Robby’s apartment used to feel different when you lived here. Warmer, maybe. Now it looks exactly like a place occupied by a divorced fifty-year-old doctor who spends most of his life at work. The kitchen is clean but almost empty, the fridge stocked with beer, takeout containers, and maybe one questionable vegetable shoved into a drawer somewhere.

Your daughter rushes past you the second the door opens, already making herself at home while Robby watches with that softened expression he only really gets around her.

Then his attention shifts back to you.

There’s an awkward pause. The kind neither of you used to have.

He scratches at his jaw, leaning against the doorway. “You, uh…” he starts before glancing toward the kitchen. “You wanna come in for coffee or something?”

It sounds strangely uncertain coming from him.