“It’s not your fault,” I managed, though my throat burned as if I’d swallowed smoke. “I guess I should’ve known better.”
She tilted her head slightly, watching me.
“No,” she said. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”
The words landed like something heavier than comfort. Like a verdict.
I wanted to ask her what she meant. I wanted to demand she explain the coin, the strange certainty in her voice. But the revolving doors were turning, and inside them, the life I thought I had was already moving on without me.
I walked away.
And the wind hit harder without my jacket.
Two weeks is a short time to lose your footing. It’s also more than enough time for panic to become a daily companion.
The first few days, I moved through a fog of disbelief. I polished my resume like it was a life raft. I emailed contacts I hadn’t spoken to in years. I refreshed job boards until my eyes blurred. I wrote cover letters late into the night with my laptop balanced on my knees, the apartment too quiet around me.
At first, I treated it like an emergency that would resolve itself quickly. I had experience. I had skills. I had always been the reliable one.
Then the days kept passing.
The polite rejection emails came in, some immediate, some delayed. A few places never replied at all, which somehow felt worse, like being erased.
My savings began to thin out in a way that made me hyperaware of every purchase. Groceries became a calculation. Heating became a compromise. I found myself standing in my kitchen staring at my bank app with a hollow feeling in my chest, as if the numbers were quietly laughing.
On the fourteenth day, I woke up with that heavy, trapped feeling that comes when you realize you’ve been clenching your jaw in your sleep.
I needed air. I needed movement. I needed something normal.
I opened my apartment door to grab the mail, expecting the usual thin stack of flyers and bills.
And then I froze.
On the porch, placed neatly as if it belonged there, sat a small velvet box.
Deep, dark velvet that caught the light in a soft way. It looked expensive in a way that made my skin go cold. It was too deliberate to be a mistake. Too specific to be random.
No address.
No note.
Just waiting.
