Their Joke Ended With One Word: Ex Chapter 13

Their Joke Ended With One Word: Ex Chapter 13

When he passed me, he stopped.

“I kept the deer charm this whole time. I…”

None of that matters anymore.” I didn’t look at him.

I’d left in a hurry back then and hadn’t had time to throw it out.

After the door closed, the room went quiet.

My mother came out of the kitchen and sat down beside me. “He isn’t as bad as all that. It’s only

that before…”

“Mom, don’t. I’m seeing someone, and if that jealous man hears you I’ll never hear the end of it.”

My mother blinked. “What? Who?”

“You’ll find out.” I poured myself a cup of coffee. “I only wanted to say that what’s done is done.

Don’t let him in the door again.”

She looked at me for a while and nodded.

That night, I lay in my old room.

I thought about three years earlier, when I ran through the airport with my boarding pass and ended up crouched by the gate crying hard enough to shake.

Back then, I’d thought I was finished.

I’d thought that relationship would be a scar that never healed.

But three autumns later, I sat in my parents‘ living room and calmly watched the man who’d called

me a last–minute filler walk out the door.

Things really can get better.

The Faye Hart who crouched beside that gate had been gone a long time.

Long enough that I couldn’t remember the look on Ian’s face the night he stood in the doorway and

said we’d talk tomorrow.

Because I’d been through a lot of tomorrows since then.

And not one of them had needed him to show up for it.

The End