I knew that black satin box. I knew what was inside without looking, but I picked it up anyway with quaking hands, the hinges squeaking softly when I opened it. The light caught the two-carat diamond inside, the ring I’d worn every day for a year until the day when I was supposed to wear it forever.

I closed the box with a snap, my fingers numb as I picked up the letter in the bottom of the cardboard box with my name on the front. I opened the envelope and unfolded the paper inside, sinking into a chair as I read.

Maggie — 

These months without you have been the worst of my life. I found all of this in our closet, the box full of our memories, and it was too much. I’ve been giving you space, but I can’t stay quiet anymore.

Tell me what I have to do to get you back. Tell me what to say. I love you, and I always have. Come home, Maggie. Because my life doesn’t make sense without you in it.

—Jimmy

Tears spilled down my cheeks, hot and fat, so fast I could barely see. I closed my eyes, ribs aching as I dragged in a skipping breath, letting it out with a sob. And my past rushed back to me, overwhelming me. It wasn’t what was in the box. It was the deluge of my memories, the ghost come back to haunt me. To push me over the edge.

“Oh, God, Maggie,” Lily whispered and reached for me.

I shook my head, hands clasped over my mouth. Beaten. Broken. My eyes found the picture from the football game again, what felt like a million years ago and yesterday. We looked so happy. I thought we were happy.

Everything about him was constructed, manufactured to make me feel safe and wanted, and it was all a lie. I didn’t believe that he cared about anyone but himself. But for years, for my entire adult life and even before, Jimmy was all I’d ever known.

The memory of him, of seven years of loving him — it all crashed into me.

Everything I’d been hiding from, everything I’d been running from had found me.

I couldn’t breathe, though the tears still fell, my heart beating so hard in my chest that I felt like I’d been shot. My fingers tingled, black spots swimming in my vision.

Rose turned my chair. “Maggie? Breathe, Maggie.”

I tried. I tried to slow down, closed my eyes and held my lungs still, but they sucked in another frantic breath, sobs shuddering through me until the black spots spread.

And then they were gone.

GRAVITY

Maggie

THE CHILDREN’S FACES WERE TURNED up to mine, eyes full of hope and wonder as I read to them the next morning, feeling like I’d been hit by a steam roller. Which was to say that I felt nothing. I was stretched out and flattened.

Numb.

I’d opened my eyes after passing out the night before to find Lily and Rose leaning over me¸ looking terrified. And the tears fell. They fell in the shower, mingling with the scalding water that beat down on me like a fiery baptism. They slipped down my cheeks and into my ears, onto my pillow as I lay in bed, alone.

Lily wanted to stay with me, but I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want anyone to see me.

I wanted to disappear.

I’d woken up feeling nothing. Got dressed and left the apartment in a daze, came to the shelter and did my job. I didn’t check my phone until the morning, and when I finally did, I found texts from Cooper, saying he hoped I was asleep and had gotten some rest. Said he couldn’t wait to see me.

My chest was hollow as I messaged him back, telling him I was busy and that I’d be over after work. And then I put my phone in my bag, unable to check it again. I just couldn’t.

The one thing I’d learned after all was said and done: I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t even been close to being ready. What I had been doing was fooling myself. Pretending. I was too broken, so broken that I’d been walking around, stuck together with duct tape and bubblegum, acting like I was fine.

I didn’t trust myself to make decisions about Cooper. He gave me his heart, and I took it too soon. And now, I was about to drop it. Break it. Shatter it.

So stupid. So careless.

Maybe it was for the best.

I hadn’t been enough for Jimmy — how could I ever be enough for Cooper Moore? I believed that he wanted to try, that he’d do the best he could to only be with me. I wanted to think he could do it. But the only other boy I’d ever given my heart to didn’t care for it. He just wasn’t equipped, and I couldn’t be sure that Cooper was, either.

But the scariest thing of all — my feelings for Jimmy were back, buzzing around my head, around my heart, reminding me of everything I’d lost. The love I’d never had to start with.

I could see a dozen ways out of my mess, and no path was easy. In my favorite one, time healed my wounds, Cooper earned my trust, and we could be together. But every other path ended up in heartache, mine or his. Or both.

I couldn’t risk any more than I already had.

I turned the page of Cinderella, the version by Hilary Knight with the most lovely illustrations. It was the same one my mom read to me as a girl, the one I always used in class. The kids sat at my feet, leaning forward as I read. I didn’t need to look at the words. I knew them by heart.

For so long, I believed in fairy tales. That Jimmy was my prince, and I was living my happily ever after. But the reality was that my life was the opposite of a fairy tale. My prince lied. My happily ever after didn’t exist.

No, if my life were a fairy tale, it would go something like this.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maggie who was honest and true, who danced her way through life with sunshine in her eyes and a smiling heart.

One day she met a beautiful boy with a beautiful smile who showed her what it meant to love, and her gravity shifted until her whole world revolved around him, her sun, the middle of her little universe that he filled with laughter and happiness.

But then the sun went out, and in the darkness, she found the truth.

That beautiful boy had lied. His smile was plastic — the truth cracked it until it crumbled, like sunshine cracks thirsty earth. And her little universe blew apart, sending her spinning, flying into the darkness with nothing to grab onto, nothing to stop her.

She closed her eyes to hide until she felt the warmth of a new sun, a bigger sun, a sun brighter than she’d ever seen before. But he pulled her in too fast. She couldn’t trust his smile, couldn’t let herself believe. And as she spun around him, he pulled her closer, spinning her faster and faster until she couldn’t hold on. 

And so she flew away once more into the dark, feeling free and lost in equal measure.

I read the last page of Cinderella and closed the book. The kids smiled up at me, and I smiled back against the hollow in my chest. We moved to the table where strips of orange construction paper and yarn waited for their tiny fingers, and I sat them all down and began to help them assemble paper pumpkins.

I felt a little like Cinderella, like I’d gotten to live a dream life for just a moment before I had to face reality again. The carriage smashed into pumpkin bits. The shoe was lost. And now I had to tell the prince that I couldn’t be with him after all.