A text message pings on my phone while I’m sitting on my couch, combing through online product listings for lube. I’ve been making a list of keywords for when I create my own product listing but the distraction of my phone is a welcome relief. There are only so many times you can read the words “slick” and “arousal” before your eyes start to bleed.

It’s been a week since I let Jackson in on my secret and I haven’t let myself think about anything other than work and my new business in that time. When I pause, even for a minute, it’s an invitation to start thinking about Matthew and all the ways I miss my old life, and it just sucks. The shittiest thing about this situation is that for all the hurt I’m feeling now, there were good parts about the time I spent with Matthew. He brought order to my life when everything else seemed to be splintering apart, and I loved him for that. Even now, after everything that’s happened, I know how important it was for me to have that stability in my life. If only he hadn’t broken the same stability by breaking my trust.

I shift my computer off of my lap, my skin hot underneath, and reach for my phone.

Hey, babe, missing our usual girls’ night! Mandy’s text is accompanied by a photograph of her tiny balcony, glittering with string lights and a bottle of wine sitting in the middle of her patio table.

The message shoots straight to my chest. Even though it’s not in the picture, I know my old balcony is sandwiched right next to hers, a mirror image. We actually met on the balconies the night I moved in, after I’d gone outside to look at the city lights. We struck up a conversation about waiting tables and she hung over the railing to offer me a glass of Chardonnay.

Another picture, this time of two glasses of wine. Just gonna have to drink your glass for you, followed by a lewd winking face. I wonder if she’s bumped into Matthew in the building, if now that I’m gone he has Wendy over in my place. The idea of it makes my stomach twist, but I can’t muster up the energy to go into that with Mandy.

I type, Miss you. Enjoy. Then I stuff the phone deep under the cushions of the couch. As much as it’s nice to hear from Mandy, it’s salt in a wound I didn’t realize was still so raw. She’s part of my old life with Matthew, and the logical part of me knows that just because he and I broke up doesn’t mean Mandy and I can’t be friends. The problem is, my heart can’t compartmentalize. Everything hurts, everything’s a fucking reminder of the sharp line between before and after. Even a well-intentioned text.

I glance around the guesthouse, my shoulders dropping. Everything in Boston is spinning forward without me. Everything’s going to change and the longer I’m away, the harder it’s going to be to get my old life back. Even here in Swan’s Hollow, where nothing ever changes, things have changed. Yesterday I went to the cheap taco stand off the main drag just to get out of the house. They used to have Mexican Cokes—the kind made with real sugar—and they’d serve bottomless chips straight from the fryer. But the Coke was the standard can, and I had to pay for refills on my chips. If even that can change, Boston’s going to be a whole new world when I get back. Matthew will have had a chance to tell some version of our breakup story to all our friends, and I won’t have had a chance to tell my side. All the more reason to hurry up and get out of here.

My eyes skim over the rooms that have become my home in these last few weeks. No matter how well I mold the couch to fit my body, no matter how cute Precious looks by the window with the plantation blinds, it’s still a guesthouse—emphasis on guest. The rooms are full of touches that Gayle’s decorator picked—ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped like tiny white elephants, a campaign dresser with brass nailheads dotting the front panel. It’s not my apartment in Beacon Hill with the cobblestone path out front, with its high ceilings and framed posters of classic book covers on the walls. It’s missing the vintage desk that I’d haggled for at the Somerville Flea Market, the one with a hidden drawer and a mysterious gauge running down the left-hand side of the surface.

And my books. God, my books. There were too many of them to pack in my escape; they were too heavy to fit in the boxes I stuffed in the back of my Camry. So I left without most of them. Gone is the copy of White Oleander that I picked up in the Trident Bookstore on Charles Street, polishing off my favorite lemon ricotta French toast afterward. Gone is the copy of Practical Magic from the huge Barnes & Nobel in the Prudential Center, the Dubliners from the tiny gift shop in Harvard Square.

I did bring a few signed copies to Swan’s Hollow with me, but the little collection that’s still boxed up next to my fig tree doesn’t feel like a library. It doesn’t smell like coffee shops and paper and hope. It doesn’t make me feel like I can breathe deeply enough to fill my lungs.

I’m sure I can go back for the rest of my books, but I’m not ready to face my old life just yet. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. Suddenly I’m homesick—for Boston, for Matthew, for Mandy. For a time when I was happy. I might have been blind and stupid, but I didn’t have ragged edges and empty dreams. I didn’t feel like a ghost in my own life.

I can’t remember the last time I laughed and meant it.

Actually, that’s not true. With Jackson at the coffee shop the other week, some door inside me had eased open, but I slammed it shut again just as soon as it happened.

I pull a shaky gulp of air and eye the boxes next to my tree again. Just a sideways glance, fast and noncommittal. I don’t want to give them my full attention, make them real. But, argh.

I grab a kitchen knife and sink to my knees next to the cardboard tower. I left Boston quickly enough that I hadn’t labeled a single box, but if I tap the sides I can make a guess as to what’s inside of them.

The box on top of the stack is light and it makes a hollow thud when I hit it. This one. Just the flap. Opening it doesn’t mean I’m unpacking.

I slice the packing tape quickly and efficiently before I can second-guess myself. Inside I spot my fleecy winter blanket, red and black buffalo plaid, squares as big as my hand. I bought it in Copley Place one winter and even though Matthew hated it at first, it was the warmest, coziest thing either of us owned. Soon enough he was the one to reach for it on movie nights. We brought it with us the summer we camped in the Berkshires and it cushioned us when we had sex under the stars.

I pull the plaid blanket from the box and wrap it around my shoulders. It smells like Matthew, and I get this feeling again that my life exists somewhere outside of this house and this town. This feeling like I’m waiting for something to start, or resume, or something.

It’s too hot with the blanket draped around my shoulders, so I open the window near Precious to let in some air. Voices float in on the breeze, my dad’s and Gayle’s and someone that sounds remarkably like Jackson.

Wait. I pull down the blinds. It is Jackson, standing there, shooting the breeze with my parents. I pinch the bridge of my nose and stare with horror at the scene. This is not what I need tonight.

Not at all.