You Loved Her

Laura met his eyes, searching for defiance or self-pity and finding only exhaustion and the barest glint of shame.

"Divorce papers?" she asked, the syllables catching in her dry throat, the question feeling enormous in the small kitchen.

He nodded once, the movement barely there, as if even that much acknowledgment required more energy than he could spare.

"Have you talked to a lawyer?" Laura asked, voice gentle but insistent, trying to anchor them both in something practical.

Drew exhaled a humorless breath, the sound rough and hollow, shoulders sagging as if the act itself had cost him.

"I've been a little busy," he said, the sarcasm brittle, his eyes flicking away, unwilling to let her see how close he was to breaking.

"Doing what?" Laura pressed, tilting her head, her voice both challenge and plea, needing him to name the thing that was swallowing him whole.

His gaze slid toward the bottle, lingering, almost apologetic, as if it were a confession he hoped she might miss.

Laura followed his gaze, her own eyes landing on the bottle with a heaviness that made her shoulders slump—the truth, unspoken, pulsed between them.

"Oh." The word came out small, a sigh of resignation, thin as tissue and just as easily torn.

Neither of them spoke. The silence thickened, filling the kitchen with a weight that pressed down on Laura’s chest, making it hard to breathe.

Outside, a car rolled slowly along the street, its tires humming against the damp pavement, headlights cutting brief golden lines through the darkness.

Its headlights swept across the kitchen wall, tracing warped rectangles of light over peeling paint and shadowed corners before slipping away again, leaving the room in a hush deeper than before.

Laura thought of the acceptance letter waiting in her email, the single word—Congratulations—still glowing in her mind like a secret she was almost afraid to touch.

That strange, brilliant sentence: a promise, a beginning, something pure and untouched by the shadows crowding this kitchen.

Congratulations. The word echoed, bright and improbable, in a place that felt built for disappointment.

It felt as though she’d crossed from one life into another during the drive here, the boundary marked not by celebration but by headlights, unanswered questions, and the taste of grief in the air.

She hadn’t even celebrated. The thought stung—a quiet ache at the back of her throat—reminding her how joy could shrink to fit the space you gave it.

Hadn't told anyone except her father, and even that had been more about relief than joy, more about proving she was still here than about what came next.

Hadn't bought cheap champagne. Hadn't called a friend or stood barefoot in the middle of her apartment, arms raised in triumph, letting herself believe she had done something real, something difficult and good.

Instead, she sat across from Drew Smith, watching him stare at a bottle as if it were the only thing in the room that might outlast them both. The moment felt fragile, a balance between leaving and staying she wasn't ready to upset.

Laura swallowed, the motion working painfully down her dry throat, every muscle in her body tense with the effort of not rushing to fill the silence.

"Have you eaten today?" she asked, voice gentler than before, careful as if the wrong word might send him retreating again.

He frowned, lines deepening in his brow, as if the question was too complicated to answer or too distant to matter.

"That is not an answer," Laura said, a faint smile tugging at her lips, trying to coax him back to the present one small demand at a time.

"I'm not hungry," he replied, the words sounding both defensive and lost, as if hunger had become irrelevant in the wake of everything else.

"When did you last eat?" she pressed, her gaze steady, refusing to be dismissed.

"I don't know," he admitted, voice cracking just slightly at the edges, a confession that held more than just skipped meals.

"Yesterday?" she prompted, searching for any foothold in the slippery timeline of his days.

He shrugged, shoulders rising and falling, the gesture heavy and slow, as if even that small movement required more effort than he could spare.

"Drew," Laura said, her voice edged with worry and a thread of command she borrowed from her father.

"I don't know, Laura." The words landed between them, heavy and sharp, the kind of honesty that left marks.

The irritation returned, louder this time, riding on exhaustion and the unspoken plea to stop digging where it hurt.

"I don't know when I ate. I don't know when I slept. I don't know what fucking day it is. Is that what you wanted?" The words tumbled out, raw and jagged, a barricade made of frustration and pain, his voice rising before breaking.

Laura went quiet, her hands curling into fists in her lap, eyes burning with the effort of holding back what she wanted to say.

Drew breathed hard through his nose, shoulders hunched, jaw clenched tight as he wrestled with the surge of anger and regret that threatened to tip him over.

Then his face changed—a flicker of something in his eyes, the anger draining away, leaving only exhaustion in its wake.

Not dramatically—no grand collapse, just a slow unraveling, the kind that left him looking smaller, older, impossibly fragile.

The anger collapsed, folding in on itself, replaced by a quiet resignation that settled over the room like dust.

His eyes dropped to the tabletop, lashes shadowing his cheeks, jaw slackening as if every word had taken something from him.

"I don't know," he repeated, but this time the words were barely more than a whisper, trailing out into the hush of the kitchen.

Much softer, a note of surrender that stung more than any shout ever could.

Laura looked at him, her heart clenching, unsure whether to reach out or stay perfectly still.

There it was again—grief swelling up beneath his eyes, the old redness, the rawness alcohol couldn't quite disguise.

That swollen redness, pooling beneath his lashes, evidence of nights spent holding back tears until he couldn’t anymore.