Olivia pushed the stroller through the heavy glass doors of Green's Market, her pulse still drumming in her ears. She must've walked the entire two blocks on autopilot, because she couldn't recall crossing the street or dodging the guy with the headphones who always rollerbladed too close to the sidewalk.
All she could see was his face.
Daniel.
Her ex.
The man she had sworn she'd never, ever, under any circumstances, run into again. And yet, there he was, standing like some ghost that had materialized out of the cracked plaster walls of her building.
"Why now?" she muttered under her breath, clutching the stroller handle tighter. Ethan gurgled up at her, blissfully unaware that his mother's world had just tilted off its axis.
She pasted on a shaky smile and bent down. "Don't worry, baby. Mommy just saw a… uh, zombie. Yeah, a zombie from the past. But we're fine. Totally fine."
Her voice cracked on the last word, betraying her.
The cool blast of the store's air conditioning swept over her, but it did nothing to calm the sweat prickling her neck. She tried to focus on the ordinary hum of grocery shopping—the squeak of carts, the shuffle of feet, the soft murmur of a cashier greeting customers—but her thoughts kept looping back to that hallway. To him.
She hadn't even known Daniel was in New York again. The last she'd heard, he'd moved upstate for some fancy job transfer. That had been three years ago. Three years she spent clawing her way out of heartbreak, rebuilding her life, and raising a son on her own.
And now, apparently, fate thought it would be hilarious to plop him right back into her orbit.
Her hands trembled as she pulled a shopping basket from the stack, awkwardly maneuvering with one hand while steadying Ethan's stroller with the other. A woman nearby gave her a sympathetic smile, the kind only strangers in grocery stores seemed to share—like they understood how hard it was just to keep it together sometimes. Olivia managed a tight nod and pushed forward.
"Milk, bread, detergent," she whispered, trying to anchor herself with the list. "This is just a normal grocery trip. Totally normal. No reason to think about how his stupid jawline hasn't changed. Or how his hair still looks annoyingly perfect when he barely tries. Nope. No reason at all."
Her voice was a little too loud in the dairy aisle, earning her a side-eye from an older man debating between two brands of yogurt.
She ducked her head and sped past, cheeks burning.
The problem wasn't just seeing him. It was the way her body reacted before her brain caught up—the little lurch in her stomach, the flicker of recognition in her chest, the echo of a memory she wanted buried. She hated that. Hated that even after everything, a tiny part of her remembered what it felt like to love him.
And then she remembered why it ended.
The betrayal. The fight. The way she'd found out about the other woman before he even confessed.
The fury came rushing back, mixing with the panic until her insides felt like a shaken soda can.
She grabbed a carton of milk too quickly, nearly dropping it on the floor. Ethan let out a startled wail, and she instantly crouched down to soothe him, pressing a kiss to his soft head. "Sorry, sweetheart. Mommy's just a mess tonight."
His tiny fist wrapped around her finger, grounding her in a way nothing else could.
"Right," she whispered, breathing in the powdery baby scent. "Focus. He doesn't matter. You matter. Us."
She straightened, tossed the milk in the basket, and moved on.
But no matter how much she tried to shove it aside, the image of Daniel standing there with Mrs. Greene hovered at the edge of her mind. If he rented that apartment… God. That meant she'd have to see him in the hallway, maybe at the mailboxes, maybe even in the laundry room. The thought made her skin prickle.
She detoured into the snack aisle, pretending to deliberate between chips but really just trying to calm her racing thoughts.
Could she handle this? Could she live next door to the man who had once broken her?
"Of course you can," she muttered, grabbing a bag of pretzels like it had personally offended her. "You survived childbirth without an epidural. You can survive this."
Still, her stomach churned as she rolled the stroller toward checkout.
The line was short, but each second waiting felt stretched thin with unease. She could almost imagine Daniel's voice again, deep and smooth, echoing in her memory. She hated herself for remembering the exact timbre of it.
The cashier, a teenage boy with braces, rang her up. "That'll be twenty-three eighty-seven," he said, not looking up from the register.
Olivia fumbled with her wallet, nearly dropping her card twice before sliding it through.
"Rough day?" the boy asked, glancing up briefly.
She forced a laugh. "You could say that."
When it was done, she loaded the bag into the stroller basket and pushed out of the store, the evening air meeting her like a wall. She paused on the sidewalk, clutching the stroller handle as if it were a lifeline.
Somewhere, back at her building, Daniel was probably talking leases with Mrs. Greene.
And Olivia Parker was panicking on the sidewalk, wondering how many times in life you could survive having your heart crack open.
She kissed Ethan's head again, whispering, "We'll be okay. Mommy just has to figure out how to live with a ghost down the hall."
And with that, she pushed the stroller home, the streetlights flickering to life as the city around her carried on like nothing had changed—when for Olivia, everything had.