Ashley
The silence of my new apartment was deafening.
After the chaos of the moving day, after Harvey's tears and Zach's stoic goodbye, I found myself standing in the middle of my sparse living room surrounded by my luggage that contained the remnants of my former life. The evening light cast long shadows across the hardwood floor, highlighting the emptiness of the space. This apartment was supposed to represent my fresh start, but in this moment, it felt more like exile.
I sank onto the lone piece of furniture in the room, a blue secondhand couch I'd purchased months ago, and pulled my knees to my chest. The weight of everything that had happened pressed down on me until I could barely breathe. With trembling fingers, I reached for my phone and called the one person who had never let
