The small apartment was bathed in the dim, amber glow of a single lamp, a stark contrast to the cold, clinical brightness of Julian's penthouse. The rain had slowed to a rhythmic tapping against the windowpane, a sound that usually comforted Clara, but tonight it felt like a countdown.
Mia stood by the door, adjusting the collar of her crisp hotel uniform. She looked sharp, professional, and entirely too fierce for a graveyard shift at a reception desk. Her eyes, however, kept darting back to Clara, who sat huddled on the edge of her bed, her frame looking smaller than usual beneath a thick wool blanket.
"I hate leaving you tonight," Mia whispered, her voice uncharacteristically soft. She crossed the room, sitting beside Clara and taking her hand. "I feel like I should call in sick and just stay here with a bucket of ice cream and a baseball bat, just in case that idiot decides to show his face."
Clara managed a weak, watery smile. "I'll be fine, Mia. You need the shift. And besides, Julian won't come here. He made it very clear that he's 'ascended' past this neighborhood."
Mia snorted, a sharp sound of derision. She hesitated for a moment, her expression shifting into something more serious, more protective.
She squeezed Clara's fingers. "Hey. I have to ask. Because I know how persuasive that snake can be, and I know how much you loved him. Tell me… tell me you didn't trade your virginity to that fool. Tell me he didn't take that from you, too."
Clara looked down at her lap, her thumb instinctively rubbing the bare skin where her engagement ring used to sit. The skin was still red, still marked by the phantom weight of a promise that had been a lie.
"No," Clara said, her voice steadying. "I didn't. I'm… I'm lucky, I guess. I held onto it. I really believed it was something meant for the wedding night. I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted to give him something that no one else had."
She let out a hollow, jagged breath. "He insisted, Mia. Every weekend. Every time we were alone, he'd start pushing, telling me that I was being 'archaic' and that 'normal couples' didn't wait. He made me feel like I was broken because I wanted to wait. He even told me once that my 'stubbornness' was the reason he felt distant."
Mia's face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated disgust. She stood up, pacing the small span of the bedroom. "No wonder! No wonder he did what he did! He isn't a man, Clara; he's a pervert. He didn't want a wife; he wanted a trophy he could use whenever he felt like it. He was probably cheating on you for months because he couldn't wait for a 'holy' moment. He's a bottom-feeder who doesn't deserve the dirt under your shoes."
Mia stopped her pacing and knelt in front of Clara, forcing her friend to look her in the eye. "Listen to me. That 'stubbornness'? That was your intuition. That was your soul protecting itself from a man who didn't deserve a single piece of you. You didn't lose your virginity to him, and thank God for that, because now he has nothing left of you. He has his memories of your kindness, which he'll eventually realize he can't live without, but he doesn't own a single part of your body."
Mia checked her watch and sighed, standing up to grab her bag. "I have to go. But I want you to repeat after me: I am beautiful."
Clara looked away, her bottom lip trembling. "Mia, please…"
"Say it, Clara. Because that woman in the bed? She's a mannequin. She's hollow. You have a soul that can light up a room, and you are beautiful. Not 'beautiful for a plus-sized girl.' Just beautiful. Period."
"I am beautiful," Clara whispered, more to appease her friend than because she believed it.
"Louder tomorrow," Mia promised, blowing her a kiss. "Don't worry about a thing. Get some sleep. I'll be back at dawn with donuts. I love you."
The click of the front door echoed through the apartment, followed by the heavy thud of the deadbolt. Suddenly, the silence rushed in, filling the spaces where Mia's protective energy had been.
Clara turned off the lamp.
In the darkness, the apartment felt cavernous. She pulled the duvet up to her chin, but the fabric felt cold. Her mind, no longer tethered to conversation, began to drift back—back to the penthouse, back to the way Julian's hair looked when he laughed, back to the feeling of his hand in hers when they had signed the lease on their first office space.
A sob caught in her throat. She tried to think of the insults, tried to conjure the image of Sasha to fuel her anger, but all she could feel was the crushing weight of the loneliness. She had no mother to call. No father to sit silently with. Julian had been her anchor, her entire social circle, her "found family."
She rolled onto her side, burying her face into the pillow. The scent of her own lavender laundry detergent hit her, and she remembered how Julian had complained that the smell was "too grandmotherly."
Was I really a burden? she wondered, the thought spiraling in the dark. If I had just given him what he wanted... if I had been thinner... would he still be here?
The pillow grew damp beneath her cheek. She wept quietly, her body shaking with the rhythm of her grief. She felt like a discarded object, a "charity case" that had finally been dropped.
The darkness of the apartment was not the peaceful kind; it was a heavy, suffocating blanket that seemed to press the very air out of Clara's lungs. Every time she closed her eyes, the image of the bedroom door swinging open replayed like a jagged film strip, flickering with the sight of Julian's arched back and that woman's mocking smirk.
Sleep was a cruel joke. Her mind was too loud, a chaotic gallery of "what ifs" and "whys."
Trembling, Clara reached for her phone on the nightstand. Her thumb hovered over the screen, glowing bright and clinical in the pitch-black room. She knew she shouldn't. Mia had told her to delete everything, to scrub him from her digital life as if he had never existed. But Clara was an orphan; her entire life was a collection of things she had lost, and she wasn't ready to let the last three years vanish into the ether just yet.
She opened her gallery.
The first photo that popped up was from only two weeks ago. They were at a bridal boutique. Clara wasn't in the frame—she had been too self-conscious to let him take a photo of her in the dress—but Julian was there, caught in a candid reflection of the mirror. He was looking at his watch, an expression of mild boredom on his face. At the time, she had thought he was just tired from work. Now, she realized he was counting the seconds until he could get away from her.
She scrolled back further.
There was a photo from last Christmas. They were standing in front of a giant, glittering tree at the mall. Clara was wearing a bright red sweater that Julian had told her made her look "festive," but now she remembered the way he had stepped slightly away from her just as the timer went off, as if he didn't want their bodies to touch in the frame. She looked at her own face in the photo—her cheeks were flushed, her smile wide and guileless. She looked so happy. She looked so loved.
"You liar," she whispered into the empty room, her voice cracking. "How could you smile like that if you hated looking at me?"
She scrolled again. Hundreds of photos.
A selfie of them at a park. Her head was resting on his shoulder. He wasn't looking at the camera; he was looking off into the distance, his jaw set.
A photo of a dinner she had cooked for his birthday. She had spent ten hours on a five-course French meal. The photo showed the beautifully plated steak, but she remembered how he had barely finished half of it, complaining that the sauce was "too heavy" and that he needed to watch his waistline even if she didn't watch hers.
Then she found the "anniversary" folder.
Two years ago, they had gone to a small lake house. In these photos, Julian looked different. Or maybe she was just imagining it. They were sitting on a pier, the sunset casting a golden, forgiving glow over everything. In one shot, he was actually looking at her. He was tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
Clara zoomed in on his eyes in that photo. She searched for the disgust. She searched for the "burden" he had claimed she was. But all she saw was a man playing a role. Had he been acting even then? Had the last three years been nothing but a long-form performance of a man waiting for a better lead actress?
The tears began to fall again, hot and fast, splashing onto the cold glass of the phone screen. Each drop magnified a different part of the image—his hand, his smile, the engagement ring that had once been the center of her world.
She remembered the day that photo was taken. He had told her that she was his "anchor." He had said that in a world of shallow people, her heart was the only thing that felt real.
"If I was your anchor, why did you cut the rope?" she sobbed, pulling the phone to her chest and curling into a ball.