by Elena Chiaruttini

Her heels, a lucky find from Macy’s Backstage, clicked along the sidewalk with a stubborn rhythm. They were new, but the left one let out a little squeak each time it struck the pavement. A thin, irritating sound that had followed all day. Eva had arrived at the office that morning, breathless and already exhausted from lack of sleep, and no matter how she shifted her foot inside the shoe, the damn thing kept squeaking. So it had become the soundtrack to her day.

Now, after her nine-to-five, she was walking home with her body on autopilot. Her legs knowing their way, her mind spinning. The air was cold and damp, and her hair bore the evidence: misshapen curls pushed upward, more combative than ever, indifferent to the forty-five minutes she had spent styling them before leaving the house.

She crossed the street distractedly, oblivious to the traffic around her, her mind entirely elsewhere. Today, Kelsey from work suggested her to pull back a little. To give Alec a little space and time to come back when he’d felt ready. The kind of advice that barely worked in high school.

Over the past year, Kelsey had appointed herself the audience for Eva’s marriage troubles, not out of generosity but because other people’s pain was juicy entertainment. Eva knew that. She was not that naïve. Still, she needed someone to vent to. Her friends were busy with kids, work, and god knows what else. Real friendship after forty often felt like a luxury people remembered fondly but no longer had time to maintain. Therapy was out of the question. Too expensive, and Eva was too picky to spend money on someone she might not even like. Might as well talk to Kelsey for free with the hope of things getting fixed soon.

The first time she broke at work, she arrived with swollen eyes and her mind feeling foggy. She felt caught off guard by nosy questions, disguised as altruism and concern, when they really hid nothing but the joy of gossip. Besides, Eva had never been good at lying, and she would often fall into oversharing followed by immediate regret.

“I’m having problems in my marriage,” she had said at last, her voice so thin it barely seemed to belong to her.

Kelsey had tilted her head with practiced sympathy. Eva had hated herself for the confession and then, just as quickly, forgiven herself. She was allowed a moment of weakness. And that one-time weakness soon became routine.

Still, the whole thing felt odd. This was not the life she had imagined for herself. She had grown up determined to be strong, independent, and selective. She had promised herself she would never settle, never end up like her mother, never choose a man over passion alone. She would choose well. A good man. Educated, stable and caring. The kind of man young people on social media would call a golden retriever boyfriend.

And yet, after only 5 years on from saying yes, the golden retriever had hardened into an English bulldog, planted on the couch after work, scrolling endlessly because he “needed to decompress after a long day”.

So today she had decided to pull back a little. Say less instead of forcing uncomfortable conversations.

 Yes, I became that lame, she thought.

The trees along the avenue started turning into the familiar landmarks. From the BART stop, it was a ten-minute walk to the house. Years ago, Alec used to wait for her at the 16th Mission Station in the car, often with takeout on the back seat, still warm in its paper bag. Chinese, Indian, Thai, you name it. The smell would fill the car so thickly it made her slightly nauseous, but she never said anything. She was just grateful for that act of care, for not making her walk home alone. Especially in winter, when it gets dark early. He hated the cold, so she’d let the windows stay shut.

Somewhere along the years, he had stopped coming.

Finally at home, she slid the rusty key into the lock and stepped inside.

Her husband was hunched over his phone, eating a snack, dropping crumbs onto the couch. A rugby match murmured in the background. Who said men can’t multitask?

Eva crossed the living room slowly, work bag still on her shoulder for a moment longer than necessary, giving him the chance to look up properly. To say something first or ask how her day was.

He glanced at her, then back at his phone.

The silence landed in her body like a weight. She suddenly remembered the squeaking shoe and she kicked them both off and let out a long breath, trying to channel all her frustration out with it. Then she turned and went to the bathroom.

Once there, she noticed the trash can was full. It was Tuesday, and the collection would come on Wednesday morning. The garbage under the kitchen sink was probably still full too. Taking it out was Alec’s responsibility.

She called, “Alec, you need to take out the trash.”

