Page 15 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

My throat tightens anyway, because the awful thing about humiliation is that even when you know the other person isgarbage, it still hurts. It still gets in. It still sits in your chest and whispers that maybe you were stupid, maybe you were naïve, maybe you were too much, too loud, too messy, too emotional, too all the things he implied when he decided to blow up my life in public.

I stare at the picture until it starts to blur, then I throw my phone onto the bed like it offended me personally.

“Absolutely not,” I say to the empty room, wobbling just a little. “We're not doing this again.”

I’m not crying over Bryce Biggs.

I press my lips together, breathe in through my nose, and count backward from ten like I’m one tantrum away from needing my own nanny.

By ten, I’m mostly holding it together.

By eleven, I’m furious, which is much more useful, because here’s the thing: Bryce always did love intense drama.

Everything with him had to be dramatic, heightened, cinematic. A normal disagreement couldn’t just be a disagreement; it had to be a scene. A job couldn’t just be a job; it had to be a launchpad to some bigger, better life he’d invented in his head. Every month, there was some new obsession, some new plan, some new version of himself he was convinced would finally make him happy.

He said he wanted a move to Chicago, wanted a future, wanted us.

And now, looking back, I can see the pattern so clearly it makes me want to scream. Bryce was never building anything. He was always chasing the next shiny thing, and this time, apparently, that shiny thing was cheating on me and fabricating an entire relocation.

I scrub a hand over my face and swing my legs off the bed. If I let myself keep thinking about him, I’ll drive myself insane.

I stand, cross to the tiny mirror above the dresser, and look at myself. I look rough.

My honey blonde hair is piled on top of my head in the world’s saddest bun, there are dark half-moons under my eyes, and my oversized sweatshirt's giving “woman in witness protection” more than “fresh start in a glamorous city.”

“Okay,” I tell my reflection. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We're going to stop acting like we got stranded in the wilderness. We're in Chicago. There are jobs in Chicago. There's housing in Chicago. Millions of people live here on purpose.”

My reflection remains skeptical, but saying it out loud helps a little.

Enough that I shower in water that can’t decide between lukewarm and punishment, put on jeans and a cardigan, and attempt to make myself look like someone a respectable agency might trust around children.

By the time I’m dressed, I feel almost human.

I sit cross-legged on the bed with my laptop, motel Wi Fi wheezing bravely under the pressure, and start making lists.

List one: money.

Bad.

List two: places to stay.

Worse.

List three things I'm not allowed to do.

1. Call Bryce.

2. Text Bryce.

3. Stalk Bryce’s stupid face online again.

4. Admit defeat and go crawling home so everyone can look at me with pity.

5. Get murdered by renting a room from Craigslist serial killers.

That last one's very important.

I open a search tab and type in nanny agencies in Chicago, housing for nannies, live-in childcare positions, temporary housing options, and affordable sublets. Then I fall into an internet rabbit hole so depressing I’m pretty sure the algorithm starts feeling sorry for me.