BREAKFAST IN BED- Nessa Barrett Ever since Grayson Hawthorne left you, you’ve eaten breakfast in bed. He once told you he loved you. Isn’t that lovely? He’d said it like it was something permanent, like words could be carved in stone just by the weight of his voice. Tangled in sheets and sunlight, he promised you pancakes for all your Sundays. You believed him—not just the words, but the ease with which he said them, like they’d been waiting to be spoken for years. Now the only Sundays you have are silent. You haven’t eaten pancakes in weeks. Instead, you’ve been eating breakfast in bed. If you can even call it breakfast. Sometimes it’s toast. Sometimes it’s a granola bar from the bottom of a drawer. Sometimes it’s nothing at all until noon, when your black coffee’s gone cold on the nightstand. Just like your soul. The stains on your t-shirt are eleven days old. The sheets haven’t been washed since he last slept in them—partly because you can’t bring yourself to erase the faint trace of him, partly because you don’t have the energy to care. You miss him like hell, and you’re spoiled like milk. If he saw you right now, you’re convinced he’d run for the hills. The girl he knew would never have let herself rot in bed. She’d have been sharp and composed, untouchable. This version of you—the one hollowed out and limp under heavy blankets—feels like someone he’d walk right past without a second glance. You’re not sure if what you had was real anymore. The memories feel too bright, too vivid, like they’ve been touched up by some romantic filter your brain refuses to turn off. But then you think about the way he looked at you sometimes—like you were the only person in a crowded room—and you start to wonder how he could have thrown all that away. How come he doesn’t feel the way you feel? I didn’t lie, I didn’t cheat or kill, so why is this my death row meal? The spiral gets worse at night. Sleep won’t come, so you keep replaying it—the last fight, the final look, the sound of the door closing. You run your mind ragged trying to figure out if there was something you could’ve said differently. Something you could’ve done to make him stay. Three weeks after he left, you deleted every app on your phone. Every contact that wasn’t essential. Except his. You kept his number. You told yourself it was just in case. But you know the truth—if his name ever flashed on your screen, you’d pick up before the first ring finished. And then, almost a month after the last time you saw him, it happens. Not the phone call. The knock. It’s sharp and unexpected, cutting through the still air of your apartment. You sit up slowly, your body protesting after so long in bed. You tell yourself it’s probably a delivery, maybe the neighbor. But there’s something about the sound—deliberate, familiar—that pulls you toward the door. Your muscles ache as you cross the room. Your socks catch on the floor, your hair is a mess, and you can feel how unpresentable you are. Still, you turn the lock and pull it open. And there he is. Grayson Hawthorne, in a charcoal suit, standing like some misplaced vision against the hallway’s dim light. In his arms, he’s holding a strawberry-themed care basket—jam, shortcake mix, even a jar of strawberry syrup—and your favorite flowers, fresh and vibrant. For a moment, he looks exactly the way you remember—composed, handsome, untouchable. And then his eyes take you in, all of you, and the expression on his face fractures. His voice is low, almost pained. “{{user}}…”