“I’ll do it later,” he called back. I’ll do it later. The most frequent sentence in their conversations lately, which were mostly about chores, like two roommates who don’t stand each other.

Eva closed the bathroom door and let herself cry, a short cry of stress that lasted only a

few seconds. She didn’t even have the energy for a full breakdown.

She began her religious skincare routine. Double cleanse. Toner. As she pressed the cotton pad, soaked in the promise of tightening her pores, Eva looked at herself in the mirror. She was still beautiful.

Through the bathroom wall, she heard the neighbors’ voices escalating into a burst of loud laughter. Eva barely had the time to fall into a cycle of negative thoughts, filled with comparisons, when her phone screen lit up.

An Instagram notification. Brennan_ has requested to follow you.

She stared at the name, and she had the feeling that her blood froze in her veins for a moment.

Eight years earlier, just two before meeting Alec, there had been Brennan. An intense chapter of her life. It had only lasted a year, on and off, but it carried a weight that could not be measured. A story of highs so high they felt unreal, and lows that would keep her in bed away from food for days when things weren’t going well.

Even now, Eva considered the breakup one of the bravest things she had ever done for her well-being and sanity.

It wasn’t Brennan’s first attempt to get her back.

Over the past years, he had resurfaced in intervals, but she never gave him a chance to reappear in her life. A follow request, always denied. Flowers were sent to her office a couple of times. He had been blocked on her phone for years. One time, already married to Alec, she got a message from reception saying a man was downstairs asking for her. She never went down.

There was passion with Alec too, but with more stability. More structure. A life that looked put together. A plan. And she took shelter in that and felt more in control.

Then everything seemed to crumble there as well. She had worked so hard to step away from her patterns, but tonight all of it felt like bullshit. What if she had made a huge mistake?

This time, she accepted the request before she could think herself back into her senses.

The first message came. Pleasantly surprised you accepted my follow request.

Eva locked the phone and set it face down on the bathroom counter as if that could undo what she had just done. She stayed there, looking at her reflection, breathing loudly through her nose.

When she picked up the phone again, there were three more messages.

Time felt different after that night. For the following two weeks, Eva felt a sense of safety and stomach butterflies, a sense of romantic coincidence. Talking after all that time, their conversations running smoothly, the understanding, the intimacy, the inside jokes. Familiarity and novelty at once. She felt alive and thrilled after a long time. She could disconnect from the farce of her marriage and feel seen just by opening her Instagram DMs.

He asked what she was reading, whether she was still into charity work, and whether she still took pictures. He remembered things she had forgotten he knew. Over the last year, without meaning to, she had become needy in ways she despised. Waiting for reactions, measuring silences. Tired all the time. Just unhappy. Sometimes she felt like a stranger to herself.

The more they talked, the more she felt something uncomfortable and undeniable rising in her.
She couldn’t help but feel a little silly, light-hearted, teenager in spirit.

They talked about their past and their present and her failing marriage. The way she abruptly broke up with him years ago. How, over time, he reflected on his mistakes and how he hadn’t been able to feel the same way for any other woman after her.

Until it happened and he asked her out for coffee.

Eva did not have any doubt, she wanted to go. She was left with no choice anyway. She would have eventually ended her marriage, but for the last year, she just felt paralyzed, almost in denial, hoping things would have gotten better and this was just what she needed to move toward it.

The Saturday they agreed for their first date, she woke up sweating. Of course she was alone in the bed. Alec would fall asleep on the couch most nights. She had guilt and a sense of nausea for breakfast. She repeated herself why she wasn’t a terrible person and wife, making mental lists of reasons why she should go. Finally, around 2 pm, she put on a blue cardigan, a long white skirt, ballerina flats, and wore her hair down. Just a little mascara, so she would not come on too strong.

They ended up choosing his place, so he sent her the address. It was a better option than a public place. She had to drive forty-five minutes. He lived in the South Bay, and traffic was particularly heavy that Saturday. They wanted to talk privately, catch up and she could not risk being seen at a coffee place too close to home.

