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I missed fighting with her, which was information I didn't know what to do with.

I missed the three seconds at halftime, and her long hands on my waist, and the way she'd looked in the morning light before it all ended. I missed what I'd never actually had. The easy version of this. The version where she was brave enough, and I was able to trust someone, where we got to find out who we were together outside of one perfect, finite, already-receding night.

I missed the mark on my collarbone.

That was the one that did it.

I cried. For the date that went nowhere. For the text I hadn't answered. For the light in her kitchen. For the selfie I'd pretended I'd posted to nobody in particular. For two weeks of very mature emotional health that had ended with me alone in my apartment missing someone I'd technically spent only one night with.

For all the conversations I wanted back.

For the fights I'd take in a heartbeat if the alternative was this absence.

For her.

I cried until I was wrung out and flat and too exhausted to do more than breathe. Then, I lay there in the silence and thought: I am absolutely, catastrophically, not even remotely over this.

And I didn't care.

I was going to get over it anyway. Not tonight. Maybe not this month. But I had walked away from my own mother's kitchen table and built a whole life out of the pieces, and I could walk away from this too. I was going to get up tomorrow, and the day after that, and I was going to keep getting up, until one morning I'd wake up and my first thought wouldn't be of her.

The only way out was through.

Forward, DuBose.

The only path is forward.

I closed my eyes and, eventually, finally, slept.

20

Great

Cam

Harper had posted a photo.

I'd told myself I wouldn't look. I'd done well, actually, for several days. I hadn't opened her profile, hadn't checked her stories, hadn't done any of what I'd done that first week, when I told myself I was only making sure she was okay and knew that wasn't the whole truth.

Then, at midnight, alone in my kitchen with one light on, I looked.

She was in her bathroom. I knew the lighting, the warm bulb over her mirror, the way she angled her phone when she wanted a photo to look effortless. An orange dress I'd never seen. Her makeup was perfect, curls loose and shining. And her collarbone, bare, smooth, unmarked, where two weeks ago I'd put my mouth and left her a bruise she'd said yes to.

It was gone. Of course it was gone.

She was wearing the expression I knew best, the one she put on when she was armoring up, performing confidence until it became real. I'd watched that expression turn genuine in my bed, at three in the morning, when she'd stopped performing for anyone.

New adventures.

A date. She'd been on a date. Tonight, while I'd been sitting in this kitchen, she'd been across a table from someone who could hold her hand in a restaurant without checking who was watching.

I stared at the photo until the screen went dark, and then I tapped it awake again and kept staring.

Then I texted her, because apparently self-preservation was a skill I'd never developed where she was concerned.

Cam

I hope you're happy. You deserve all the happiness in the world.