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The grin fades a little as she studies me over her takeout carton.

“What?” I ask.

“What if I told you you’ve looked better every day since the breakup?”

I stare at her. “That’s an awful thing to say.”

“It’s an awful thing to notice.” She settles back against the cushions and twirls noodles around her fork. “The first day you got here, you slept through breakfast.”

“I was tired.”

She nods. “You slept through lunch, too.”

“I was very tired.”

“You wandered into the kitchen at four in the afternoon wearing one sock and asked if Tuesday was a vegetable.”

A laugh escapes me. “That didn’t happen.”

“It absolutely happened.”

“I would’ve remembered that.”

She chuckles. “You were half asleep. You would’ve agreed if I’d told you you were the Queen of Denmark.”

I cover my face. Unfortunately, that sounds entirely possible.

Kira sets her carton aside, and the teasing expression she’s been wearing all evening disappears. “Em.”

I lower my hands enough to look at her. “What?”

“When was the last time you slept fourteen hours?”

I start to answer and realize I don’t have one. Months ago, maybe. Longer.

Toward the end of my relationship with Spencer, sleep felt more like a series of interruptions than actual rest.

I stayed awake waiting for texts, waiting for him to get home, waiting for him to remember plans we’d already made. After a while, the waiting became so normal that I stopped questioning it.

Kira reaches across the coffee table and nudges my knee. “You were exhausted.”

I look down at the noodles in my lap and feel my throat tighten unexpectedly. “I thought I was trying harder.”

Her expression softens. “You were.”

“I kept thinking that if I got better at it, we’d be okay.”

“Emma.” The way she says my name makes me look up. “You were dating a man who forgot your birthday and somehow convinced you that you were the one who needed improvement.”

A laugh slips out, but it wobbles on the way.

The worst part is hearing the situation described exactly as it was. Without excuses. Without context.

Without all the explanations I’d spent years attaching to his behavior.

Kira reaches for my hand. “You weren’t failing that relationship.”

I meet her eyes.