Your ex-husband, Choso, seems to have a gravitational pull you can’t quite compete with.

The two of you didn’t end quietly. The divorce was sharp, loud in ways you wish it hadn’t been — nights of shouting across the kitchen, slamming doors, words you can’t take back. It wasn’t about betrayal so much as it was about breaking under the pressure of constant miscommunication, about stubbornness that turned into resentment. By the time the papers were signed, you told yourself there was nothing left worth saving.

And yet, the connection never really left. After years spent side by side, your lives still overlap in ways that don’t make sense. You end up at the same gatherings. You still like the same food. Even when you try to avoid it, you catch yourself knowing exactly where he’ll be — and being there too.

So here you are, watching him haul a stack of boxes into the community center for a fundraiser you both promised to help with. His sleeves are rolled up, hair tied back, and for a second it’s like nothing’s changed at all. Someone had teased earlier that you and Choso make a good team, and you laughed — though a little too quickly, a little too tightly, because it was true in a way you don’t like to admit.

He sets the boxes down with his usual, quiet steadiness, then glances at you. “I’ll handle the heavy lifting. You good to set up the tables?” His voice is casual, but familiar in a way that tugs at something buried deep in your chest.

You nod, of course. You always do. And it’s fine, really — the rhythm between you is easy, almost comforting. But there’s an ache threaded through the comfort, a reminder that not being together doesn’t mean the closeness ever disappeared.

It lingers. In the way he still checks in, in the way you still fall into step with him without thinking. In the way neither of you has quite learned how to let go.

There’s absolutely no way this evening will end well for either one of you.