Page 48 of Ashes of Us
My apartment was exactly how I'd left it this morning—mattress on the floor in the bedroom, card table with two folding chairs, boxes I still hadn't unpacked stacked against the wall. I'd been living here for months and it still looked temporary. Like I was ready to run at any moment.
I paced to the window and kooked down at Main Street. There was a couple walking past with shopping bags, life going through the rhythms of a normal Thursday afternoon. The world hadn't stopped just because mine had tilted sideways.
I turned away from the window and my eyes landed on the closet.
The boxes were still in there. The ones Maya had retrieved from the apartment last year while I hid in her guest room eating ice cream and crying. She'd brought back my clothes, my books, the stand mixer Liam's parents had given us for Christmas two years ago.
And one cardboard box labeled "Piper's stuff" in Maya's handwriting. All the things Maya thought I might want someday, as well as the things I'd told her to just throw in a box because I couldn't look at them yet.
I hadn't opened it. Not once in the year since Maya had brought it.
I walked to the closet and pulled it out.
The cardboard was dusty, and the packing tape Maya had used was starting to peel at the corners. I sat down on the floor with it between my knees and just stared at it for a long moment.
This was stupid.Realstupid. I should throw it away. Hell, should have thrown it away months ago. And yet…
I peeled back the tape.
The wedding binder was on top. Three inches thick, bursting with magazine clippings and fabric swatches and my handwritten notes in the margins. I lifted it out and set it aside without opening it.
Underneath it was a framed photo from our engagement party. Liam's arm around my waist, both of us laughing at something his brother had said. I looked so happy. So stupidly, blindingly happy.
I set it face-down on the floor.
More photos. Our first apartment together. A camping trip where Liam had forgotten the tent poles and we'd slept in the car. Christmas morning two years ago, both of us in matching pajamas his mom had bought.
I kept pulling things out. A ticket stub from a concert. A birthday card he'd given me:
To my favorite person. Love you forever.
A coffee mug from the beach town where we'd spent our first vacation together.
Then, at the bottom, a small photo album.
I pulled it out slowly.
The cover was navy blue, worn at the corners. I opened it and there we were—in our early-twenties , standing outside his first apartment. He was in his fire academy uniform, grinning like he'd just won the lottery. I was in my student teaching clothes, skirt and cardigan, looking exhausted and happy.
We looked like kids.
I flipped the page. More photos from that first year. Halloween—him as a firefighter (obviously), and me as a cupcake. Thanksgiving at my parents' house. New Year's Eve, kissing at midnight in someone's cramped apartment.
Before the engagement. Before the wedding planning. Before Jenna.
When it was just us, figuring it out, stupidly in love.
I flipped another page. There we were at the beach, sunburned and grinning. At a dive bar playing pool. In my tiny apartment kitchen, him teaching me how to make his mom's pasta sauce.
God, we'd been happy.
Hadn't we?
The door to my apartment flew open and banged against the wall.
"Okay, what the actual fuck?” Maya stopped in the doorway, taking in the scene. Me on the floor. Photos spread around me like a crime scene. The wedding binder off to the side.
She looked at me, then at the photos, then back at me.
