Page 76 of Your Place or Mine

“Terracotta,” I said. “Bold.”

“Unfortunate,” she corrected, grinning. “And for the record, I didn’t even like the guy that much. But sometimes it’s not aboutthem, you know? Sometimes it’s about everything you’ve been holding in that decides,welp, now’s my moment.”

I nodded slowly.

She got it.

She knew nothing about my mom, Callum, or the mess inside me—but she understoodenough.

And sure, I even had a dud of an ex I needed to shake loose, but he was the least of it. I’d learned a lot about that relationship. When my mom got sick, he became absent, and I didn’t have enough energy to care.

“You want tea?” she asked after a moment. “I brought some just in case.”

She pulled a thermos out of her oversized tote bag like Mary Poppins meets emotional support barista.

I blinked. “You carry tea around with you?”

She shrugged. “Only when I have a weird feeling. I saw your light on and the door cracked, and I don’t know… something told me you weren’t okay.”

She handed me a small thermos and I accepted it with both hands, grateful for the warmth.

It smelled like chamomile and something sweet—maybe vanilla?

“I wasn’t okay,” I admitted, voice soft.

“Want to talk about it?”

I shook my head, then paused. “Actually… yeah. I do.”

I told her about the paint and how it reminded me of starting over. I told her about how grief sneaks up on me—how it doesn’t knock, it just shows up and settles in my chest like a squatter, and the next thing I know, I can’t function.

I told her about missing my mom.

Not the dramatic stuff, but the quiet things—the way she folded her dish towels a certain way and hummed old Abba songs when she baked. The way she always left handwritten notes in the lunch bag I brought to work, even when we lived together after college. At the time, I cringed, and now they were treasures.

“I didn’t cry after the funeral,” I said, voice cracking. “Not really. I just… packed up her things. Called the lawyer. Sold the car. I handled it. I wasfine.”

Riley didn’t interrupt. She just sipped her tea and let me keep going.

“I came here thinking this would help me move forward. I thought throwing myself into something new would give me purpose. And it has… in some ways. But sometimes it feels like all I’ve done is carve out a quiet place to feel the weight of what I lost.”

I looked down at the thermos in my hands.

“Until today,” I added. “I just… broke.”

Riley reached out and squeezed my arm. “It’s okay to break.”

“I know. But I hate it.”

“Of course you do. Breaking sucks. But you know what’s worse? Pretending you’re not already in pieces.”

That got me.

Tears welled again, fresh and hot, but I didn’t apologize this time.

I just let them fall.

She sat with me through the silence that followed, the kind of silence you only get between women who know what it’s like to carry too much.

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