Page 5

I down the last of my whiskey and put the empty glass down. Bruce Willis is crawling through an air duct onscreen.

She was wearing a red dress and had this loud, contagious laugh, and I remember thinking she looked like someone who'd be exhausting by morning. But she was also funny, spontaneous, and completely unlike anyone I'd ever dated. I was fascinated by her, even when I knew better.

We were married three months later. I was forty, she was forty-three, and for a minute there, I thought I’d found something solid after a lot of years of not finding much at all. Then Julian showed up—a thirty-three-year-old personal trainer who apparently caught her eye—and six months into the marriage, she was packing. Elena had always loved the excitement of something new. The trouble was, once the novelty wore off, she tended to go looking for it somewhere else.

I’m not heartbroken. I wasn’t then and I’m not now. What I am is thoroughly fucking annoyed that, two years later, I’m still signing checks to lawyers because Elena can’t decide whether she wants the lake house or a bigger cash settlement or my continued attention. Pick one. Any of the three. Just pick.

Work’s good, the house is paid off, and I’ve got nothing to complain about. I like my life. I like the quiet, the routines, the independence of coming home to a house where nobody needs anything from me until I’m ready to give it. I built that. And after Elena left, I doubled down on it. Got the place exactly how I wanted it, kept the things that worked, got rid of the rest.

Then there was Sophie.

Seventeen years old, standing in the hallway, watching her mother load suitcases into a convertible. Elena looked at me that last morning and said, “She’ll be fine here, won’t she?” But it wasn’t a question. I could’ve said no. I had every right to. She wasn’t my child. She wasn’t my responsibility. The marriage had lasted six months. But Sophie needed somewhere to live, and I had a house with three empty bedrooms and a decent school district. So I said yes.

Sophie needed stability, and I could provide it. The math was straightforward.

What wasn’t straightforward was everything that came after. Watching her settle in, learning her rhythms. Figuring out how to be the adult in a teenager’s life. There were mistakes, plenty of them. But she’s turned into someone smart and resilient and surprisingly funny, and if I had any hand in that—and I think I did—then letting her stay was the right call.

I look around the room. The fire has burned down to glowing coals, the Christmas tree lights cast a warm glow, and Sophie is curled up beside me. I'm pleased with how festive the house feels. Last Christmas was our first without Elena, and although it took some getting used to, we'd had a surprisingly good time together. This year, I'm hoping we can enjoy the holiday without quite so much of her shadow hanging over us.

Eventually, Elena’s calls will stop. The divorce will finalize. She’ll take whatever settlement she decides is enough, and she’ll move on to whatever comes after Julian, and the phone will stop ringing.

The house has been too quiet without Sophie. I didn’t realize how much I’d gotten used to the background noise of another person until I went four months without her. Four months of coming home to silence. Four months of cooking for one, which meant I mostly stopped cooking. There’s a stack of takeout containers in the recycling bin that would embarrass me if anyone saw it. I’ve missed her.

She’s changed, though. That’s the thing I keep noticing.

When I drove her to campus in August, she was still all sharp edges and nervous energy. Nineteen going on sixteen, trying too hard to sound grown-up, checking her phone every thirty seconds. Now she's more self-assured. She's always been small, but she's filled out a little, her figure more defined than I remember. There's a maturity in the way she carries herself that wasn't there before.

And her face. Christ. Her face.

I look away from the couch and back at the television. Hans Gruber is monologuing, but I have no idea what he’s saying.

This isn’t new, exactly. I’ve watched her grow up for two years. Watched her finish high school, get into college, start figuring out who she is when she’s not Elena’s daughter or my stepdaughter or anyone’s anything except herself. But there’s a difference between watching someone change gradually and not seeing them for four months and then having them show up in your living room looking like a beautiful young woman you might have noticed under different circumstances⁠—

No.

Not going there.

I take a deep breath and focus on the empty whiskey glass.

The thing is, she’s always been attractive. I’m not blind. I noticed Sophie’s beauty the first time Elena brought her to the house. She was seventeen, with raven-dark hair, Elena’s mouth and large dark eyes that aren’t Elena’s at all. But it was an objective observation. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything.

Except now I’m having trouble dismissing it, and I don’t like that.

She moves her foot and the blanket gets pulled down to her waist. The hoodie’s ridden up a little at the hem, and I can see a strip of skin above the waistband of her jeans. I look away quickly, back at the TV screen.

This is Sophie. Sophie, who called me from her dorm room crying after her first bad grade. Sophie, who made me watch every episode of Is It Cake? for months. Sophie, who depended on me to be the stable one when her mother wasn’t. The trust between us is the one thing in the last two years that hasn’t been complicated, and clearly I’ve spent too much time alone if I’m starting to notice things I have no business noticing.

I stand up too quickly, and the sofa creaks, but Sophie doesn’t stir. Good. I need a minute.

In the kitchen, I run the tap and splash cold water on my face. I look at my reflection in the window above the sink: a forty-three-year-old man who clearly needs to get out more, probably driven to the brink of sanity by his ex-wife’s harassment. I need to get a grip.

I dry my face with a towel and lean against the counter. This is just proximity, I tell myself. Familiarity. The fact that she’s an adult woman now and I’m a man who hasn’t been with anyone in too long. It’s biology, not psychology. It’s meaningless.

I pour another two fingers of whiskey.

When I go back to the living room, I sit in the armchair and force myself to pay attention to the movie. Hans Gruber falls out of a window. The hostages cheer. The credits roll.

I should wake Sophie up, tell her to go to bed, but I sit there and drink and admire the tree, and let her sleep for another twenty minutes. Eventually, I get up and cross to the couch.