just tired in the way people get when they’ve been editing themselves for too long.

‘I spent twenty-four years being somebody’s wife before I was a person again,’ she said.

‘Then I spent two years being the woman people pitied.

I don’t know how to do this without getting crushed by it.’

I wanted to tell her I would stand there and catch every ugly part of it if I had to.

I didn’t.

She wasn’t asking for promises yet.

She was asking whether I was real.

A week later, just after nine at night, she texted me one sentence: Hot water just died.

Are you awake?

I was at her house in three minutes.

The problem was in the basement again.

Same weak yellow bulb.

Same smell of concrete and copper.

Same two of us in a room that had already changed the shape of things once before.

I checked the water heater and found the issue fast, but neither of us was really focused on the part in front of us.

She stood near the stairs in a navy sweater with her hands wrapped around her elbows like she was trying to hold herself steady.

When I stood up and told her it was fixed, she didn’t move.

‘I tried to stop thinking about you,’ she said.

I waited.

She swallowed once.

‘I tried to be sensible.

I tried to care more about what Brett would think than about the fact that I haven’t felt this awake in years.’

I set the wrench down on top of the water heater so carefully it almost made me laugh.

Then I walked toward her and said, ‘Tell me to leave, and I will.’

She didn’t.

She closed the distance herself.

The first kiss was not neat or practiced or strategic.

It was the kind of kiss people reach for after talking themselves out of something for too long.

My hand found the railing behind her.

Her fingers curled in my shirt.

When we broke apart, both of us were breathing like we’d run somewhere.

She rested her forehead briefly against my chest and whispered, ‘I am done hiding from my own life.’

I said, ‘Then let’s stop hiding.’

She wanted to tell Brett alone.

I told her I would back whatever made it easier, but I wasn’t going to sneak around like I was ashamed.

In the end she asked me to come for dinner the following Sunday.

I knew before I parked that it was going to be rough.

Brett was already there when I walked in.

The table was set.

Kora had clearly spent all day trying to make the room look normal, which only made the tension sharper.

We got through maybe six minutes of salad before she put her fork down and said she needed to tell him something.

She said she and I had feelings for each other.

She said nothing had happened until after she had tried very hard to make sure it wouldn’t.

She said she wasn’t asking for approval, but she was asking for honesty.

Brett looked at her first.

Then he looked at me.

I saw the exact moment anger won.

‘Are you kidding me?’ he said.

‘Him?’

Kora’s voice stayed steady.

‘Yes.’

He turned to me.

‘So what was all