The hyacinths were the first thing I noticed. Purple. Her favorite. Fuck me.

I stood there on her doorstep like a goddamn idiot, bouquet in one hand, the other shoved deep in my jacket pocket because my fingers were shaking. Hydrangeas. Peonies. All the shit she liked. The shit I remembered she liked, because I wasn't a complete fucking monster, no matter what she thought.

The card was already written. I love you, I'm sorry. -CJ. My handwriting. Loopy and careful like she taught me to do when she said my regular scrawl looked like "a drunk spider had a seizure."

I left them there. Didn't knock. Didn't ring the bell. Just set them down like an apology in porridge form and walked back to my car like a coward.

Twenty minutes later, nothing.

Forty minutes later, still nothing.

I sent the text. Did you get the flowers?

Read receipt. No response.

I could picture her perfectly—standing in her doorway, bare feet on that cold tile she always complained about, phone in her hand. Reading my message. Probably rolling her eyes so hard she pulled a muscle. Tossing the phone onto the couch like it was contaminated.

That's what I did to her. Made her own phone feel like a weapon.

An hour passed. Then another. I sat in my car three blocks away like some pathetic stalker, knuckles white on the steering wheel, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached. The image kept playing in my head. Not the party—I was trying not to think about the party, about the way her face looked when she walked in, about the girl with the lip gloss on her knees and the way my whole fucking world detonated in three seconds—but her. The way she cried. The way she cried and I couldn't even fucking fix it because I was the one who broke it.

I was out of town, I told her. Bullshit. I was three streets over at some dickhead's house party, whiskey in one hand and—

Fuck.

I drove back.

The banging on her door probably sounded desperate because it was desperate. I didn't care. My fist hit the wood like I was trying to punch my way through time itself.

She opened it.

And there she was. Red-rimmed eyes. Hair a mess. Wearing that ratty sweatshirt she'd had since college, the one with the hole in the sleeve. She looked like she hadn't slept. She looked like she'd been crying.

Because of me.

Because of what I did.

I pushed past her before she could slam the door in my face. The couch was right there. I dropped into it like my legs gave out, ran my hand through my hair because I didn't know what else to do with it.

"Why did you not text me back?"

My voice came out sharper than I meant. Accusatory. Like I was the one who got wronged here. Like I deserved a response.

She just stood there. Arms crossed. Looking at me like I was something she stepped in.

"Are you with a man right now?"

The words were out before I could stop them. Jealous. Possessive. Stupid. Because if she was with someone else, I deserved it. I deserved to walk in on it. I deserved to feel that knife twist in my gut the same way I'd twisted it in hers.

But I couldn't help it. The thought of someone else's hands on her made me want to put my fist through a wall.

She didn't answer. Just kept staring.

And I realized—really realized, sitting there on her couch in the apartment I used to have a key to—that flowers don't fix shit. Hyacinths don't mean anything when you've had another woman's mouth on you. I'm sorry doesn't cover it when you lied about where you were.

I love you?

Yeah. I did. I do.

But that wasn't the point, was it?

The point was that I was sitting in her living room, and she looked at me like I was a stranger, and every single thing in this room screamed her—her blankets, her candles, her photos on the wall—and none of it had me in it anymore.

Because I did that.

Because I got a blowjob at a party when I told her I was out of town, and she caught me, and now I was just the asshole on her couch with a bouquet of flowers she probably threw in the trash.

"You're not gonna say anything?" My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked. "Come on, please. Just—fucking yell at me.“