She hesitated in the parking lot before getting out of the car.

For a few minutes, she stayed there with both hands on the steering wheel, replaying their story in her head, twisting her rings nervously. What had happened between them, what had gone wrong. But it all seemed far away now, blurred by time and flattened by distance. For some reason, in that moment, it was easier to remember the passion and the chemistry. The happiness. And not so much his jealousy, his anger, his silent treatments. Those issues were far away in the past, and maybe time and maturity had magically fixed them.

As she realized she was missing that feeling, the excitement, the anxiety, she also realized how much she missed feeling something. And feeling reciprocated.

Incoming call, Mom.

“Of course now,” Eva muttered to herself, but she answered. She always did.

“Hi mom, I don’t have much time. Yes all good. How are you. Mh mh. Yeah Alec’s good. Yeah of course we’re together today I’m just running a few errands, mom. We’ll talk later”.

For a moment, Eva pictured her mother, sitting at the kitchen table, alone. The house, quiet around her, the day stretching long and empty, filled with mistakes and regrets to rummage through. A woman who had raised a daughter on her own after years of abuse and after a man who eventually left. A woman who was meant to be an example of what not to become, and who had left traces that Eva still carried.

Eva shrugged both the guilt and the resentment from her shoulders and finally stepped out of the car. She walked to the door, double-checking the address on Google Maps as if she hadn’t memorized it, and rang the bell.

Brennan opened the door.

His smile was genuine and contagious, and he looked slightly older, but still so charming. He was clearly still going to the gym regularly. He was wearing jeans and a bright green sweater, making a great contrast with his tan skin tone.

“Hi,” he said, soft, almost disbelieving.

“Hi.”

She closed the door behind her and for a few seconds, they just looked at each other, both smiling, slightly embarrassed. She could feel the familiar smell of his skin even from only a few inches away. All the anticipation, the overthinking, the stress started to let go, and she finally felt she could release it. She felt weirdly altered, almost drunk from the situation.

“I thought,” he said, still looking at her like he was making sure she was really there, “maybe instead of coffee, a glass of wine. To loosen the tension a little.”

She let out a small nervous laugh. “Yeah. Sure.”

He moved toward the kitchen, and she stayed there for a moment, taking in the apartment. It was tidy.

Warm lighting. Low music in the background.

When she was left alone in the living room, she realized how out of practice she was. She had not dealt with a man in a long time, not in a dating context, or whatever that was. There was a small mirror on the wall. She checked herself quickly, narrowing her eyes a little, searching for any mascara goop gathering in the corners of her eyes to remove. She touched her hair nervously.

“I’m really glad you came,” he said from the kitchen.

When he came back, he handed her a glass of white wine. “Chardonnay,” he said. Their fingers almost touched.

“Thanks.”

He stayed close. There was so much history. He smiled and shook his head once, almost to himself. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”

He stepped forward as if to hug her. She let him. His arms wrapped around her tightly. Too tightly. As she wondered to herself what had happened to her flirting skills, a knife sank into the middle of her back.

She felt the blade crossing her flesh, her muscles, her bones. “You’ve always been a selfish bitch,” he hissed. He let go.

A searing pain ripped a cry out of her, like a pig at slaughter. She collapsed to the floor, blood pouring out in dark gushes, running fast through the cracks between the tiles. She wondered how many seconds she had left. Maybe minutes.

Wasn’t her life supposed to flash before her eyes? It didn’t.

Just a deep sense of shame. The pain was excruciating, and yet she clung to her thoughts, gripping them as they slipped. She had been caught off guard, and at the same time everything suddenly made sense.

Life was leaving her body the way an overused sticker peels away from a page. The pain spread further, flooding even her ability to think. The last thing she saw was her blood running across the floor, and a thin layer of dust trapped beneath a piece of furniture.

She had done everything she could to escape what she knew, deep down, might be waiting for her, and it had been useless. She had returned to a starting point. But this time, the starting point was the end.