Page 12 of Ashes of Us
She'd blocked me.
The reality of that settled in my chest like smoke that wouldn’t clear. I stood up and paced to the kitchen, needing to move, needing to do something with my hands. I opened the fridge without thinking and the light flickered on, catching on a few slices of cake still sitting on the middle shelf. They were wrapped in cling film, the labels written in Piper’s looping handwriting. The ink had started to blur, but I could still tell which was which.
She’d always been meticulous like that.
I closed the fridge and pressed my forehead against the cool metal door, trying to breathe.
The apartment was full of her. Everywhere I looked, there was something that reminded me she was gone. Her running shoes by the front door, the ones she never remembered to put away. Her coffee mug in the sink from yesterday morning, still with a lipstick print on the rim. The wedding binder on the coffee table, resting beside a stack of wedding planning magazines, pages dog-eared and covered in her neat handwriting.
I walked over and picked up the top one. She'd circled centerpiece options in purple pen, written "too expensive" next to half of them and "maybe?" next to the others. There was a Post-it note stuck to one page:
Ask Liam about burgundy vs. navy for groomsmen ties.
The wedding was five weeks away. Just over a month until two hundred people were supposed to show up and watch us get married. My parents had contributed eight thousand dollars. Her parents had given ten. We'd paid deposits on everything: the venue, the catering, the photographer. My mom had been texting me all week about the rehearsal dinner, asking if we'd decided between the Italian place or the steakhouse.
Everyone still thought we were getting married.
Everyone except Piper.
I dropped the magazine back on the table and sank onto the couch, running my hands through my hair. How had I let it get this far? How had four months of... what? Stupidity? Weakness? How had four months of sneaking around destroyed six years?
It had started after a bad call. Three-alarm fire, residential building, and we'd pulled two kids out but couldn't get to their mom in time. I'd been shaken up, we all were, and a bunch of us had gone to McGinty's afterward to decompress. Jenna was new to the station, barely three months in, and she'd been quiet during the debrief but she'd come to the bar anyway.
Piper had been working late that night—grading papers, prepping for parent-teacher conferences, doing the thousand little things she always had on her list. I'd texted her that I was grabbing a drink with the crew and she'd sent back a heart emoji and told me to be safe.
Jenna had sat next to me and asked if I was okay. Actually listened when I talked about the call, about how I kept seeing that woman's face, about how sometimes this job just got under your skin. Piper would have listened too, but Piper wasn't there.
One drink had turned into three. Jenna's hand on my arm had felt warm and steady. When she'd kissed me in the parking lot, I'd told myself it was just the adrenaline, just the aftermath of a shitty day, just one time.
But it hadn't been just one time.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table and I grabbed it, hoping?—
It was Jenna.
Are you okay? I've been worried about you.
I stared at the text, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. I should just delete it. I should block her number and never talk to her again. She was the reason I'd lost everything.
But she wasn't, was she? I was the reason. I'd made every choice that led to Piper walking out that door.
Before I could decide what to say, my phone buzzed again.
Can I come over? I think we should talk.
My thumb kept hovering over the keyboard, but I couldn't figure out what to type.Yesfelt wrong.Nofelt worse. I didn't know what I wanted, didn't know what I should want.
I set the phone down without responding.
For twenty minutes, I sat there on the couch, staring at nothing. The apartment was too quiet. Too full of Piper and too empty of her at the same time. I kept seeing her face in that doorway, kept hearing the crash of the cupcakes hitting the floor.
The doorbell rang, and I knew who it was before I opened the door.
Jenna stood in the hallway, still in her workout clothes. Leggings and a tank top, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked worried, her eyes searching my face like she was checking for damage. Then she glanced past me into the apartment, quick and nervous.
"Is she… is Piper here?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"No," I said. "She left last night."
