The next morning felt wrong.
Ava noticed it immediately.
Not because anything obvious had changed.
The house looked the same.
The weather looked the same.
Everything should have felt normal.
It didn't.
Something sat heavily inside her chest.
A feeling she couldn't explain.
A feeling she didn't like.
The kind of feeling that usually arrived before bad news.
She spent most of breakfast staring at her coffee.
Noah seemed distracted too.
Quieter than usual.
His smiles didn't last as long.
His eyes kept drifting toward his phone.
Ava noticed.
Of course she did.
She noticed everything about him.
That was part of the problem.
"You're weird today."
The words escaped before she could stop them.
Noah looked up.
"What?"
"Weird."
He laughed softly.
"Very specific."
"I'm seri
