I stared at the ceiling at 3 a.m., wondering if she was sleeping, if she was dreaming, if she was thinking of me at all—or if she had finally, finally learned to stop.
One night, drunk out of my mind on the whiskey I’d sworn off a year ago, I found myself outside her apartment again.
The world spun.
I leaned against the door, forehead pressed to the wood, whispering her name.
“Brittany… baby, please… just let me—” My voice broke on a sob I didn’t know was coming. “I can’t—I can’t do this without you.”
The door stayed silent.
I slid down to the floor, crumpling like a man who’d run out of ways to stand. I sat there for hours, maybe longer, until Sylvia cracked the door open just enough to slip through, crouching in front of me with a look that made my throat tighten.
“Ace,” she said softly, “this isn’t helping.”
I let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “I know.”
She put a hand on my shoulder, fingers light but grounding. “Go home. Please. She needs space.”
I closed my eyes, swallowing the bile in my throat. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
“She knows.”
“Tell her I love her.”
“She knows that too.”
But knowing and forgiving, I was learning, were oceans apart.
---
The days kept coming.
Brittany turned twenty-eight, and I watched her from across the café, from behind my coffee cup, heart thudding like a war drum in my chest.
She was radiant.
There was no other word for it. Confident, beautiful, with a quiet strength that made my chest ache.
And me?
I was thirty-five, nearly thirty-six, staring at her like a man who had wasted his best years on fear and now realized too late that he was standing on the wrong side of the finish line.
I watched as she laughed with friends, as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, as she leaned back in her chair and smiled at something Sylvia whispered in her ear.
And every part of me screamed: That’s mine.
But she was no longer mine.
---
One evening, I sat in my car outside her apartment, watching the lights flicker on in her window, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white.
“God,” I whispered into the dark, voice shaking. “What do I do? How do I fix this? Please…”
I hit the steering wheel once, twice, my breath coming in shallow gasps.
When I stumbled out of the car, I almost tripped over my own feet as I made my way to her door. My hands shook as I knocked, then knocked again, panic clawing up my throat.
