You always make everything dramatic, Llaya,” he said. “If you had a real job, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Heal fast, because I am out of patience.”

He turned and left. The click of the door settled in the room like a period at the end of a sentence I did not write.

Penelope came in later, pulled a chair close, and sat without speaking, letting the silence be a blanket. When she finally spoke, she said the quietest, truest thing I had ever heard. “You can be lucky to be alive and unlucky to be loved by the wrong person. That is not a contradiction.”

I cried then, not loud, just a clean stream that didn’t ask for permission.

The next morning, my friend Norah swept in with peonies wrapped in brown paper and a tote bag full of snacks. She kissed my forehead, set her bag down with a thump that felt like a promise, and said she would stay the night in the chair beside my bed. We talked about small things because small things are the ladders you use to climb out of shock.