365 Days of Rain, 365 Days of Her, Zero Days of Me Chapter 04

365 Days of Rain, 365 Days of Her, Zero Days of Me Chapter 04

He’d never looked at me like that before — pure contempt, not even trying to hide it. I dug my nails into my palms.

“The lease is done. We need to be out… by the weekend.”

The door slammed shut behind him.

The force of the slam knocked our framed photo off the back of the door. It hit the floor, scattering shards of glass everywhere. I crouched down and started picking up the pieces.

“Don’t hang it there. It’ll fall.”

“No, it won’t.”

He’d been so sure. Said it would be fine as long as neither of us slammed the door during a fight — then yelped when I swatted him for being cocky.

Three years I’d opened and closed that door gently, keeping that photo safe. He shattered it in one second.

A sharp sting hit my fingertip.

Blood smeared across the photo, across both our faces. I stared at it for a long time before I could look away.

Three years in this apartment. There was so much to pack up.

The fridge was covered in magnets from every trip we’d taken together. The stuffed animals on the bed — we’d blown whole weekends at the arcade winning those.

Movie stubs, the snow globe from the night he first said he loved me, the record he’d bought with his very first paycheck. I shoved it all into a box and left it by the apartment dumpsters.

I packed the rest of his clothes into trash bags, set them by the door, took a photo, and sent it to him.

He didn’t reply. He was too busy posting.

Day one of the trip — dinner with Chloe at a little seaside cabin restaurant in the next city over.

The place I’d picked for our anniversary.

Day two — they caught the last day of an exhibition I’d been wanting to see.

I scrolled back through our messages and found what he’d said when I’d sent him the listing. [Let’s talk about it later, kinda busy rn.]

He wasn’t busy. He just wanted to go with someone else.

The rest of the week, I went to work like nothing had changed.

A couple of coworkers cornered me. “Audrey, what’s going on with you and Julian?”

“Word is that trip was supposed to be yours. He went to his manager and swapped you out for Chloe.”

I just shrugged and kept typing.

“How are you not losing it? That project lands, and it’s a guaranteed quarterly bonus. You two built it from scratch — you’re really gonna let her take the credit and walk away with it?”

I stood up and squared the stack of papers on my desk. “I’ve made my peace with it.”

Sometimes, you just have to cut your losses.

Someone spotted the transfer paperwork in my hand and their jaw dropped.

“You’re leaving?!”

I smiled and made my rounds, saying goodbye to each of them.

I was just stepping out of a storm that was never going to clear.

Before the plane took off, I called Julian. Once, twice, three times.

He picked up on the fifth try. Except it wasn’t him.

“Hey, Audrey! Julian’s in the shower. Anything I can pass along?”

There it was — that little edge of triumph she’d never quite managed to hide. The mask was finally off.

“Just tell him to check his messages. And pick up his stuff.”

I hung up. The plane lifted off right on schedule.

I leaned against the window and watched Seacrest’s gray sky sink below me, and for the first time in years, I smiled.

The rain had finally stopped.