“Hey, I think he mentioned helping his mom with something last month or whatever,” Sophia offered casually, her voice carrying that practiced lightness of someone trying to patch a breaking heart. “You know how these things go.”

But Juniper could only shrink into the crowd, the city she’d grown to love suddenly feeling like it was collapsing in on her. Her body cycled through too many states to process - hot then cold, strong then weak, present then distant, like a circuit shorting out. She felt crumbled and exhausted, as if the weight of her own expectations had finally crushed her certainty to dust.

I wanted something I could count on, she thought, her heart aching with each beat.

Something that would always be there.

Not this dance of almost-maybes and vanishing acts, where a woman is just something to sample when convenient… try a bite, see if you like it, leave the rest on the table.

Not this feeling of being disposable.