17. Brittney
— ? —
Brittney
The week has been perfect.
Shawn at Mom’s dinner table, nodding along as Uncle Dave diagrams a carburetor on a napkin. Dinners with Mom that don’t end in arguments. Quiet conversations on the porch that stretch past midnight. The slow, careful rebuilding of something I thought was broken beyond repair.
Then Friday happens.
I find out from Instagram. Not from him.
A photo on his cousin’s story: Shawn at the Ross family quarterly dinner. The one I wasn’t invited to. The one he promised to skip in solidarity.
He’s smiling in the photo. Shaking hands with his uncle. Standing in the dining room of the house where his mother introduced me to a room as his little project, where I was furniture with a first name, where I learned exactly how little my presence mattered.
He didn’t tell me he was going. He didn’t even mention it.
I call him. He doesn’t pick up.
I text: You’re at the dinner.
His reply doesn’t come for a long time: I can explain. It was a last-minute thing. Business. I’ll be home in an hour.
I don’t respond.
When he shows up at Mom’s, I’m sitting on the porch. Waiting. The night air is cold against my bare arms, but I don’t care. I’ve been sitting here for an hour, watching my breath fog, running through every conversation we’ve had over the past week and searching for the lie I missed.
His car pulls up. He gets out. He sees my face.
“Britt.” He crosses the yard quickly. “I know how this looks-”
“You promised.”
“There was a vote happening. About the Milan transition. I needed to be there to protect my exit terms. It wasn’t about the family-”
“You were at her table.” My voice comes out flat. Dead. “The table where nobody ever said my name unless they needed something. You told me you wouldn’t go without me.”
“I wasn’t planning to.” He runs a hand through his hair, frustration bleeding through. “But my uncle called and said the vote was happening and if I didn’t show up, I’d lose my leverage on the transition and-”
“So you went. Without telling me. Without asking if I was okay with it. You just decided it was more important than the promise you made.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
“This is what you always do.” My voice is quiet.
Worse than yelling. I know it’s worse than yelling because I can see him flinch.
“You make me believe things are different. You make promises. And then something comes up - business, your mother, some emergency that’s always more urgent than me - and I’m back to being the thing you fit in around the edges. ”
“That’s not-”
“Go home, Shawn.”
“Britt, please-”
“Go. Home.”
He stares at me for a long moment. I can see the argument building behind his eyes, the explanations, the justifications. I can see him swallowing them all.
“Okay.” His voice cracks. “Okay.”
He leaves.
I sit on the porch until the stars come out, and I wonder if I’ve been stupid to believe people can actually change.
***
I find the letter in the morning.
Five pages. His handwriting, getting messier as the pages progress. The words of a man who doesn’t know how to say what he means, trying anyway.
I went because I was scared. Not of losing the business - of losing the progress I’ve made with you.
I thought if I could protect the exit terms, I could leave cleaner. Give us a real fresh start.
But I did it the old way. Unilateral decision. Prioritizing outcome over process. Treating you like someone I was managing instead of someone I was building a life with.
You asked me once what I’d choose between my family’s approval and you. I’ve been choosing you. I thought I was choosing you.
But going to that dinner without telling you was a choice too. And it was the wrong one.
I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if you’ll let me try.
But I’m not going anywhere. Even if you never speak to me again, I’ll be at the end of the block. Learning how to be better.
I love you. I’m sorry. I’ll keep showing up until one of those things matters more than what I did wrong.
I read it three times. Then I fold it carefully and put it in my pocket.
He’s on the curb when I find him that night.
Not at the end of the block - right here, on the curb in front of Mom’s house, sitting in the dark like he’s been waiting for hours. Maybe he has been.
“The letter was dramatic.”
He looks up. His eyes are red. “I meant every word.”
I sit down next to him. Our shoulders touch. Neither of us moves away.
“You hurt me,” I say quietly. “Again.”
“I know.”
“Part of me wanted to give up. Part of me thought, ‘This is who he is. This is who he’ll always be.’”
He doesn’t say anything. Just waits.
“But then I thought about those Tuesday nights you think I don’t know about.”
He freezes. “How did you-”
“Fern. He’s a terrible secret-keeper.” I turn to look at him. “You’re taking art classes. At the community center on Delancey. Because you want to understand what I see.”
“I’m terrible at it.”
“I know. He showed me photos of your sketchbook.” I’m almost smiling. “The proportions are all wrong.”
