“I’m not going to let a shouting match on my porch decide what I’m allowed to feel.”
I nodded.
She held my gaze.
“The question isn’t whether Tasha comes back, Ethan. It’s whether you let her come back into your life.”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Diane studied my face.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then act like it.”
That night, I blocked Tasha’s number.
I deleted the photographs I’d kept because I couldn’t bring myself to decide what to do with them. I packed the things she’d left at my apartment and mailed them to her last known address.
I didn’t write a note.
I didn’t ask for an apology.
For the first time in seven months, I stopped waiting for the next message.
The silence that followed was not empty.
It was mine.
Three days later, I returned to Diane’s house.
Maya had left for a two-week barista certification course in a city three hours north, and the house was unusually quiet.
