I WAS A LITTLE SURPRISED to find my front door locked. I dug for my key and let myself in, grabbing my mail from the box on the way. My little mailbox was falling off my house. Another thing to fix. As I slid through envelopes, a realtor’s brochure of fancy, expensive houses in Atlanta was on top. I searched for the smiley realtor, Sandra Dee, it said her name was. The price for a house in Buckhead, with a sparkling swimming pool was two-million-dollars. Yeah, I freaking wish, Sandra.

Until I hit the lottery or my random ideas of opening up a chain of high-end but fair priced spa experiences takes off, it’s my little house with the dangling red mailbox for me. When I got inside, the house was heavy with silence. I went through the rest of my mail—nothing interesting, mainly bills and flyers—and because the entire house smelled of Elodie’s popcorn and it made my stomach growl, I grabbed some pretzels from my pantry.

My house felt different with no sound. It felt strange not hearing the name Olivia Pope every few minutes. I was completely alone. No Elodie. No Kael. We didn’t agree on a time or anything, but I guess I’d just assumed that he would be at my house when I got off work.

Where else would he go?

I microwaved the last of the leftovers from Mali. I washed a load of dishes. Sat at my kitchen table. Grabbed the paperback I was reading and tried to pick up where I had left off. I kept thinking about Kael, wondering how he would be when we went shopping. Would he be more talkative or would it be a silent excursion?

I loved to torture myself with second thoughts, so now I was thinking that maybe I had misconstrued the whole situation and that Kael was under the impression I would be dropping him off to shop by himself. Then I convinced myself that I had invited myself to shop with him, and that he probably thought I was weird or pushy. Or both.

Ten minutes later, I was back to reality. No way would Kael be sitting around overthinking our conversation—wherever he was. I was totally overreacting.

Overthinking. Overreacting. Not exactly skills I could put on my resume. I put the book down without having read a word, then picked up my phone and went through Facebook, typing Kael Martin in the search box. No change in his profile. And I still couldn’t bring myself to send him a friend request.

I clicked out of his page and went to my inbox, as if I was expecting an important email or something. I was pacing around my room before I knew it, going in circles, getting myself worked up. I stopped dead in my tracks when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. With my dark hair pulled back, my eyes wild, I looked like my mother. Frighteningly like my mother.

I lay on my bed and grabbed my book again, but soon felt like I needed a change of scenery, so I went to the living room and flopped on the couch. I checked the time on my phone. Almost seven. I picked up where I left off on my last dog-eared page—I had never been a bookmark kind of girl—and let Hemingway’s brutal tale take me to the first World War. It wasn’t the distraction I had hoped for, though. The closer I got to sleep, the more Kael’s face appeared on multiple characters. He was a drill sergeant. A wounded soldier. An ambulance driver. And he looked at me like he recognized my eyes.

I woke up on the couch, the sun bright on my face. I looked around the living room, gathering my thoughts.

Kael hadn’t come back.