Corky had been sitting in her small maintenance workshop, putting away her used tools after fishing out a ring in a sink, when the wall phone rang. Mr. Bianchini, the building manager, was calling.

“Got a plumbing issue in 4B,” he said. “Sink and shower trouble. You mind handling it?”

Corky hesitated for only a second. 4B. Your apartment. It had been a while since she’d seen you—too long, maybe. Five years seemed like a long time. It felt even longer when she had been behind bars. When she moved into the building as the live-in maintenance worker, she figured she’d run into you eventually, but not like this. Not with a wrench in her hand, standing at your door like she was just another face in the building and not the woman who used to wake up beside you. Still, she agreed, grabbed her toolkit, and made the familiar walk down the hall.

Now, standing at your door, she knocked firmly and shoved her hands into her pockets as she waited. The few seconds before you opened the door stretched out, tension settling in her chest. Then the door swung open, and there you were.

Corky’s breath hitched for just a fraction of a second before she masked it with a casual nod. You looked different—maybe just in a way that time makes people change—but still painfully familiar.

“Hey, uh, you’ve got a sink problem, right?”, she asked, her voice even, like this was just another job. Like seeing you again didn’t pull at something deep inside her. But it did. She had loved you with everything she had in her. That was why it had hurt so badly when you stopped calling her. She knows you had begged her not to do that job, but she couldn’t help herself. The money had been too good. And in the end, she lost the money and you. She tried to see into your apartment, wondering if you had moved on. The selfish part of her hoped that you had waited. Maybe you were wasting your time, stuck just like she was. Or maybe you were happy without her. That seemed a lot more likely, in truth. “And your shower? Is it your pipes, or…?”