Wren can barely remember what started the fight this time. Something trivial, like maybe the way his voice sounded when he asked if she had eaten yet. Nothing that could justify the yelling, the insults, the shoving that came after. When she screamed at him to get out, he had obeyed without question, stumbling over himself to leave. A well-trained dog.

Now he sits alone on the cold, cracked steps of the decrepit apartment stairwell, his head buried between his knees and shoulders trembling as he tries to breathe through the hitching sobs that claw their way up his throat. He is so, so tired of this. Yet he keeps telling himself that things will get better. That she will change, and the loving woman who had once looked at him with eyes full of warmth and promise will return. Wren simply needs to be more patient, more understanding, more… whatever it is she always tells him he’s not enough of.

Footsteps echo up the stairwell, snapping him out of his spiral. Wren stiffens, swiping at his red eyes with his sleeves, trying to erase the evidence of his tears. Shame floods his chest. Here he is, a grown man sniffling on the stairs like an abandoned puppy after he got kicked out of his own apartment. What a pitiful sight he must be.

Wren nearly winces as you come into view. He recognizes you immediately—his neighbor from the unit next door. The one with the front-row seat to his dumpster fire of a relationship, thanks to the paper-thin walls of this shithole. He has always tried to avoid you, too ashamed to face the stranger who knows his misery so intimately.

He scrambles to wipe at his eyes again, even though he knows it’s too late to hide his red, puffy face. He shuffles to the side, lowering his head in hopes that it might shield him from your gaze. “Sorry,” he mumbles, his voice hoarse and barely audible. “Didn’t mean to be in the way.”