Martha likes her scones with extra lemon glaze. Tom from the hardware store pretends the bear claws are for his wife but I’ve seen the powdered sugar on his mustache. The college kids order oat milk lattes and study for hours on a single cup, but they tip well and tell their friends, so I let them stay.
Five weeks of being Zoey Carter.
Some days the name fits like a glove. Other days it sits on my skin like someone else’s coat, close enough to wear, wrong enough to itch.
Today is an itchy day.
Saul left this morning.
Three days of orgasms, unsolicited coffee, and being looked at like I’m someone worth rooting for.
And now he’s gone and I’m here, standing in a kitchen that still smells like him and trying not to lose my goddamn mind.
I stood by the window and waited for the familiar existential freefall. It didn’t hit. Not like it used to.
Just a low-grade ache. Old grief humming under my ribs like a shitty fridge motor I’ve learned to ignore.
It tastes like Dario’s espresso and Enzo’s laugh, which is rude, because neither of those things are Witness Protection approved coping mechanisms.
I miss them in a way that doesn’t fade, doesn’t soften, doesn’t get easier with time. It just becomes part of me. Background noise. The hum of grief I’ve learned to function around.
Saul knows. He sees the mug I won’t put away. The shirts I sleep in. The pen on my nightstand that I’ve never used because using it would feel like erasing something.
He doesn’t ask about them.
I don’t know if that’s kindness or avoidance.
Maybe both.
I’m restocking the display case, chocolate croissants on the left, almond on the right, everything in its place, when the door chimes.
“Be right with you,” I call without looking up.
“Delivery for Zoey Carter.” It’s a courier. Brown uniform. Clipboard. The kind of bored professionalism that says he does this forty times a day and doesn’t care what’s in the boxes.
“That’s me.”
He has me sign. Hands over a package. Medium-sized. Heavier than it looks.
I set it on the counter after he leaves. Stare at it.
I didn’t order anything. Supplies come through the back. Saul would have mentioned if he’d sent something.
The paper’s brown. Plain. No return address.
My hands are steady when I cut the tape. Then I open it and immediately wish I hadn’t. Because inside is grief in a fucking wrapper.
A box. Smaller. Dark wood with gold lettering. The kind of packaging that whispers expensive and imported and someone spent real money on this.
Italian chocolates.
The kind that taste like betrayal and orgasms and a man who could make murder look like art. Same box. Same pretentious gold lettering. Same emotional whiplash.
My heart does a backflip. My lungs forget their job. My trauma response kicks in like it’s clocking in for the night shift.
I open the box.
The chocolates are perfect. Rows of dark and milk, nestled in paper like tiny works of art. The smell hits me, rich, sweet, the specific scent of that first box.
