My husband invited his ex to our housewarming and …

“You okay?” she asked.

“I can’t decide which ones I want.”

“So buy the ones you want.”

“I know. That’s the issue.”

She leaned the cart against her hip.

“Maya. This is not about dumplings.”

I laughed and then, embarrassingly, started crying between the peas and the microwaveable rice.

Not loud crying.

Just overwhelmed leaking.

Because she was right.

It was not about dumplings.

It was about how often, over the previous two years, I had made tiny decisions around Derek’s tastes until my own preferences felt less like choices and more like inefficient detours. Even in the grocery store, my first instinct was to run a simulation of his likely opinion.

Ava handed me a tissue from her coat pocket because she is the sort of person who has tissues in coat pockets.

“Take both,” she said. “Freedom is a buy-one-get-one situation.”

I took both.

Three weeks after the party, I signed a lease on a one-bedroom in Fremont.

It was not glamorous.

The building was older, the radiator hissed like a gossiping aunt, and the kitchen was arranged by someone who had never cooked a meal. But it had tall windows, maple floors scratched into honesty, and a tiny balcony just wide enough for two plants and a folding chair.

More importantly, when I stood in the middle of the living room, the emptiness answered to me.

The landlord was a woman named Elise with silver hair in a braid to her waist and a habit of referring to appliances as if they had personalities. She looked over my application, asked what I did for work, and when I told her, brightened visibly.

“Oh, good,” she said. “Then you won’t be intimidated by the heater. It’s moody but loyal.”

I got the keys two days later.

Moving in was a patchwork operation carried out by friends, a borrowed truck, and stubbornness. Marcus carried the heavy boxes as if they insulted him. Jenna labeled things with unnecessary enthusiasm. Ava arrived with sandwiches, cleaning supplies, and a spider plant she claimed was impossible to kill, which I took as a challenge from the universe.

My parents drove up with the kitchen table from my old studio, the one that had been in storage because Derek’s table was “nicer.” My father tightened every loose hinge in the apartment within twenty minutes of arrival. My mother lined shelves with contact paper and said, as if discussing the weather, “Sometimes leaving is not the end of a thing. Sometimes it is the first accurate sentence.”

That first night alone in my new apartment, I sat cross-legged on the floor eating noodles out of my own bowl with my own chopsticks while the radiator hissed and rain tapped lightly at the window. There were boxes everywhere. My mattress was on the floor. The internet was not working yet.