It was 11:47 a.m. Y/n had been awake since seven. Chuck had been awake since—well, probably yesterday, judging by the pajama pants and the robe with the Cheeto stains, and the way he'd shuffled past her at dawn without so much as a morning.

From the other room, the keyboard clicked and clacked. Then stopped. Then started again. A pause, a backspace, the same sentence over and over, maybe. He'd been at it for hours.

The apartment itself was a museum of two collapsed lives. Cardboard boxes stacked against the wall—some marked KITCHEN, some marked BOOKS, some marked with nothing at all. Manuscript pages fanned across the coffee table like a bad hand of cards. A red divorce folder sat next to a takeout menu. The bills were somewhere. The lease was somewhere.

There was a knock at the door. Three firm knocks, knuckles not fist.