"You don't just come back from what you did," she said, voice low now, like a final curse. "You'll spend the rest of your life trying to prove you're not that man anymore. And she'll spend just as long wondering if she can ever believe you again."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Because she was right.
She turned away then, arms folded tight across her chest, like she was holding herself together.
Silence stretched between us.
Then she turned her back on me and said, cold and final: "Take your shit. And go."
So I did. But her words followed me all the way out the door. And they still haven't let me go.
I didn't go back to my apartment. I couldn't.
Too many shadows waited for me there—shadows shaped like her laughter echoing off the kitchen walls, her favorite coffeemug still on the rack, the ghost of her handwriting on sticky notes stuck to the fridge.
It wasn't just a space. It was a museum of our beginnings.
Memories clung to the furniture like dust I couldn't wipe away—her laughter when we built that crooked Ikea shelf together, the way she kissed me with paint on her nose and a smudge of it on her cheek. The nights we stayed up late naming future kids we weren't ready for.
That apartment had once felt like home.
Now it felt like punishment.
So I drove to Grandma's. She didn't look surprised to see me.
"You look like roadkill," she muttered, pulling me into a tight hug. "Get in before you get rained on more." I sat at her kitchen table while she reheated soup, clinging to the scent of thyme and something safe.
"I lost her," I said finally, my voice breaking.
She set the spoon down with a thud. "No. Youlefther. Big difference."
"I didn't mean to—"
"But you did. Intent does not erase impact. And now you've got to live with the mess you made." She sat down across from me, hands folded. "You're an idiot, Aaron. But you've always beenmyidiot." I cried like a kid. She let me.
Mom came later and sat on the edge of the guest bed, arms crossed like a disapproving angel.
"You were living with Selene?"
"I—yeah. For a while. Not anymore."
She shook her head slowly. "I don't get it. I don't getyou. You built a whole life with June. And the second it got hard, you ran back to the past like it had the answers."
"I was hurting, but I swear I love her" I said.
"So you threw her away like she meant nothing?"
her voice felt like knives. I could barely meet their eyes. "Instead of talking to yourfuture wife, you left her? How could you?"
I dragged my hands over my face, jaw clenched tight. "I don't know!" I snapped, voice breaking like I hated myself for not having more than that.
"Then figure it out," she said. "With help. Go to therapy. Get to the bottom of why you keep running from the hard parts. From love."
"I don't know if I can fix it." My voice came out smaller this time. Ashamed.
"Maybe you can't," came the reply. "But youoweit to her to try. You don't get to hurt someone and walk away because it's hard. And you owe it toyourselfto stop being the man who keeps ruining good things because you're too scared to bleed for them."
Then it happened two days later. I was sitting on the couch, trying to make myself eat some soup Grandma left out. My phone rang.
