Chapter 1

Mia had it all planned.

Four years with Noah deserved nothing less than perfect. The decorations. The dinner. The playlist she had spent days curating from memory every song that meant something to them. She had even managed to get his wine. Ginare. The kind that doesn’t sit on any shelf in this country, the kind you have to know someone who knows someone in Singapore to even find. It had cost her more than she was willing to admit and she had paid it without blinking because that is what you do for the person you love.

She had his anniversary gift in her bag. A Rolex. One million dollars. She had saved for months without telling a soul.

She let herself in with her spare key at noon. The house was quiet the way it was supposed to be. Noah had back to back client meetings and wouldn’t be home until evening. That was the plan. She would have everything ready before he walked through the door. Dinner. Decorations. Candles lit. The wine breathing on the table. Him walking into a home that said I love you in every direction he looked.

She went to the kitchen first. Set down the groceries. Started prepping ingredients with the focused energy of someone who had been looking forward to this for weeks. Put the food on low heat. Decided to get the decorations done while it cooked since she had hidden the materials upstairs in his room earlier in the week.

She was halfway up the stairs when she heard it.

A giggle.

She stopped.

My imagination. That was her first thought. The house plays tricks when it’s empty. She kept climbing.

Then she heard it again. Closer this time. Not imagination. 

Her feet slowed without her telling them to.

The moaning started before she reached the landing. Low at first. Then less low. The kind of sounds that carry through walls and closed doors and tell you everything you don’t want to know. She stood in the corridor outside his bedroom door and felt something cold move through her chest.

Nobody is supposed to be home.

She told herself it was the television. She told herself it was the neighbor. She told herself every reasonable thing a person tells themselves when the unreasonable truth is standing right in front of them wearing their worst fear as a face.

She bit her lip. She thought about the last time she and Noah had been like that together. She had to go back further than she wanted to.

She pushed the door open.

Noah. On his bed. With a woman underneath him.

She stood by the door and the world went very quiet.

Her first instinct and she was not proud of this was to pinch herself. She actually did it. Pressed her nails into the inside of her wrist because surely this was the kind of thing that only happened in bad dreams and dramatic movies and other people’s lives. Not hers. Not after four years. Not today of all days.

It wasn’t a dream.

They hadn’t noticed her yet. That detail lodged itself somewhere painful that they were so absorbed, so completely unbothered by the world outside that door, that she had been standing there long enough to pinch herself twice and neither of them had noticed someone was there.

Everything arrived at once.

Her father’s face the day he told her Noah wasn’t right for her. The way she had defended Noah in that conversation with a certainty that embarrassed her now. The weeks her father didn’t speak to her afterward. The way her mother had gone quiet instead of arguing, which she now understood was a different kind of concern. The recent months of Noah being too busy, too stressed, too tired, always a reason, always delivered with just enough affection to make her feel guilty for needing more. The conversations about marriage that he turned into other conversations so smoothly she had almost stopped noticing.

Almost.

“Noah.”

It came out small. Almost nothing. Her voice had made a decision her body hadn’t caught up with yet  to make itself very small, because small things don’t break the same way.

He turned.

She watched the color leave his face.

And then she saw her.

Allie.

Her best friend. Her person. The woman who had sat across from her at more dinners than she could count and said you are so lucky, you know that? Real love is rare. Her confidant. Her sister from another mother.

Now she understood why her mother hadn’t birthed her.

Now she understood why Allie has been behaving odd recently.

The tears came before she decided to cry. That was the thing about real pain it didn’t ask permission.

Noah scrambled up. Allie was already crying before she even found words. It was a mistake, it was the devil, it just happened, the kinds of explanations people reach for when the truth is too ugly to hand someone directly.

She turned and walked out before he could reach her.

Downstairs felt like a different world. Quieter. The food still on low heat. The wine on the counter breathing for a dinner that was never going to happen. She moved through all of it like someone walking through the remains of something. Picked up her Rolex from the table. Held it for a moment.

One million dollars. Months of saving. For a man currently at the top of the stairs with her best friend.

She put it in her bag. Picked up the ginare wine. Turned off the cooker because even in that moment some part of her was practical enough not to burn his house down, which was honestly more than he deserved.

He came down the stairs in nothing but his boxers.

He caught her at the door. His hand wrapped around her waist the way it always did, that specific grip, firm and warm and certain, the one that had always made her feel like the most important thing in whatever room they were in together. Her body responded before her mind could stop it. Four years of muscle memory. Four years of that hand meaning stay, I’ve got you, you’re safe.

She felt herself soften for some seconds.

Then she looked up at his face and behind him at Allie running down the stairs with mascara tracking down her cheeks and reality arrived like a door slamming shut.

This is what that hand has been doing.

She removed herself from his grip quickly.

“Don’t.”

It came out quietly but it was the first word she had said with her full voice. It surprised them both.

The doorbell rang.

She laughed. The kind that has no warmth in it, the kind that is just what happens when something is too absurd for tears.

“That should be our anniversary cake,” she said.

She opened the front door. The delivery man stood there with a white box and a confused expression. She looked at him and said: “You can have it.”

Then she walked to her car, started the engine, and drove until the house was gone from her mirrors.

She didn’t know where she was going.

She just knew she needed to be somewhere that didn’t smell like everything she had built falling down around her.

She ended up at a bar.

Of course she did.