My husband invited his ex to our housewarming and …

“Yes.”

“Do you need money?”

“No.”

“Do you want us to come?”

I closed my eyes.

“No, Mom. I’m okay. Really.”

There was a pause, then she said more softly, “Good. Because your father is already putting shoes on and pretending it’s not because he wants to drive to Seattle and glare at somebody.”

I could hear my dad in the background saying, “I can hear her, Mei.”

When he got on the line, he cleared his throat like he was preparing to discuss taxes.

“You know,” he said, “when something keeps wobbling, it’s not always because the floor is wrong. Sometimes it was installed badly.”

I laughed.

“Is that relationship advice or elevator advice?”

“Yes.”

My father repaired industrial refrigeration systems for thirty years and trusted metaphor only if it could also tighten a bolt.

Work on Monday was almost a relief.

Machines did not care if your heart had rearranged itself over the weekend. We had a callback in a hospital building where one of the service cars was intermittently refusing hall calls above the eighth floor.

Marcus met me in the loading bay with two coffees and a bag of stale donuts.

“How’s the newly single life?” he asked.

“I slept like someone had canceled an alarm I didn’t know was going off.”

He nodded with exaggerated solemnity.

“Classic symptom.”

Word had spread, of course.

Not virally, not in some dramatic public way, but through the normal channels by which every social circle metabolizes spectacle. Marcus had already received three versions of the story. In one, I threw wine in Derek’s face. In another, Nicole started crying immediately. In a third, I announced my departure while standing on a chair, which I considered an improvement and briefly regretted not having done.

My friend from softball texted:

Heard what happened. Proud of you.

A woman I had met twice at one of Derek’s work events sent:

I know we don’t really know each other, but that was incredible and also he always gave me weird vibes.

Even people who did not message me directly adjusted around me in the subtle way communities do when they decide which story they believe. I had been bracing for humiliation.

Instead, I got something closer to respect.

That surprised me enough that I spent the first week distrusting it.

Derek continued texting.

Then calling.

Then emailing.

I blocked his number after the fifth voicemail. The emails landed in a folder I told myself I would read later and never did.

The first one that made it through because he used a different address opened with:

I understand now that you felt blindsided.

It was such an infuriating use of the passive voice that I deleted it before finishing.

A week after the party, I went back to the apartment while Derek was at work. I had arranged it by email, copying Ava, because by then I was treating logistics like legal procedure. He had objected, of course. He wanted to be there. He wanted to “talk while I packed.”

Absolutely not.

Marcus took an early lunch and came with me. Jenna met us there too. Between the two of them, they radiated enough protective hostility to power a small city.

Inside, the apartment looked almost exactly the same except slightly sadder.

The string lights were gone.

There were still coasters stacked on the coffee table and one unopened jar of olives in the fridge.

I moved through the rooms with a cardboard box and the uncanny feeling of walking through a museum exhibit of a life I had already left.

There was more that was mine than I first thought, though not by much.

Books Derek never read but liked displaying because I had them.

The ceramic mug.

The flannel.

A drawer of socks.

A kitchen knife my parents bought me when I moved into my first solo apartment.

A blanket Ava gave me after my grandfather’s funeral.

Three plants, two half dead and one stubbornly alive.

The little framed postcard of Taipei my grandmother mailed me when I was fourteen.

A collection of tiny things that, when gathered, resembled personhood.

In the bedroom, Jenna zipped another box and said, “Do you feel sad?”

I considered.

“A little.”

“Do you miss him?”

I looked around at the room and found I missed almost nothing except the version of myself that had kept hoping this room would one day feel like home.

“Not really,” I said.

She set down the tape gun.

“That tells you something.”

On my way out, I left my keys on the kitchen counter next to the sink I had fixed three nights before the party.

I almost laughed at the symmetry.

The first two weeks at Ava’s were an exercise in remembering how to exist without anticipating someone else’s reaction to every preference.

What do you want for dinner?

Whatever you want.

No, what do you want?

What show do you feel like watching?

Which route do you want to walk?

Do you want company or quiet?

Ava asked the kind of ordinary questions that expose damage because they assume you still know the answers.

Sometimes I did.

Sometimes I had to stop and think.

She never made a production out of helping. She just made room. Her spare room became less spare. I stacked my boots by the door. I took over one shelf in the bathroom. I started making coffee in her kitchen like I belonged there.

Every small act of occupation felt oddly radical.

One rainy evening about ten days in, she found me standing in the grocery store frozen-food aisle staring at two brands of dumplings with unreasonable intensity.