand shakes as she opens the car door.
The engine starts. The car pulls away. The neighborhood exhales.
Shawn stands at the edge of the yard. Not coming closer. Waiting.
“I should have done that years ago.”
“Yes.” I cross my arms. “You should have.”
“I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t fix anything.”
“It doesn’t.” I study him - the stubble, the red eyes, the defeated slope of his shoulders. “But it’s the first time you’ve ever chosen me over her. So that’s something.”
He nods. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t try to close the distance between us.
“I’ll keep parking at the end of the block. I won’t talk unless you want me to.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, and I notice they’re shaking. “I just need to know you get home safe.”
I consider this. Consider him.
“The end of the block. Not the driveway.”
“Promise.”
He turns to go. Then stops.
“Britt?”
“Yeah?”
“You look…” He swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs. “You look incredible. Different. Like you’re finally taking up all the space you deserve.”
My breath catches.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that.”
“I know.” His voice cracks on the word. “I noticed everything, Britt. I just stopped saying it out loud because…” He trails off, staring at the grass.
“Because what?”
“Because I was scared.” He looks up, and his eyes are wet. “Of wanting you too much. Of needing you too much. Of what it would mean if I admitted how much I-” He stops. Breathes. Tries again. “I was a coward. I’m trying not to be anymore.”
I don’t have a response to that.
I just watch him walk to his car and drive away, and wonder when he learned to say things that crack my chest open.
That night, in my childhood bed, I hear Mom in the kitchen. Humming. Opening and closing cabinet doors.
“Is that for him?” I call.
“It’s for whoever shows up hungry.” She appears in my doorway, dish towel over her shoulder. “Some people need to learn that showing up is the easy part. Staying is what matters.”
I can’t sleep.
The sheets feel wrong. The pillow’s too soft. My brain won’t stop replaying the scene on the lawn - Shawn’s face when he said she made me see, the way his voice cracked, the trembling in his hands.
I get up. Walk to the window.
His car is there. At the end of the block. Just like he said it would be.
A silhouette in the driver’s seat. Not moving. Just present.
I should close the curtain. Go back to bed. Stop giving him real estate in my head.
Instead, I watch.
He gets out of the car at one point, paces a small circuit, stretches. In the streetlight, I can see the tired slope of his shoulders. The way he rolls his neck like it’s stiff. The outline of his body in those jeans that always fit him unfairly well.
Stop looking at his jeans.
I don’t stop looking at his jeans.
My brain, unhelpfully, provides a memory: the first time I peeled those jeans off him. Our first apartment. The way he’d laughed when I fumbled the button, then stopped laughing very quickly when I got my hand inside.
“Britt-” His voice had cracked. “If you keep doing that I’m going to-”
“Going to what?”
He’d shown me. Thoroughly. Against the door because we didn’t make it to the bed. On the bed afterward. Again in the morning.
I close the curtain.
My face is hot. Other parts of me are hotter.
This is humiliating. I’m standing in my childhood bedroom getting turned on by the memory of a man I’m supposed to be divorcing.
I get back in bed. I don’t sleep.
When I finally drift off, I dream about him.
He’s behind me. Chest to my back. One hand splayed low on my stomach, holding me still; the other already between my legs, two fingers sliding through the slick heat he always pulled out of me without even trying. His mouth is at my ear, that low wrecked sound he makes when he’s trying not to beg.
“Britt. Baby. Let me-”
I push back against him anyway, greedy, and his laugh turns into a groan.
The hand on my stomach tightens. The one between my legs curls just right - exact pressure, exact rhythm, like his body never unlearned mine.
My knees go useless. He keeps me upright with an arm banded around my waist and keeps working me until I’m shaking, until I’m making those broken little noises I only ever made for him.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, voice wrecked. “Come on my fingers. Show me you still-”
I wake up gasping, sheets twisted around my thighs, pulse hammering between my legs. The room is dark. My childhood ceiling stares back at me. Down the block his car is probably still there, a quiet dark shape under the streetlight.
I press the heels of my hands over my eyes and try to breathe through the ache.
It doesn’t help.
I can still feel him.