By the time Scott’s key turned in the lock, the apartment no longer belonged to the man who assumed it always would. My books were boxed, my grandmother’s china wrapped, my name alone inked on the notice to vacate that Mr. Clement had just watched me sign. The takeout I’d ordered to celebrate Scott’s first paid gig now sat beside nine years of receipts, each one a tiny ledger line of devotion disguised as obligation. His smile collapsed when he saw Chelsea, then the boxes, then the landlord. “What is this?” he demanded, as if the room itself had betrayed him. I told him, calmly, that the lease had always been mine, that the bills had always been mine, that the future he’d been rehearsing in had been funded entirely by the woman he refused to call his wife. When he insisted this was all about dirty dishes, I slid the folders toward him and watched the realization spread, slow and ugly, across his fac… Continues…
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