YENA

“Oh, Yena, I’m so sorry… are you alright?”

I closed my eyes and thought about that.

“I don’t know, Tina. But I will be.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know you will. And I’m proud of you for following your dream.”

Tina sounded sad, probably because she could feel that I was.

I was sitting in bed, staring at the door. Wondering when Nolan was going to come back here tonight… or if he would at all.

Maybe he didn’t want to sleep in the same bed as me tonight.

And if he did walk through the door, what was I going to say to him?

He seemed upset when I gave him the divorce forms back, signed.

But he was the one who wrote them up in the first place…

“Yena, you there?”

“Yeah. Sorry. What did you say?”

I realized Tina had asked something while I was thinking about Nolan.

“I was asking when you can come to see us here? I’d love to talk to you in person about all this… your plans for what you’ll do now… and help you and Evan get ready for your trip.”

I smiled. It had felt so good to talk to Evan recently. I was looking forward to spending time with my brother again soon.

“Thank you,” I told Tina, “that sounds great… I think I can use all the help I can get right now. I’ll call you tomorrow about when I’ll come to the house.”

“Okay my love, talk to you then. Please call again if you need anything… no matter what time it is.”

“Thank you. Again.”

“Love you, sweetie. Bye-bye now. Go get some rest.”

I told Tina I loved her too, and asked her to give Evan a hug from me.

Then I plugged my phone in to charge and slipped out of bed. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like Nolan wasn’t coming back here tonight.

I knew him by now.

He was probably in his office, getting drunk. Or maybe he was already passed out in there.

Thinking about that made me frown.

I cranked the heat up. There was a cold wind outside slamming into the windows, and my husband wasn’t here to warm up the sheets and hold me tonight.

I corrected myself. My soon to be ex-husband.

I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed, then looked through my closet for a comfy sweater to wear.

But then I found myself wandering into Nolan’s closet instead. I found a sweater he’d worn recently hanging on the back of a chair…

I pressed my face into it and breathed in his smell.

It was so comforting. Even though I was mad at him… and we were drifting apart already… the effect that Nolan’s smell had on me was something primal, not logical.

I put the sweater on. It went all the way down to my knees. I giggled when I caught my reflection in a floor-length mirror that I passed on the way back to the bedroom.

Back in bed, I curled up in all the blankets and tucked myself in tight.

My eyelids were so heavy, they needed to stay closed. But I couldn’t fall asleep. There was an aching pain that started in the center of my chest and went out through my whole body.

It was one thing to think about leaving Nolan during the daytime… when I was getting encouragement from my friends and family.

But being alone at night, the way my body missed the shape of his body next to it… that was something else. It felt like a part of myself was missing, and it hurt.

NOLAN

There was a bigger couch in the main part of his office, but Nolan wound up passing out on the tiny one inside the library nook, instead.

His big body didn’t fit in the hard little couch, and his head, arms, and legs were all hanging off the sides.

He’d snoozed for a while, before the pain in his neck woke him up. The room was dark and his neck cracked painfully as he jerked up into a sitting position.

Nolan looked down at his watch and pressed the button that made the numbers light up in green.

The lines were all blurry… the numbers kept moving around…

It was something around midnight, he wound up guessing. It was hurting his head to keep trying to figure it out exactly.

Nolan was awake enough to want to put himself to bed properly. But too drunk to go walking through palace right now.

He stood up to test his balance. It was alright.

Then he tried walking back out to the main office and…

Nope.

He tripped on an empty bottle and had to grab for the wall to keep from crashing to the floor.

Nolan put his back to the wall and used it to keep himself standing up.

He didn’t want Yena to see him like this.

After all this time, and everything he did to show the princess that he loved her… he didn’t want this to be the way she remembered him, at the end.

As the drunken asshole she hadn’t had to deal with since their wedding night.

So whether or not he’d be able to walk back to their room without falling over, he couldn’t show up in their bed like this…

Nolan made it to the big couch and dove into it head-first.

It was a bad idea, because then the spins started…

Making himself sit up again, though, made his stomach turn, and all the liquid in it sloshed around and surged up into his throat in a hot, burning flood—

He was only fast enough to miss the couch.

But maybe it was actually worse that he puked right into the carpet.

Next thing Nolan knew, a clattering sound and a blinding yellow light were forcing him awake. His head was pounding.

It was morning. A rare very sunny morning.

Perfect time for that, he thought to himself.

He squinted his eyes open a tiny bit and sat up slowly.

His secretary was there in the room, bustling around. That was all the noise.

The smell of coffee seemed both good and bad… There was a steaming cup in front of him on the table. He took it with a shaky hand and started sipping it slowly.

“You have an appointment in twenty minutes,” the secretary said, walking over toward Nolan.

He grabbed a little can from right beside the couch and Nolan heard some liquid sloshing around inside. He didn’t even remember using it, or where it came from.

The place where he’d thrown up into the carpet was already cleaned up and covered over with a towel.

Nolan looked over at his secretary, who was all business right now, and frowned.

The old man shouldn’t have had to find Nolan like this. Not again.

Nolan was better than this, now… or at least he should be.

Yena had been making him a better version of himself.

He sighed. He was going to have to find a way to live without her, now.

This wasn’t the way to do it.