MY EX HUSBAND’S REGRET

Elara

Friday came faster than I expected. The week had passed in a blur of new employee training, content calendars, brand guidelines, and trying to remember everyone’s names without looking at my phone under the desk. Work was actually good. Better than good. It gave me something to focus on besides the wreckage of my personal life, somewhere to put all the energy I’d been wasting on crying and replaying those horrible birthday party moments in my head.

Sarah was a good manager. Direct and no nonsense but fair, the kind of person who would told you exactly what she wanted and left you alone to deliver it. She’d already given me two projects to run independently, social media campaigns for two of Rhode Enterprises’ smaller brands, and seemed genuinely pleased with my initial ideas.

“You’re picking this up fast,” she’d said on Thursday, looking over my campaign proposal. “I expected at least two weeks before you were ready for independent work.”

It felt really good to hear that. Like maybe I was still capable of something, maybe losing my job at my father’s company wasn’t the end of my career but the beginning of a better one.

Melissa had become something like a work friend by midweek. She was sharp and funny with a dry sense of humor that made the long afternoons bearable. She brought me coffee every morning without asking, remembered that I took it with oat milk and no sugar after I mentioned it exactly once, and had a talent for appearing at my cubicle exactly when the isolation was starting to feel heavy.

“You look less like you’re about to faint today,” she’d told me on Wednesday.

“High praise,” I’d said.

“Around here? Absolutely.”

I hadn’t seen Adrian all week. Not even once. The forty-second floor might as well have been a different planet from my spot on twenty-eight. I didn’t know if he was deliberately staying away to give me space or if he was just genuinely that busy, but his absence made the work week easier to navigate. Less complicated. Less charged.

But Friday morning I woke up with butterflies swarming my stomach.

I lay on my IKEA bed staring at the ceiling for twenty minutes before I could convince myself to get up. The morning light was coming through the window at that specific angle that made even my sad beige walls look almost golden.

What was I doing? Going to dinner with my boss. With the man I’d slept with the night my life fell apart. That man had seen me at my absolute lowest, drunk and destroyed, barely holding myself together.

And yet he still wanted to know me, to sit across a table from me and talk. That either meant he was genuinely interested in who I was, or he felt sorry for me. I wasn’t sure which option scared me more. I called Natalie while I was getting ready for work.

“I’m freaking out,” I said the second she picked up.

“About the dinner?”

“Obviously about the dinner.”

“Why? You’ve already slept with the man. Dinner should be the easy part.”

“That’s not helpful, Nat.”

She laughed. “Okay, okay. What are you freaking out about specifically?”

I sat on the edge of my bed already dressed in my work clothes, one shoe on and one in my hand. “I don’t know how to do this. How to date. How to sit across from someone new and pretend I’m a normal person with a normal life.”

“You are a normal person.”

“I’m a recently divorced woman with no future, no family, trying to prove I was framed with AI porn. That’s not normal.”

“Fair point. But Adrian doesn’t know all of that.”

“He knows enough. He knows I was broken that night at the bar.”

“Broken is interesting,” Natalie said. “Broken makes people want to understand you.”

I put my second shoe on and stood up. “What if I cry?”

“Then you cry. The man has already seen you at your worst. Tears aren’t going to scare him off.”

“What if I say the wrong thing? What if I accidentally bring up Ethan? What if…”

“Ivyyy.” Natalie’s voice was firm but kind. “Stop. You’re overthinking this. Just go, eat good food, drink good wine, and let the man talk to you. You don’t have to perform anything. You don’t have to be impressive or perfect or put together. Just be yourself.”

“Myself is a mess right now.”

“Yeah but you’re a beautiful, intelligent, warm mess and that’s more than enough.”

I almost smiled. “Thank you.”

“Now go to work. And text me every detail tonight.”

Work passed in a blur of meetings and deadlines, and before I knew it five o’clock arrived and my stomach was in knots all over again.

I have brought along a change of clothes knowing I wouldn’t have time to go home first. A deep burgundy wrap dress that Natalie insisted I pack, fitted enough to be elegant, comfortable enough that I wouldn’t spend the whole evening pulling at it, a pair of simple gold earrings, and my one good pair of heels that actually fit properly.