The honesty hurts, but at least she does not dress it up.
I curl under the blanket, suddenly exhausted down to bone. “I feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I fell for him.”
“Yes.”
“After Garrett.”
“Garrett was a thieving little parasite with nice hair and the moral depth of a spoon.”
“I should have been smarter.”
“No. You should have been loved better.”
That sentence finds some deep bruised part of me and presses gently enough that I cannot fight it.
Darlene reaches over and pats my knee once. “You and Kauss are both stubborn as rusted bolts, and neither of you knows how to trust good things without looking for the trapdoor. That doesn’t make you stupid. It makes you wounded and annoying.”
I laugh through another sob. “Comforting.”
“I do my best.”
Downstairs, the bakery creaks in the wind. Without Kauss below checking the locks, without his heavy steps in the stairwell, without the low murmur of his voice in the kitchen, the whole building feels exposed. Halo outside seems colder,meaner, wider. Every passing engine sounds too loud. Every distant shout becomes a threat.
I hate that his absence feels like weather.
“I threw him out,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“What if he doesn’t come back?”
Darlene is quiet long enough for fear to take root.
Then she says, “Then I’ll hunt him down and hit him with something educational.”
I close my eyes. “You always know what to say.”
“No, I don’t. I mostly know what to threaten.”
She stays until I stop crying. Eventually she gets me into bed like I am fourteen and heartbroken for the first time instead of grown and heartbroken in a much more expensive apartment. She turns off the lamps, leaves a glass of water on the bedside table, and pauses at the door.
“Try to sleep.”
“I won’t.”
“Try anyway.”
“Do you think I ruined it?”
Her silhouette stills in the dim hallway light.
“No,” she says. “But I think both of you are scared enough to do damage if you keep swinging blind.”
Then she leaves.
