it.

Then one rainy evening I saw her in her side yard trying to steady a ladder under a sagging gutter while the wind shoved water sideways.

I jogged over before I could think better of it, took the ladder from her, and made her stand in the garage while I reset the bracket.

When I came in dripping, she handed me a towel and looked more upset than grateful.

‘People talk on this street,’ she said.

I leaned against her workbench and waited.

She stared past me at the rain.

‘My ex left me for someone in her twenties.

Do you know what this would look like to everyone? To Brett? An older woman in the same neighborhood suddenly losing her mind over a younger guy who should know better.’

I said, ‘What matters is whether that’s what this is.’

Her jaw tightened.

‘I am not going to be somebody’s revenge fantasy.

Or somebody’s phase.

I already survived one man making me feel ridiculous for trusting the wrong thing.’

That landed hard because it wasn’t really about me.

It was about all the damage that got there first.

I stepped closer anyway.

‘Then don’t ask me what everyone else would call it.

Ask me what I call it.’

She looked up at me, and for a second I thought she might let me kiss her.

Headlights swept across the garage door.

She turned immediately.

So did I.

Brett’s truck had pulled in.

Dinner that night was one of the most uncomfortable ten-minute stretches of my life.

Brett came in carrying a bag of groceries for his mom, saw me standing in her kitchen with rain still drying on my shirt, and got very still.

He was polite, but only on the surface.

I left before anybody could force the moment into words.

He followed me out to the driveway.

He said, ‘I like you, Jake.

Don’t make this weird.’

I told him nothing had happened.

He held my gaze and said, ‘That’s not what I asked.’

I didn’t sleep much after that.

For the next three weeks I stayed away unless she texted first, and she barely did.

The space between our houses felt wider than the street.

I hated how quickly my routine had reshaped around someone I wasn’t even sure I was allowed to want.

Then one afternoon I saw moving boxes stacked on her dining room table through the front window.

A few days later there was a folder on her passenger seat from a real estate office.

I caught her on the porch that evening and asked whether she was selling.

She crossed her arms, looked out at the street, and said her sister in San Antonio had a guest room.

She said maybe starting over somewhere else would be easier than staying in a house that still smelled like old memories and sat one fence away from a mistake she was trying not to make.

I don’t think I’ve ever had my chest go cold that fast.

‘You don’t get to decide for me what I can survive,’ I said.

She flinched like I’d raised my voice, even though I hadn’t.

‘This isn’t just about you.’

‘I know that.

But stop saying no on my behalf.’

She looked tired then.

Not dramatic, not fragile,