So you broke her heart in the ugliest respectable way possible.
You let your assistant send flowers two days after the breakup, as if roses could do the work of character. You sent a check she returned uncashed. You ignored the last voicemail she left, not because you were cruel enough to enjoy it, but because part of you knew that if you heard her voice again, even one more time, the whole expensive lie you were building around yourself might collapse.
And now she is here.
Not in scrubs fresh from a hospital shift. Not with her spine straight and her dark eyes lit with the dry impatience that used to make you want to kiss her and argue with her at the same time. She is wearing faded navy medical pants beneath a black restaurant apron stained with grease, butter, wine, and the humiliation of work nobody notices unless it stops being done. Yellow rubber gloves cover her hands. Her hair is twisted into a rushed ponytail. Her shoulders, once so impossibly steady, are curled inward as if the world has spent years teaching her to apologize for taking up space.
The waiter who bumps her barely looks at her.
