God.
That question.
I didn’t even blame her for asking it. Ishould’veexpected it. Should’ve known that if you push someone away enough times, they’ll stop assuming the best of you, even if they want to.
Even if youwantthem to.
But I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t.
Not because the answer was yes, but because the answer wasso much messier than that.
Because the truth wasn’t in a clean box labeled single or married, taken or free. The truth was bruised and buried, wrapped in years of guilt and loyalty and the bitter taste of obligation disguised as responsibility.
The truth was, I’d spent most of my adult life being who everyone else needed me to be.
The good son.
The stoic partner.
The one who fixed things.
Even when it meant bleeding out quietly under the weight of what I wasn’t allowed to want.
And now here I was—thirty-six years old and realizing I’d fallen for someone whose laughter undid me, whose optimism wrecked me, whose heart I’d already managed to scrape raw without even meaning to.
I let go of the railing, turned, and walked back up the stairs.
I didn’t go to my room.
I went past it, down the quiet hallway that curved behind the guest wing. The old bench at the end sat beneath a window with a warped pane and a view of the garden where someone had once planted lavender in neat rows.
I sat, my elbows on my knees, and let the silence rush in.
I’d left that pantry because I was afraid.
Not of the question, but of what she would see in my eyes if I answered.
Because the truth wasn’t that I had a wife.
The truth was, I had apast.
One I hadn’t unpacked. One I hadn’tlet go of.
My ex wasn’t waiting for me in Florida. She’d walked away years ago, tired of waiting for me to put her above my school, my job, the chaos I kept patching over like it wouldn’t eventually collapse. She left with words I still heard sometimes in my sleep.
You take care of everyone but yourself. And someday, that’s going to cost you something real.
And maybe that someday was now.
Maybe that something was Fifi.
Because she wasreal.
Too real.
She saw through the layers before I was ready to be seen. She offered herself in pieces and warmth and terrible jokes about towels, and I had met her with silence, retreat, and the kind of half-formed longing that looked more like indecision than love.
And that’s what killed me most.
