I thought about that.
“I guess not.”
Eleanor started gathering the papers, organizing them back into neat folders with the efficiency of someone who’d done this a thousand times.
“What happens now is up to you. Grant might come back, try to salvage this, or he might not. Either way, you need to decide what you want.”
What did I want? A week ago, I’d wanted to marry Grant. I’d wanted the life we’d been planning. The wedding. The honeymoon. The future together. But that future had been built on a foundation of assumptions that no longer existed.
I drove home in a daze, barely remembering the route. My apartment felt too quiet, too empty. I made tea I didn’t drink. I stared at my phone like it might ring, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted it to.
It didn’t.
That night passed. Then the next day. Then the day after that. Grant’s silence was absolute. No calls. No texts. Nothing. Maya texted:
“How did it go?”
I stared at the message for five minutes before typing back:
“Tell you later.”
My mother left a voicemail about wedding invitations, asking if we’d finalized the guest list yet. I deleted it without responding. I went to work, conducted meetings, reviewed contracts for CloudSync Pro, responded to tenant issues at one of my rental properties. I functioned, but it felt like I was watching myself from a distance, like I was an actress playing the role of Paige Callaway going through her normal life.
On the third day, I was leaving my apartment building to grab groceries when my phone buzzed. Grant’s name appeared on the screen and my heart did something complicated. Jumped and sank simultaneously. The message was short, almost curt.
“We need to talk. My place tomorrow, 7 p.m.”
I stared at those words. No please. No when you’re ready. Just a command, like he still had some authority over me, over us, over whatever this was.
Part of me wanted to refuse, to text back no and let that be the end of it. To let our relationship die quietly, without drama, without confrontation. But another part, the part that had loved him for three years, that had said yes when he proposed on that beach, that still remembered what it felt like when things were good, that part needed to know what he’d say.
I stood on the sidewalk outside my building, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. Finally, I typed:
“Okay.”
I sent it before I could talk myself out of it.
His response came immediately.
“Thank you.”
I shoved my phone in my pocket and walked toward the grocery store, but I couldn’t remember what I’d planned to buy. My mind was already jumping ahead to tomorrow night, imagining the conversation we’d have, preparing for whatever Grant was going to say. Would he apologize? Demand an explanation? Try to salvage the relationship? Or would he do what I suspected he might, try to make this my fault somehow, twist the narrative until he was the victim and I was the deceiver?
I didn’t know. But tomorrow at seven, I’d find out. The sky overhead was heavy with clouds that hadn’t quite decided whether to rain, the air thick with the promise of a storm that might or might not come. I felt the same way, balanced on the edge of something, waiting to see which way I’d fall.
The next evening, I stood outside Grant’s building at exactly seven, staring up at the industrial loft conversion that had always seemed so impressive when we first started dating. All exposed brick and floor-to-ceiling windows, the kind of place that screamed urban success even if the mortgage was crushing you. I took a breath and went inside.
Grant answered the door within seconds of my knock, like he’d been waiting right there. He looked terrible. His eyes were red-rimmed, shadowed with dark circles that spoke of sleepless nights. His hair wasn’t styled the way he usually wore it. He was in jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt. I’d rarely seen him in anything so casual, so unpolished.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, his voice not warm, not cold, just strained.
He didn’t kiss me. Didn’t even try. Just stepped aside to let me in.
The loft was immaculate as always, everything in its place, the expensive minimalist furniture arranged just so, the abstract art on the exposed brick walls, the industrial lighting casting carefully designed shadows. It looked like a magazine spread. It had always looked like a magazine spread. I wondered, not for the first time, how much of Grant’s life was performance.
We sat on opposite ends of his leather couch, a distance that felt deliberate, symbolic. Grant poured himself a whiskey from the decanter on his coffee table. Expensive Scotch, the kind he kept for impressing clients. He didn’t offer me one.
The silence stretched between us, heavy and uncomfortable. I could hear the ambient noise of the city through the windows, traffic, distant sirens, the hum of life continuing outside this strange, frozen moment.
Finally, Grant spoke.
“Paige, I’ve been thinking.”
He stared into his glass like it might contain answers about us, about everything that happened in that conference room.
I waited, saying nothing.
“I was shocked,” he continued. “Obviously. I mean, you have to understand, finding out the person you thought you knew is actually someone completely different… that’s a lot to process.”
“I’m not someone different,” I said quietly. “I’m the same person I’ve always been. You just didn’t know everything about me.”
“Exactly.”
