Five years after my husband vanished without a word, I finally agreed to a date — but nothing could’ve prepared me for the face I saw across the room that night.
Some people say time heals everything. I never believed that. If anything, time just taught me how to live around the hole, the one my husband left behind when he walked out of my life without a trace.
Five years later, it still hurt.
My days had become predictable, almost mechanical. I worked too much, slept too little, and avoided anything that resembled emotion.
Romance?
That was for people who still believed promises meant something.
Compliments? They were just preludes to disappointment.
I’d built walls so high that no one bothered to climb them anymore, and honestly, that suited me just fine.
***
That morning, I poured cereal into a mug because all my bowls were in the sink. Again. The clock blinked 7:12 like it wanted to argue.
“Answer me,” my BFF Maya, who recently returned from Chicago, said on speaker.
“Why didn’t you say yes to Steve? He’s kind. He’s practical.
He’s got that quiet smile.”
“I don’t need quiet smiles. I need coffee.”
“I have a life. I go to work.
I come home. I sleep.”
“Yeah, and you do it in those sad sweatpants that hang at the knees like broken hammocks.”
I looked down at the pill-balled fabric and snorted.
“Comfortable isn’t living. Where is the woman who loved picking new shoes more than air?
Where’s the lipstick in the glove compartment for ‘just in case’?”
“She retired. She wasn’t getting benefits.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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