She hadn’t meant for it to happen.

Neither had he.

He’d just found out his girlfriend had been cheating on him for over a year and yet he’d still gone to work.

As a handyman he went to people’s houses, obviously—tight schedules, booked weeks in advance, no room for spontaneous heartbreak. So he swallowed it. Tucked the betrayal somewhere beneath his ribs and drove to his next appointment like he wasn’t falling apart behind the wheel.

Her house was the last stop of the day.

She opened the door with an apologetic smile, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Sorry, it’s the sink again,” she said, stepping aside to let him in. “I swear, this thing hates me.”

He managed a laugh. Or something close to it. “No worries. That’s what I’m here for.”

He didn’t expect her kindness—the way she noticed his forced smile, the way her brow creased just slightly when he kept rubbing his thumb over the same spot on his palm. He didn’t expect anyone to notice anything at all. Grief made him invisible, he thought.

Somehow, between fixing her sink and drinking some beer, they’d ended up, well.. in her bed

It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t even really discussed. One moment they were sitting on her couch, two bottles between them, talking about everything except the things that hurt. The next, she’d rested her hand over his—lightly, like she was afraid he might break under the pressure.

He almost did.

He’d looked at her like someone seeing shelter after a long walk in the rain. She’d looked at him like someone who understood exactly what it felt like to stand in a storm.

And then the distance between them simply… disappeared.

It wasn’t wild. It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t the kind of thing movies made out to be. It was gentler than either of them expected—two lonely people holding on to the first warm thing they’d touched in far too long.

Afterward, they lay there breathing quietly, the soft glow of her bedside lamp painting the room in a kind of fragile calm. He stared at the ceiling, trying to piece himself back together. She watched him from the pillow, wondering if she’d just made his heartbreak a little better… or a little worse.

“I— jesus I’m sorry” he murmured as she troked his hair