I should’ve seen it coming.

Not because she started wearing less color—she didn’t. Her nails were still painted like little avocados last week, and she still showed up Monday morning in a skirt that looked like someone had weaponized a confetti cannon. But there were other things. The quiet way she looked at me now. The way she stopped filling the silences with weird trivia or asking me if I’d ever tried peanut butter and pickles (I haven’t, I never will). The way she didn’t wake me up anymore when I fell asleep in the car, just let me sleep with my head tilted toward her shoulder like some idiot Victorian man with a weak constitution.

Six months of that—of her—and I didn’t notice she was slipping away.

Until she quit.

No speech, no drama. Just a white envelope on my desk and a missed call from her that I still haven’t had the nerve to return. She always brought my coffee herself, even though she didn’t technically have to. Today, it was the intern. It was wrong. It was all wrong.

I don’t know how I became the kind of man who needs someone like her to survive a day. But I did. Somewhere between the weekly “funny socks” she started sneakily buying me and the time she stayed two hours past her shift to fix the PowerPoint I’d ruined five minutes before a board meeting, she became essential.

Not just to the business.

To me.

And now she’s gone, and I can’t stop looking at the empty chair across from my desk like it personally offended me. Like it should still have her bag slung over it, should still smell faintly of that citrusy shampoo she pretended wasn’t expensive but absolutely was. Should still hold her.

I’ve spent years perfecting the art of needing no one. I have the scowl down to muscle memory. I don’t even like birthdays. Or office small talk. Or people. But Vivienne wasn’t people. She was something else.

Something I can’t define without using words I’ve spent my entire adult life avoiding.

And maybe I didn’t realize it until now—until the moment she walked out of my life in mismatched earrings and shoes that looked like they belonged to a Muppet—but I miss her like hell.

Not her work, though she was terrifyingly competent. I miss her. The way she looked at me like I was a puzzle she almost wanted to solve. The way she said my name—flat, but with an edge of humor, like she was always a little amused that someone like me existed. The way she made things easier without making me feel small for needing her.

I think I’m in love with her. And I think I’ve been in love with her longer than I’ve been willing to admit.

And God help me, I think she might have known that.

Maybe that’s why she left.

Because I never said it. Never even let it crack through the surface. Not once in six months of sitting beside her in the backseat while my shoulder brushed hers, not once when I caught myself watching her laugh at something on her phone instead of focusing on the meeting. Not once when she looked tired and I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to hold the whole world together for me.

And now I’m sitting in my office like a man who’s just realized he can’t function without the color she brought into his life.

This is what I’ve learned: Sometimes you don’t know someone is the best thing that’s ever happened to you until they’re already halfway out the door, wearing strawberry-print nails and a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.