“Yeah,” he said. “That’s June.”
Russell smiled down at the photo. “We met when I was still in college. I was working retail. She came in to return a rice cookershe didn’t need. I upsold her to the extended warranty, told myself I’d marry her by the time it expired.”
Dean felt something tight in his chest. “Did you?”
Russell grinned. “Beat it by two weeks.”
Dean looked at his sandwich.
He’d imagined himself and Fiona growing older together.
Laughter in tiny kitchens. Long drives with her feet on the dash. Her cardigans turning into shawls. Her strawberry socks replaced by orthopedic ones with even dumber fruit on them.
In his dreams, they were stilltogether.
He was still hers.
Dean stared down at his phone on the table. His lock screen was still a picture of Fiona.
Dean rubbed a hand over his face.
He could’ve been listening to people like Russell. Instead, he’d been trying to keep up with Cam and Ava and Roxanne. He'd laughed at their sarcasm, mirrored their detachment, mistook their clever cruelty for intelligence. For power.
He’d joined their table, thinking it made him someone.
But the truth was, thebest person in his lifehad never needed to sit at the cool table to prove her worth.
He thought about how she’d looked that night at the awards dinner, her smile so bright before it broke. And how he’d stood on that stage, basking in applause, while she sat in the crowd—bleeding in silence.
Dean swallowed hard.
Russell was saying something about the next Dodgers series, but it blurred into background noise.
He wasn’t thinking about baseball anymore.
He was thinking about Fiona, alone in Emma’s guest room, pulling a blanket over her knees and writing words for strangers who actually listened. He was thinking about how she’d asked him,“Do you even like me?”
But he’d always liked her. It had been himself he hadn’t liked.
Dean stood abruptly.
Russell blinked. “Everything alright?”
Dean shook his head slowly. “No.”
He left the break room and headed straight back to his desk.
There was work to do—real work.
For Fiona. For the classroom that shaped her. For the kids she believed in. For the version of himself that might, someday, be worthy of her again.
Even if she never knew.
Even if he never got her back.
Because loving someone meant you didn’t get to make them a punchline.
And if he’d finally learned that too late?
