I stood outside my own building for twelve minutes.
The suitcase sat between my feet like a loyal dog. The streetlights buzzed overhead, casting everything in that sickly orange glow that makes cities look like crime scenes. A homeless man slept in the doorway of the bank across the street, wrapped in a sleeping bag that had once been blue.
I watched him breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
It was easier than thinking.
My phone buzzed in my hand. Naomi's text: "Parking. Stay there."
I stayed.
The Honda Civic pulled up to the curb seven minutes later. Naomi killed the engine and got out. She was wearing sweatpants—gray, faded, with a hole in the left knee. A hoodie that said "I Teach Sarcasm" in peeling letters. Her hair was in a messy bun, and she wasn't wearing any makeup.
She looked exactly like the woman who'd held my hair back when I got food poisoning sophomore year. The woman who'd driven three hours to sit with me in the ER when my appendix burst. The woman who'd told me, straight to my face, "Derek is going to break your heart."
I hadn't listened.
Now here we were.
"Sloane." She didn't hug me. She just stood there, looking at my face, reading the damage. "How bad?"
"I found pictures."
"Pictures?"
"In his briefcase. Of women. In our bed." My voice was flat. Reciting facts. "At least five. Going back two years."
Naomi's jaw tightened. I'd seen her angry before—the time a professor gave her an unfair grade, the time her landlord tried to keep her deposit. This was different. This was the kind of anger that didn't speak. It just waited.
"Where is he?"
"Gone. He left with a suitcase. Said he was going to her."
"Megan Cross?"
I nodded.
Naomi picked up my suitcase without asking. "Get in the car."
I got in.
The Civic smelled like coffee and the cinnamon air freshener she hung from the rearview. Miso the cat was not with her—just an empty carrier in the back seat. She must have been in a hurry.
She pulled away from the curb, not toward her apartment, but toward the highway.
"Where are we going?"
"Away from here."
"I don't have my car. Derek took me off the insurance."
"Good. That car was a piece of shit anyway."
I almost laughed. Almost.
We drove in silence for a few minutes. The city scrolled past—shuttered bodegas, empty bus stops, a twenty-four-hour diner where the neon sign flickered "EAT" in pink and blue.
My phone rang.
Derek.
I stared at the screen.
"Answer it," Naomi said. "On speaker."
I swiped. "Hello?"
"Sloane." His voice was calm. Too calm. The voice of a man who had already moved on. "I forgot to mention something."
I waited.
"Don't expect alimony. You didn't earn it."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone. My hand wasn't shaking. That was the strangest part. After everything—the earrings, the photographs, the divorce papers—this was the thing that should have broken me. The final cruelty. The dismissal of five years of labor, five years of sacrifice, five years of my life poured into his career like water into a bucket with no bottom.
You didn't earn it.
I had written every contract. I had negotiated every deal. I had stayed up until 3 AM while he slept, making sure his company didn't collapse under the weight of his incompetence.
And I hadn't earned alimony.
Naomi's hands tightened on the steering wheel. Her knuckles went white.
"I'm going to kill him," she said.
"Get in line."
She glanced at me. "You're not crying."
"No."
"Is that bad?"
"I don't know yet."
She pulled into a rest stop just outside the city. A gas station, a fast-food restaurant, a few semi trucks idling in the lot. She parked under a light, cut the engine, and turned to face me.
"Tell me everything. From the beginning. Don't leave anything out."
I told her.
The contract. The nosebleed. Derek's bored voice when he handed me the papers. The earring on the pillow. The second earring behind the shoe rack. The locked briefcase. The photographs. The dates on the back.
When I finished, Naomi was crying.
I wasn't.
"Sloane." She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. "That's not a marriage. That's a hostage situation."
"I know."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Are you going to sign the papers?"
I thought about it. The unsigned divorce papers were still on the kitchen counter. Derek probably expected me to sign them meekly, to fade into the background like I'd always done.
But for the first time in five years, I didn't want to be meek.
"No," I said. "Not yet."
Naomi nodded slowly. "Good. Make him work for it."
She started the car and pulled back onto the highway. We drove the rest of the way to her apartment in silence, but it wasn't an empty silence. It was the silence of two women who understood each other.
Her apartment was small and cluttered and smelled like jasmine incense. Miso the cat blinked at me from the couch, unimpressed by my drama. Naomi led me to the bathroom, turned on the shower.
"Hot water," she said. "As hot as you can stand. Stay in there until you can't anymore."
"I already did that."
"Do it again."
I stepped into the shower fully clothed.
The water hit my face, hot and stinging. My sweater clung to my skin. My jeans turned heavy. I slid down the tile wall and sat on the floor of the tub, letting the water pour over me.
And then, finally, I cried.
Not the pretty crying. Not the single tear sliding down a cheek. This was the ugly kind—the kind that came from somewhere deep and dark, the kind that made sounds like wounded animals.
I cried for the girl who'd walked down the aisle in a white dress, believing in forever.
I cried for the years I'd given to a man who never saw me.
I cried for the children we'd talked about having, the ones who would never exist now, the ones who'd been saved from a father like him.
And when the water ran cold, I was still crying.
Naomi knocked on the door. "I'm leaving clothes outside. You can't sleep in wet jeans."
I heard her footsteps retreat.
I turned off the water. Stripped off my soaking clothes. Dried myself with a towel that smelled like lavender. Opened the door a crack.
On the floor: a pair of sweatpants, a T-shirt that said "Book Nerd," and a pair of fuzzy socks with llamas on them.
I dressed. Walked to the living room.
Naomi had made up the couch with fresh sheets and a pillow. Miso had already claimed the foot of it.
"Sleep," Naomi said. "We'll figure out the rest tomorrow."
"What if I can't sleep?"
"Then lie there and stare at the ceiling. That counts as rest."
I lay down. Miso purred against my feet. Naomi turned off the light.
"Naomi?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
"Shut up and go to sleep."
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time in five years, I slept without listening for the sound of Derek's key in the lock.