Chapter 1

Dana's POV

Vic was the love of my life.

I keep saying it in my head like a prayer, like a confession, like something I need to believe even now. She was the love of my life. And so much more than that. She was my entire world. Every morning I woke up next to her and thought: this is it. This is what people write poems about. This is what I spent years searching for without knowing I was searching.

And now I hate her.

I hate the physical pain she left behind. It's not metaphorical. It's real. It lives in my shoulders, in my jaw, in the small of my back. My body is in a permanent state of tension, as if it's still bracing for a blow that already landed. My thoughts spin in circles I can't break. Where did it go wrong? At what moment? Why does someone you love—someone you gave every part of yourself to—wake up one day and decide you are no longer worth it?

She didn't just betray our love. She didn't just break my trust. She shook the foundation of my entire existence. Every certainty I had about myself, every belief that I was living my life according to some code of honesty and integrity—she reduced all of it to rubble. I was so empty. And at the same time so full of pain and grief that I thought I would drown in it.

Four months. That's how long it's been.

Four months of days and nights that blur into one another until I can't tell them apart. I don't know when I fall asleep anymore. I don't know when I'm awake. The line between dreaming and living has dissolved, and I exist somewhere in between, suspended in a fog that never lifts. I wake up with tremors, my body already knowing what my mind is about to remember. The same scene. The same door. The same bed. The nightmare I've been living since the moment I saw the truth with my own eyes doesn't leave me. Not during the day. Not during the night.

I've gotten used to the feeling of not being able to breathe. I've gotten used to my heart racing for no reason. I've gotten used to the constant, gnawing fear that something terrible is about to happen, even when nothing is happening at all. I've learned to live in harmony with all of it. This has been my life for months. And I didn't know if there was an end to it.

This morning is no different.

I don't have the strength to get out of bed. The sun hasn't risen yet, but the sky outside the window has already turned that pale, washed-out gray that comes before dawn. Through the thin walls of the hotel room, I can hear an alarm going off in the room next door. Someone is so tired they can't even reach over to turn it off. The sound drills into my skull. I can't listen to it anymore.

I get up. I walk to the bathroom. I wash my face with cold water and then I look at myself in the mirror. Really look. At my own reflection. At my eyes, which are filled with so much pain I barely recognize them. The tears come without permission, rolling down my cheeks in slow, silent lines. I don't wipe them away. I let them fall. What's the point of stopping them now?

I walk back to the nightstand and pick up my phone.

Seven messages.

Mom — 8:02 AM

Call me when you wake up.

Ell — 1:14 AM

You should've come with me.

Ell — 1:58 AM

I think I found the one.

Ell — 2:27 AM

My head is spinning.

Ell — 3:01 AM

I'm too old for this.

Ell — 3:36 AM

I made it home.

Ell — 3:58 AM

Love you.

I smile. It hurts my face. It's been so long since I've used those muscles.

Ell always finds a way to make me laugh. Even now. Even in the middle of this.

I remember calling her that night. The night everything ended. I don't remember dialing her number. I don't remember what I said first. But I remember her voice. I remember mine.

Ell... you have to come... I... I can't breathe.

My voice was broken. Wet. Barely human. And Ell didn't ask a single question. She just said:

Where are you?

Fifteen minutes later, she was standing on the street in front of me.

I don't remember much of what happened after that. I don't remember how we got to her apartment. I don't remember the walk, the car, the elevator, any of it. What I remember is the silence. Her presence. The way she held my hand the entire night. She sat beside me on her couch and didn't ask me anything. She didn't try to fix it. She didn't tell me it would be okay. She just sat there. And every time I cried, she cried one tear more.

Somewhere before dawn, I finally found the strength to speak.

I told her what I saw.

Ell knew I was coming home early from the conference. She knew I wanted to surprise Vic. And I think she already knew what I had walked into. But she waited. She let me say it in my own time, in my own broken pieces.

Ell... she and Mark were lying in our bed... how could I have been so naive... so stupid...

The bed where she swore she loved me. The bed where she promised me forever. She brought our friend into it. Our best friend. The man who helped us move. The man who made jokes at dinner about being our third wheel. The man who hugged me at my birthday and told me I was lucky.

I imagined them laughing about me. I imagined the things they must have said. How pathetic I must have looked in their stories.

I was going to propose to her, Ell...

My voice cracked. I couldn't finish the sentence. I couldn't say the rest. What if she had said yes? What then? The thought was too heavy to hold. It still is.

Ell didn't speak. She listened. She listened to my story as it came out in fragments, out of order, incomplete. She cried with me. And that was all I needed. That was everything.

As the days passed, Ell did everything she could to keep Vic away from me. She didn't let her come near me. She didn't let her find me. She stood between me and the woman who destroyed me like a wall I didn't know I had.

My mother, meanwhile, went to the apartment and packed up my things. She brought them to her place. She didn't want me to have to go back there. She didn't want me to see Vic again. And I wasn't afraid of that meeting—not exactly—but I had no desire to see her. None.

What I hated most was myself. Because even after everything, some part of me kept trying to find my own fault in it. What did I do wrong? What did I miss? How did I push her into his arms? I knew it was a lie. I knew it wasn't my fault. But the mind does terrible things when it's trying to survive. And even though it was unbearable to admit, I still felt something for her. I wouldn't call it love. Not anymore. But it was something. Something that might have made me consider giving her another chance. Something that whispered: maybe she deserves to explain. Maybe you owe her that.

But my brain knew better. My mother knew better. Ell knew better.

When my head started to weaken, they became the voice of reason. They held the line I couldn't hold myself.

