Page 116 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

The second he’s out of the room, I make it to the toilet and throw all of it up, shaking so hard I end up on the bathroom floor, cheek against the cold tile, too weak to get back up.

This is hell,I lie there thinking.This is what you get for reaching for the sun. How dare I think I’m allowed something as simple as joy with August.

This is what a woman gets for wanting things.

Or God, maybe this karma has been aiming my way from much longer ago than that. Maybe this is the cosmic bill coming due for Harper, the friend I didn’t defend when her world was crashing to pieces. Maybe I couldn’t have stopped it, but I could have stood beside her so she didn’t have to be alone.

Then again, I’m not alone now.

There’s a man not a hundred feet from that window with a heartbeat steady enough to knock this whole house down for me if I let him.

August answers every single time I message him through our Minecraft Realm. Immediately. Like he’s sitting there by the computer. In the dark of that long night, I recall our messages from earlier today, the only lights in the dark abyss of this tunnel.

[AUGUST: what’s wrong]

[LENNON: nothing. head’s too bad to talk today. just needed to hear from you without saying it out loud]

[AUGUST: I’m right here. not going anywhere. doesn’t matter if this takes five more weeks or five more years, I’ll wait as long as you need me to. What I feel for u is not just a five-week feeling. I’ll wait for u

I bawlwhen I read that. We never talked about our feelings for each other ever since that moment I totally freaked out on him for calling himself my boyfriend. I was such a bitch, and then everything fell apart, and I never got the chance to tell him that I?—

[LENNON: you should be at work. you can’t keep doing this to yourself]

[AUGUST: I am at work]

[LENNON: liar]

[AUGUST: go rest. ping me anytime, whatever hour it is. I’ll always answer]

I lie on that floor until morning, and when Jake comes in with eggs the next morning, I don’t smile at him. I don’t look at him at all.

“Lennon. Don’t you want to give your husband a smile before he goes to work? I’ve got a big presentation today. I could use a little support from my wife.”

I stare at the wall.

“It’s about time you started tending to your wifely duties around here.”

A tear runs down my cheek, and I let it. There’s a cardinal on the feeder outside the window, bright fiery red, and I watch it instead of him.

“I’m getting real tired of you just lying around. And tired of cooking for you when you’re the one who’s supposed to be taking care ofme.”

He keeps at it until he stands up too fast and knocks the plate of eggs clean off the bed.

“Well, now look what you did.”

He scoops them off the carpet with his bare hand and puts them back onto the plate, like that makes them food again.

“If you’d just eaten when I brought it in— Christ, now you’ve made me late. How’s that gonna look?”

He slams the door on his way out.

I flush the eggs, carpet lint and all, down the toilet, and look at the footage the second his car clears the driveway.

Nothing.

Just Jake fixing a plate like any other morning.

My shoulders sag with something that feels like disappointment, which is a genuinely deranged thing to feel disappointed about.