“Margaret says I have the artistic instincts of a drunk toddler.”
“That’s generous.”
He laughs. Surprised and cracked.
My hand finds his.
“Don’t promise,” I say. “Just do.”
“Okay.” He squeezes my fingers. “Okay.”
The apartment above the bodega is exactly as I remember it.
Our first apartment. The one we couldn’t afford back then and can now. Shawn re-rented it without telling me, turned it into his penance space - the place he goes when the penthouse feels too empty and the curb feels too cold.
He’s cooking when I walk in. Mom’s pot roast recipe, the one he must have asked her for, the one that fills the small kitchen with the smell of home.
He turns when he hears the door. Fresh from the shower. Damp hair. Old robe. Looking like everything I’ve ever wanted and almost lost.
“You could have walked away,” he says. His voice comes out raw. “Today. When you found out about the dinner. You could have been done with me.”
“I could have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I cross the room. Stop in front of him. Close enough to see the fear in his eyes, the desperate hope he’s trying to hide.
“Because I’m tired of giving up on things that matter.” I reach up to touch his face. “Because you’re trying, and that’s more than you ever did before. Because the man who sat on that curb for hours waiting for me to yell at him isn’t the same man who let his mother rearrange my place card.”
“I’m still him.” His voice breaks. “Parts of me are still him.”
“I know.” I trace the line of his jaw. “I’m still the woman who counted ceiling tiles instead of speaking up. We’re both works in progress.”
He catches my hand. Presses his lips to my palm.
“I love you.”
“Show me.” I pull him closer. “Stop apologizing and show me.”
The kiss starts gentle.
His hands cup my face like I’m something precious, something he’s afraid he’ll break. His mouth moves against mine slowly, carefully, relearning the shape of me after months apart.
But I’m tired of careful. I’m tired of gentle. I want the man who threatened a tech bro in the middle of a business meeting. I want all of him, the broken parts and the beautiful parts and everything in between.
I fist my hands in his shirt and pull him closer. Bite his lower lip. Make a sound against his mouth that’s half demand and half plea.
He groans. The careful restraint snaps.
His hands slide down my back, grip my hips, lift me onto the kitchen counter. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer, closer, until there’s no space left between us.
“Tell me to stop.” His hands pause on my thighs. “At any point. Tell me to stop and I will.”
“I don’t want you to stop.” I hold his gaze. “I have wanted you to not stop for an embarrassing amount of time. If you stop right now I will actually lose my mind.”
He laughs against my skin. “Noted.”
His mouth moves to my jaw, my throat, the place just below my ear that has always undone me. I feel him smile when I shiver - like he filed that knowledge away years ago and is finally allowed to use it again.
“I’m going to worship you,” he says against my skin. “I’m going to remind you what it feels like to be chosen first. And then I’m going to do it again until you forget there was ever a time I didn’t.”
His hands push my shirt up, over my head. The cool air hits my bare skin; then his mouth follows, hot and deliberate. He kisses the hollow of my throat. The slope of my collarbone. Lower.
When he takes one breast into his mouth, slow and reverent, my head drops back against the upper cabinet with a soft thud.
“Still so sensitive here,” he murmurs. His tongue circles, then his teeth graze - just enough to make my hips jerk. “I used to think about this. In the penthouse. Lying three feet away from you and too much of a coward to reach.”
“Don’t-” My voice breaks. “Don’t talk about the penthouse.”
“Okay.” He kisses the center of my chest, right over my heart. “Only now. Only this.”
His hands slide under my thighs and pull me to the edge of the counter. I’m already aching, already desperate, and the sound he makes when he feels it - low, wrecked, almost pained - goes straight through me.
“Britt.” My name like a prayer and a curse. “Can I-”
“Yes. God, yes.”
He drops to his knees on the kitchen floor like it’s an altar.
The first pass of his mouth is gentle. Testing. Remembering.
The second is not.
He licks into me with a hunger that makes my fingers fist in his damp hair, makes my heels dig into his back. He groans against me like he’s been starving, and maybe he has - maybe we both have.
“Shawn - oh-”
He doesn’t rush. He learns me again in real time: the exact pressure that makes my thighs shake, the flick of his tongue that pulls a broken sound from my throat, the way I gasp when he slides one finger inside, then two, curling until he finds the spot that makes my vision white out at the edges.
“There,” I manage. “Right there - don’t stop-”
“I won’t.” His voice is rough, muffled. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”