I woke up on Naomi's couch at 6:47 AM.
Miso the cat was still curled at my feet, her orange fur rising and falling with each breath. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic on the street below. Sunlight filtered through the blinds, striping the floor in pale gold.
For three beautiful seconds, I forgot everything.
Then my body remembered.
The ache behind my eyes. The rawness in my throat. The hollow space in my chest where my marriage used to live.
I sat up slowly. The T-shirt I'd borrowed—"Book Nerd"—hung loose on my frame. My hair was a tangled mess, still damp from last night's shower. The one where I'd cried so hard I thought my ribs would crack.
That was last night.
This was now.
Naomi's bedroom door was closed. She was still asleep. Good. She needed it. She'd driven across the city at 3 AM to pick up the pieces of my life.
I stood up. My legs were unsteady. I walked to the bathroom, shut the door, and leaned against the sink.
The mirror showed me someone I barely recognized.
Pale skin. Dark circles so deep they looked like bruises. Eyes that were red-rimmed but dry. My lips were chapped, cracked in one corner. My hair stuck up in the back like I'd been electrocuted.
I looked like a woman who had lost everything.
But I didn't feel like her.
I felt like a ghost wearing her skin.
I turned on the shower.
Hot water. Naomi had said hot water last night, and she was right. There was something about the heat—the way it punished your skin, the way it made you feel clean even when you knew you weren't.
I stepped in.
The water hit my shoulders first, then my chest, then my face. I tilted my head back and let it run over my closed eyes. The steam filled the small bathroom, fogging the mirror, blurring the edges of everything.
I slid down the tile wall.
My back scraped against the wet surface. My legs folded underneath me. I sat on the floor of the tub, just like last night, but this time was different.
This time, I didn't cry.
I couldn't.
The tears were there—I could feel them somewhere behind my sternum, a pressure that wouldn't release. But they wouldn't come out. It was like my body had used up its entire supply in one go, and now the well was dry.
So I just sat.
The water pounded against my head. My skin turned pink, then red. The heat was almost unbearable, but I didn't move. I let it burn. I deserved to burn.
You didn't earn it.
Derek's voice echoed in my skull. Those four words, delivered with the same casual cruelty he used to critique my cooking or my outfit or the way I laughed too loud at parties.
You didn't earn it.
Five years. Five years of my life. Five years of my labor. Five years of bleeding onto contracts and crying into pillows and pretending I was happy because that was what wives did.
And I hadn't earned a single penny of alimony.
The water started to cool.
I didn't adjust the temperature. I let it go cold. The heat drained away, replaced by a creeping chill that started at my scalp and worked its way down to my bones.
Cold water. Cold marriage. Cold future.
I wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my forehead on them.
The shower ran cold for a long time.
I don't know how long I sat there. Minutes, maybe. An hour. Time had stopped meaning anything the moment Derek handed me those divorce papers. There was only before and after. Before the earring. After the earring. Before the photographs. After the photographs.
I was living in the after now.
The after was cold.
A knock on the bathroom door.
"Sloane?" Naomi's voice, soft and worried. "You've been in there for forty-five minutes. The water's been off for twenty."
Had it? I hadn't noticed.
"I'm fine," I said. My voice came out cracked, like old leather.
"You're not fine. Open the door."
I didn't move.
"Sloane. Open the damn door or I'm picking the lock."
I reached up, twisted the knob, and pulled. The door swung open. Naomi stood in the doorway in her pajamas—flannel pants with pizza slices on them, a tank top that said "Nap Queen." Her hair was even messier than mine.
She looked at me sitting on the floor of the tub, fully clothed, dripping cold water onto the tiles.
"Oh, honey," she said.
She didn't ask questions. She just reached in, turned off the water, and helped me stand. My legs were numb. I stumbled against her, and she caught me, steady as a rock.
"You're freezing," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You keep saying that. It's not true yet, but maybe someday it will be."
She wrapped a towel around my shoulders and guided me out of the bathroom. Miso had relocated to the armchair, watching us with the judgmental patience of cats everywhere.
Naomi sat me down on the couch. She disappeared into her bedroom and came back with a sweatshirt—thick, gray, oversized. She pulled the wet T-shirt over my head like I was a child, dried me off with the towel, and put the sweatshirt on me.
I let her.
I let her do everything.
She sat down next to me, pulled a blanket over both of us, and put her arm around my shoulders.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"No."
"Do you want to sit in silence?"
"Yes."
We sat in silence.
The sun rose higher. The traffic got louder. Miso jumped down from the armchair and padded over to her food bowl, meowing until Naomi got up to feed her.
I stayed on the couch.
I thought about Derek. About the earrings. About the photographs. About the hotel key card from the Four Seasons. About all the nights I'd waited up for him, convinced he was working late, convincing myself that love meant patience.
Love meant patience.
That was the lie I'd told myself.
The truth was simpler: Love meant nothing to Derek. Love was a tool he used to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was never me.
I closed my eyes.
The tears still wouldn't come.
But something else was stirring in my chest. Something cold and sharp and quiet.
It wasn't sadness.
It wasn't anger.
It was something worse.
It was the beginning of not caring.
And that, more than anything, was what scared me.