30. Paige
Paige
Twenty-three children roar at me on cue, which proves heartbreak has not affected my ability to command a room full of people under eight.
“Excellent,” I announce. “You have successfully scared every responsible adult out of the forest.”
A little boy near the front points toward his mother. “She’s still here.”
“She’s very brave,” I tell him.
His mother laughs while he studies her, as if seeing her for the first time.
I turn the picture book toward the group and continue reading.
The dragon on the page has lost his treasure, his map, and any sense of direction.
Every few paragraphs, I stop so the children can choose which path he should take.
Their voting system involves shouting, arm waving, and one determined girl’s insistence that the cave needs glitter before anyone enters it.
The program runs twelve minutes longer than planned.
Nobody cries. The craft glue remains mostly on the paper. Every child leaves with a book, an activity sheet, and the conviction that dragons make excellent library patrons if they promise not to set the returns bin on fire.
On the surface, I am doing fine.
“Great program,” my coworker says, gathering abandoned water bottles for the trash. “You had them the whole time.”
“Fear is an effective teaching method.”
“You let them roar indoors.”
“Controlled rebellion builds trust.”
She laughs and heads back to the circulation desk.
I stack the leftover activity sheets and refuse to look at the purple cushion near the front of the rug.
Josie always takes that one. She sits close enough to correct my reading voice, explain the illustrations before I turn the book around, and offer plot improvements no author requested.
Aiden usually stands beside the picture-book display until she notices him, watching me with the patient focus that used to make the room feel private.
The cushion stayed empty today. So did the space beside the display.
I carry the supply bin into the workroom and wash the glue from my hands, focusing on the routine. Books to the cart. Crayons to their labeled containers. The dragon back on his display. Each task is a small, solid thing to hold onto when the rest of the day is a reminder of who is missing.
I push the cart toward the front of the library and pause beside the romance display I arranged last month.
The covers stand face-out in coordinated rows.
Warm colors on one shelf. Dark covers beneath them.
Illustrated couples in the center, all of them frozen at the perfect point between argument and kiss.
The display looks polished enough to promise every difficult feeling will fit neatly between two covers.
I still believe in the books. I know how much work the characters do before they earn the ending. Today, the display leaves out the part where two people can love each other, tell the truth, and still end up alone on a Friday night.
I turn one crooked paperback until it lines up with the others.
“There. Emotionally devastating, but symmetrical.”
A woman browsing nearby glances at me.
I offer her a small smile. “Professional assessment.”
She smiles and reaches for the book.
I return to the children’s area and crouch beside the craft table. A few paper scraps remain beneath it. I gather them into one hand, then pull the supply bin closer to put away the markers.
A folded sheet of construction paper sticks out from behind the purple cup.
Uneven block letters spell JOSIE across the back.
My fingers stop.
I open it carefully.
Sprinkle dominates the page, purple and enormous, wearing her crown and standing beside my hammock.
Three people sit on the cabin porch beneath a yellow sun.
Josie has given herself a book. Aiden wears a brown hat despite never wearing one on my porch.
I am holding a coffee cup with steam curling high enough to reach the roof.
FRIDAY stretches across the top in purple crayon.
I remember when she drew it. She worked on it while Aiden made breakfast, refusing to let either of us look because the horse’s boots were not finished. We left before she remembered to take it from her backpack, and she must have brought it to the library later.
Josie drew a life we already lived.
I sit back on my heels with the paper resting across my palms. The cabin is mine. The hammock is mine. Every quiet piece of the drawing belongs to the life I built for myself.
Aiden and Josie are there because I chose to let them in.
By the time I pull into the gravel drive, the sun has dropped behind the trees and Josie’s drawing has slid halfway off the passenger seat.
I carry it inside with my purse, set both on the kitchen counter, and stand in the quiet, listening.
The refrigerator hums. A bird calls from somewhere beyond the porch. Wind moves through the open windows, carrying in pine and the faint promise of rain.
My cabin is quiet, peaceful, and mine. It always has been.
Relief settles through me as I change into soft shorts and an old T-shirt, twist my hair onto my head, and pour a glass of wine.
I have spent years protecting evenings like this.
Nobody needs dinner at a certain time. Nobody asks where I put their shoes.
I can read until midnight or fall asleep on the couch at nine.
I take my wine onto the porch and lower myself into the hammock.
The solitude feels good. But I still wish Aiden were here.
I wish his broad shoulders were blocking the doorway while he complains that the hammock was designed for one person. I wish Josie were sprawled across my legs with a book open, correcting me whenever I skip a sentence because Sprinkle apparently requires full literary accuracy.
The quiet is real. So is wanting them inside it.
I stay outside until rain begins tapping against the porch roof, then head in to make dinner. When I open the cupboard, Aiden’s coffee sits beside mine. He bought it after declaring mine tasted like someone described coffee to hot water from another room.
He was wrong, obviously.
His is better.
I run my thumb over the folded top of the bag, then close the cupboard and pull pasta from another shelf.
While the water boils, the evidence of them piles up.
Aiden’s spare shirt on the hook behind my door—left there after I told him to stop stealing the one I sleep in.
Josie’s purple cup in the drying rack, the one I bought after she declared mine boring.
Her library book on the coffee table, which I renewed yesterday knowing she wouldn’t be here tonight.
My life never disappeared beneath theirs.
I kept choosing where to fit them in because I liked the shape we made together.
I drain the pasta, add sauce, and eat on the couch with Josie’s drawing propped against the lamp.
