I got home feeling tired as hell.
My apartment was dark when I walked in — the way it always was when I'd been gone too long. No lights on. No sounds except the hum of the refrigerator and the distant traffic from the street below. The air smelled like nothing in particular. Dust, maybe. The faint ghost of the candle I'd burned three nights ago.
This week hadn't really been the best for work. That was an understatement.
We were trying to open a new branch in another city — Silvergrove City, the same city Rhett lived in, because the universe had a sick sense of humor — and that meant figuring out who was moving and who was staying. Paperwork. Negotiations. Signed agreements. Lawyers.
On top of that, we had a new perfume line coming out in two months. The design team was behind schedule. The packaging supplier had increased their prices. The marketing campaign wasn't coming together the way I'd hoped.
It was killing me. Stressing me out. Making me feel like I was drowning in a sea of to-do lists and unanswered emails.
My parents had run this business together — side by side, handling different parts, supporting each other. My Pa handled the creative side — the scents, the packaging, the brand identity. My Papa handled the business side — the finances, the contracts, the strategy.
And now I somehow had to run it alone?
They'd retired. Just... left. They'd bought a house by the beach and sent me a postcard with a picture of palm trees and the words "Good luck, sweetheart!"
I loved them. I really did. But I wanted to throw that postcard into the ocean.
I was so tired.
I loved my job. I really did. The fact that the moment I graduated from university, I had a guaranteed and secured job waiting for me — that was a privilege I never took for granted. I knew how lucky I was.
But that didn't mean it was easy.
My parents hadn't just handed me the company on a silver platter. They'd made me earn it. I didn't start at the top. I started from the lowest rank in the company, in one of our smallest branches, in a city I'd never been to before.
I was a sales associate. I stocked shelves and rang up customers and cleaned the displays at the end of the night. I made minimum wage. I lived in a tiny apartment with leaky faucets and a neighbor who played the drums at 2 AM.
That was one of the worst and best parts of my life.
The worst because it was hard. Because I was lonely. Because I missed my parents and my friends and the comfort of not having to worry about money.
The best because it taught me things I couldn't have learned any other way. It taught me what our customers actually wanted. It taught me how the business worked from the ground up. It taught me that I was capable of more than I thought.
And it taught me that I didn't want to be the kind of boss who forgot where he came from.
But right now, none of those lessons were making me feel better. Right now, I was just tired.
I changed out of my work clothes — suit jacket tossed over the back of a chair, tie abandoned on the bedroom floor — and collapsed onto the couch in my sweatpants and an old t-shirt.
The couch swallowed me whole. It was one of those oversized sectionals that took up half the living room, and normally I loved it, but right now it just felt like too much space.
I'd ordered pizza twenty minutes ago. It had arrived while I was changing, and the box sat on the coffee table, taunting me with its warmth and its grease and its total lack of nutritional value.
I grabbed a slice and took a bite.
It was fine. It was just pizza. But it was hot and it was salty and I didn't have to cook it, so it was perfect.
I ate three slices in silence, staring at the wall, thinking about nothing and everything at the same time.
My phone sat on the arm of the couch, faceup now, still dark.
Nothing.
I stared at the pizza box — half-empty now, greasy stains soaking through the cardboard — and a thought drifted into my head.
If I was with Rhett right now, he wouldn't let me eat this all the time.
He'd call it unhealthy. He'd make some comment about preservatives and empty calories. He'd probably take the box away from me and hide it on the top shelf where I couldn't reach it, just to prove a point.
He would nag and say, "You could eat it sometimes, but not all the fucking time, Teddy."
I let out a laugh — just imagining it.
I could hear his voice in my head. See the way he'd roll his eyes. The way he'd cross his arms and give me that look — the one that said I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.
The laugh faded.
Now I was thinking about him again. Great.
I grabbed my phone and started scrolling through the Internet lazily, hoping to distract myself. News articles. Social media. Random videos of cats falling off things.
Anything to stop thinking about Rhett Vale and his stupid face and his stupid cooking and his stupid "I still haven't agreed. Just saying."
Five days. Five days of silence.
He's not going to call, I told myself. You need to accept that. He's not going to call, and you're going to be fine.
You've survived without him for five years. You can survive a little longer.
I scrolled faster.
And then I saw it.