I scroll to my mother's name and press call. She answers on the first ring.

"Hey, good morning."

"Good morning," I say.

"Are you ready?"

I close my eyes.

"I'm not sure."

"Dana. We talked about this."

"I know."

A pause. I can hear her breathing on the other end. I can picture her standing in her kitchen, holding a cup of coffee, her brow furrowed the way it does when she's worried but doesn't want to show it.

"I promise you," she says, "it will be better."

I don't answer. I'm thinking about what she said. About whether I believe her.

"Dana. Trust me."

My mother is the only person in the world who has never betrayed me. Well—her and Ell. But my mother is different. My mother chose me. She chose me when my father walked away because I love women. She chose me when I was teenage girl and terrified and convinced that no one would ever love me again. She chose me over and over, in a hundred small ways, in ways I didn't even notice until I was old enough to understand. She fought for me when no one else would.

In all of this pain, she hasn't talked much. Neither has Ell. They've just listened. They've just been there. And slowly, they've been pulling me back into life. It was theater, once every two weeks. Then a walk to the store. Then a walk in the park. Then a movie. Then apartment listings. Then job listings. And even though all of it felt like too much, I knew I needed it. I needed something new. Something scary. Something challenging. Something that would shake me awake.

Ell applied for the professor position at Columbia on my behalf. I had been staring at the application for days, opening it, closing it, telling myself I would do it tomorrow. She got tired of waiting and did it for me. I was angry at first. Then I was grateful. Then I cried.

My mother scheduled the apartment viewing because I couldn't decide if I even deserved more than this hotel room.

I owe them both everything.

"I'll be in front of the apartment in half an hour," I say.

I hang up before she can respond.

I get ready quickly. I call a taxi and give the driver the address.

The apartment is in a good part of the city, close to the university. It's on the top floor of a modern building—glass, steel, clean lines. The kind of building I would have designed myself. It has large windows that let in an enormous amount of light, and a terrace that wraps around the corner of the building, big enough for a table and chairs and maybe a small garden. The inside is open—living room, kitchen, and dining area all in one space. Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. A small office.

I walk through the empty rooms slowly. My footsteps echo against the bare floors. The walls are white. The windows are spotless. Everything smells like fresh paint and new beginnings.

I think about how long it will take me to make this space my own. To give it a personal touch. To walk in and feel like I'm home.

My phone rings. It pulls me out of my thoughts.

Mom.

"Hey, did you get there?"

"Yes, I'm outside. Come down—the van with your things is here. We'll need help carrying everything in."

It takes about an hour to bring everything upstairs. The movers are kind and fast, and my mother directs them like a general. That goes in the kitchen. No, not there—there. The books go in the study. Careful with that box, it has glass in it.

When they finish, I stand in the middle of the living room, surrounded by boxes, and I feel something I haven't felt in a long time. Not happiness. Not peace. But something close to it. Something like possibility.

I'm about to close the door when Ell appears in the doorway.

"Hel. Sorry I'm late."

She's holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a framed picture in the other. She's wearing a bright yellow dress and sunglasses pushed up into her hair, and she looks like she just walked out of a magazine.

"Here," she says, handing me the wine and the frame.

I look at the picture. It's us. Her and me, during our student days. We're sitting on the steps of a university building, laughing at something off-camera. She has short, messy hair and a cigarette between her fingers. I have long dark hair and a coffee cup in my hands. We look impossibly young. Impossibly careless. Impossibly happy.

"Find a good place for it," she says.

Then she walks past me into the apartment and starts inspecting everything. The bedroom. The terrace. The bathroom. The kitchen. She runs her fingers along the windowsill. She opens the closet doors. She nods approvingly at the empty bookshelves.

Finally, she flops onto the couch and lets out a long, dramatic sigh.

"Heavy night?" I ask.

"Don't ask."

We both laugh.

I pour us each a glass of wine, and then the three of us—me, Ell, and my mother—start unpacking. We clean. We organize. We put things on shelves. We break down empty boxes and stack them by the door. By the time we finish, we're exhausted. The wine is long gone. We sit together on the couch, staring at the empty bottle, and I think all three of us are wishing there was one more glass each.

"You know," I say quietly, "in these four months... this is the longest I've managed to go without thinking about what happened. And I know I haven't said it, but... thank you. Both of you. For being here. For all of it."

My mother shakes her head.

"Dana, you don't have to thank us."

Ell doesn't say anything. She just looks at me with so much love in her eyes that it makes my throat tighten. Then she wraps her arms around me. She kisses the top of my head.

"I'm here," she says. "For everything."

"I know," I whisper.

Ell leaves soon after. At the door, she turns back.

"I've got a lot of work tomorrow. I need to finish up that thing with your project."

"I'm sorry I haven't been useful," I say.

She tilts her head.

"You're always useful. Don't apologize. I can't wait for you to get back to your projects. I miss my best architect."

"I hope it'll be soon."

"It will."

We say goodbye, and she's gone.

My mother and I are alone.

"I'll be leaving soon too," she says. "Do you want me to help with anything else?"

I look at her.

"Can you stay?"

She doesn't hesitate.

"Of course."

We lie down together on the bed—the only piece of furniture that's fully assembled. I curl up against her like a child, my head on her chest, her arm around me. She smells like lavender and coffee. She feels warm. Safe. Like home.

I breathe in deeply.

"Everything will be okay, my love," she says softly. "Trust me. I'm here."

"I know, Mom," I whisper. "I know."

And then, for the first time in four months, I fall asleep without fighting it.

I don't dream about Vic.

I don't dream at all.