I walked three blocks before my legs remembered how to be tired. The adrenaline that had carried me out of the restaurant drained slowly, like a phone battery on one percent trying to play a movie. The chill from the Chicago night slipped through the fabric of my dress, raising goosebumps along my arms.
I wrapped my coat tighter around myself and kept moving, letting the city swallow me up. Cars passed, windows glowing with other people’s lives. Someone laughed too loudly across the street.
A dog barked, straining at its leash. Somewhere a siren wailed and faded into the distance. Life was still happening, oblivious to the nuclear fallout that had just taken place over linen tablecloths and pan-seared salmon.
I didn’t have a dramatic collapse on the sidewalk. I didn’t crumble against a lamppost and sob under the halo of streetlight. I just kept walking.
I didn’t realize where I was going until I was already there. The bookstore café. It looked smaller than I remembered.
Maybe because I’d grown, or maybe because once you’ve watched your entire marriage implode in public, everything else feels almost manageable. The same chalkboard stood out front, advertising seasonal lattes in loopy handwriting. The fairy lights in the window were still up, dimmer now, some of them burned out.
I hesitated with my hand on the door. The bell chimed when I stepped inside, that same soft ring that had once signaled the beginning of something I thought would last forever. The air smelled like coffee, sugar, and paper.
Familiar. Quiet. Safe in a way that made my throat tighten.
There were only a few people scattered at tables—students buried in laptops, a woman reading a hardcover novel, an older man sipping tea and staring out the window like he was waiting for someone who was never coming. I ordered a black coffee. No milk.
No sugar. I didn’t want comfort. I wanted clarity.
The barista gave me a warm, automatic smile, completely unaware that she was serving a woman who had just legally detonated her own marriage. “Do you want room for cream?” she asked. “No,” I said.
“Just… just coffee.”
I took my cup to a corner table, the same one I’d been sitting at the first time he’d walked in with his magazines and his easy smile. The chair still wobbled. I remembered how that used to annoy me.
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