Aiden wanted a shared home, marriage, years he could name. I treated every permanent word like a door locking behind me. But somewhere in the argument, defending my right to choose hardened into its own rigid rule: refusing to picture any choice that might actually change my life.
I pick up my phone and open the message thread I have avoided for eleven days. His last text asks if I made it home safely after a late library event. Mine says yes and includes a complaint about the terrifying size of the moth waiting beside my porch light.
I tap the message field.
I love you. I want you and Josie in my life. I can picture years with you, maybe even marriage someday. But I need to keep my cabin for now. I need time that's just mine. I need you to ask instead of deciding. We have to build what comes next together.
I read it twice.
Every word is true. Sending it would put the repair in my hands when Aiden ended us because the future I could offer did not resemble the one he had already planned.
I will not bargain him back by presenting a revised version of myself.
If we try again, he has to understand why the key, the closet, and the family assumptions hurt. I need to know he wants a future shaped by both of us, even when my choices do not make immediate sense to him.
I save the message as a draft and set my phone facedown.
The cabin is still peaceful. My life is still whole. I no longer need to pretend either truth makes me happier without him.
Pike’s Perk is busy enough Thursday morning that I can hand over Josie’s drawing without turning the exchange into an event.
That is the plan, anyway.
As I enter, Sadie looks up from the register. Her gaze lands on the folded purple construction paper in my hand, and she stops reaching for a cup.
“Regular?”
“Please.”
“To stay?”
“I haven’t decided.”
She glances toward the table beside the office where Rowan sits with her laptop and several invoices. “That sounds like a yes.”
“I appreciate how neither of you respects an evasive answer,” I say.
“We respect it,” Rowan says without looking up. “We simply recognize one.”
Sadie starts my drink while I take the chair across from her sister. Rowan’s eyes drop to the paper when I place it on the table.
“Josie left this at the library,” I explain. “Will one of you give it to Axel so he can return it to her?”
“Of course,” Sadie says, joining us with my coffee. “I’ll see her this afternoon.”
“Please don’t tell her I was upset when I found it.”
“I won’t.”
“And I’m not sending a message to Aiden through her.”
“I know.”
The immediate agreement loosens the knot beneath my ribs. Sadie folds the drawing along its existing crease and places it safely behind the counter.
That should be my cue to leave. Instead, I anchor my hands to the cup, chasing its warmth.
Rowan closes her laptop.
“I thought there would be no emotional ambushes.”
“No one invited you over here,” Rowan says.
“You watched me sit down.”
“I support free will.”
Sadie hides a smile behind her coffee.
I take a drink. Aiden’s coffee is better than Pike’s Perk’s, too, which is an unacceptable quality in a man who is currently making me miserable from a respectful distance.
I set my cup down. “I spent last night at the cabin.”
Neither woman points out that I always spend Friday with Aiden and Josie.
“I read. Made dinner. Sat on the porch. It was peaceful.”
Sadie offers a gentle smile. “That sounds nice.”
“It was nice.” I trace the edge of the cardboard sleeve around my cup. “I kept waiting for the quiet to prove I made the right decision.”
Rowan’s expression remains careful. “Did it?”
“It proved I still love my cabin.”
“Good,” Rowan says.
The answer catches me off guard. There is no concern beneath it, no suggestion that loving my home means I have chosen wrong.
“I thought independence meant preserving my life as it was,” I admit. “Last night, I realized I had already changed it. I was the one who made room for Aiden and Josie because I wanted them to come back.”
Sadie says nothing. She gives me room to hear myself.
Rowan turns her coffee slowly between her palms. “Do you miss having someone want you, or do you miss that specific life?”
The question lands, sharp and clean, giving me no room to deflect.
“That life.” My voice is quiet. “I miss Aiden.”
My throat tightens on his name, a familiar ache, but the bitter taste of defeat isn’t there this time.
“I miss his terrible opinions about coffee and the face he makes when I read him a filthy paragraph he wasn’t prepared for. I miss watching him try not to laugh when I’m being unreasonable for sport. I miss the way he listens, even when he thinks he already knows the answer.”
A reluctant smile pulls at my mouth.
I miss Josie taking over my hammock and giving Sprinkle dialogue. “I miss our Fridays, breakfast at the ranch, and the feeling of having two people in my day who are genuinely happy when I show up.”
Sadie’s eyes soften.
“And the sex.” I take a breath. “I miss that an alarming amount.”
Rowan leans back in her chair, a smile touching her lips. “There she is.”
“I’m heartbroken, not dead.”
“Important distinction.”
The humor eases some of the pressure in my throat. I look toward the counter where Josie’s drawing waits to go home.
“They made room in my life without asking me to perform for it. The problem started when Aiden decided making room for me meant deciding where I belonged.”
Sadie nods once. “What do you want?”
“I want him. I want Josie. I want Fridays and sex and our books migrating between both houses. I want a commitment we define together. I also need time alone, work that remains mine, and decisions about my future that include me.”
Neither of them tells me to call him.
They do not offer to explain me to him or report whether he is suffering enough. Rowan opens her laptop again. Sadie finishes her coffee and returns to the counter when the bell over the door rings.
Their restraint leaves the decision where it belongs.
I drafted a message last night. I could send it now and offer Aiden every truth I was too angry to name during the breakup. That would ask me to cross the distance he created without knowing whether he understands what went wrong.
I can love him and still wait for him to show me he understands.
If Aiden offers a future we can build together, I will listen.