Page 53 of Doughn't Let Me Go

“I’m scared.”

“You should be, but I guess I can’t be too weirded out by it. My ex made sure to make her try a little bit of everything when she was really young so she’d have a well-rounded palate.”

Dory’s jaw drops open, but she recovers quickly.

Right. My ex. It’s not that she’s some surprise or anything—it’s obvious she exists out there somewhere. I just don’t think I’ve ever mentioned her before.

Dory takes another sip of her coffee, peeling her eyes away from me.

I know she wants to talk about it, but I don’t. Not really.

Still, now that she’s working with Kyrie, I know questions are going to come up. We need to clear the air.

“You can ask me anything.”

The only indication she heard me is her eyes briefly flitting my way.

I push off the counter, dropping my elbows on the island. I lean across, holding my cup the exact same way she’s holding hers, and take a sip, staring at her over the rim.

Underwater.

That’s what her eyes look like this close up in the daytime.

It’s like those photos you see of marine life, the ones where right around the animal, it’s bright and blue. Then the brightness fades into a murky, dark midnight color.

It doesn’t even matter that she’s wearing colored contacts and what I’m seeing probably isn’t real. The color fits her, considering her name and all.

“I don’t want to pry,” she finally says, setting her mug on the counter with a soft clink.

“It’s not prying if I’m offering the information.”

Her ocean eyes meet my gaze for just a brief second and then they bounce back down to the mug. “Were you married?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Too long.”

Her lips twitch, but she doesn’t actually smile. “What happened?”

Fuck. Of course she’d pick the most loaded question of the bunch to ask.

What happened? I don’t know.

I woke up one morning, happy and satiated. The next I was a shell of a broken man.

It was a Wednesday. I remember because Wednesdays are pancake days. We’d always get up half an hour early to celebrate hump day. We’d have slow, quiet sex, then we’d get up and make breakfast together. It never felt like a routine or a slump. It was just what we did. It was how we connected, took time for ourselves.

It was our thing.

Except for that Wednesday.

I woke up and the bed was empty. I thought maybe she’d gotten up to pee. So, I waited. And waited. When she never came back to bed, I called out for her.

Nothing.

I searched for her.

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