For Scarlett, tomorrow might have been another day, but for me, it felt like heartache on repeat. It had now been nearly three months since we ended.

Mardi Gras hade and gone, but tourist season was still in full, riotous swing—at least until summer rolled in and threw a wet, humid cloth over everything.

Fewer tourists.

Fewer locals.

Days hotter than Hades.

Nights lonelier than an echo in an empty house

My apartment, my safe haven—the silence of which had been peaceful just weeks ago, was now loud with memories.

I got up after another restless night, and on my way to the bathroom, I stopped in the middle of my bedroom—bare feet on the warm wooden floors, the soft morning light nting through the sheer curtains.

It stretched across the pale walls andnded on the space next to mine on my bed.

His space.

Still empty.

Still aching.

There were no dents in the pillow where Gage used to lie, no faint scent of cedar and sawdust clinging to the sheets. He’d always smelled like work and wind and the Quarter.

I went into the bathroom and shut the door, only to find his T-shirt still hanging from the hook on the door—the one he’d carelessly left thest time he spent the night. I liked to pretend I hadn’t noticed it was still there.

But I had because I leaned against it, took his scent in like I was starved, so that I could start my day without him.

I finished my morning ablutions and went into the kitchen.

I loved my apartment, I did. I’d renovated it myself when I moved in three years ago, turning the upstairs into a sanctuary of soft colors, mismatched vintage furniture, and intentional warmth.

Every piece had been chosen forfort and history, from the moss-green velvet loveseat I’d found at an estate sale to the delicate pink tea set on the open shelving in my little kitchen.

I kept flowers on the table—always fresh.

Above the firece were three framed photographs of my parents: one from their wedding in City Park, one of them dancing barefoot in the rain on our street in Baton Rouge, and thest one—the hardest one—a candid of my father kissing my forehead the summer before they died.

I hadn’t been able to save anything else from that life. Just those photos and my mother’s now-empty antique perfume bottle, which sat on my vanity like a talisman.

I made myself coffee—strong, dark, slightly bitter the way I liked it—and leaned against the counter, mug in hand, eyes heavy.

Gage drank it sweet. He’d dump in two sugars and top it off with cream, humming—Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf—like the blues lived under his skin, and he didn’t even know he was letting them out.

He liked to sit on my balcony with his coffee, legs kicked up on the rail, watching the Quarter wake up.

I hadn’t made it out there since we ended. The chair he used was still there. Empty.

I didn’t open the store on Tuesdays—usually spent it doing paperwork and other mundane tasks that were part of being a shop owner. I loved my store—and yet, since Gage, there was an emptiness I couldn’t fill.

I saw him here and there—sometimes alone, sometimes with a woman, and every time I did, I knew I wasn’t over him, past us—I hadn’t moved on. But he had.

How long could a heart hurt?

I got a text message from Aurelie, demanding that we meet for drinks.

I sent back a response: Busy. Rain check?

That had been my response for the past few weeks. I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to see him. Our friend circles had plenty of ovep. I just couldn’t stand the idea of seeing him with another woman, flirting, loving, kissing…forgetting me entirely.

God!

I’d been so uninhibited with Gage—that had never happened before. I’d been reserved with my other lovers, not with him. He loosened something inside me, called to the wildness that was a part of me. He made me feel like myself—the real me, not the pretend woman I’d made out of the ashes of my parents’ deaths.

I was in Aire Noir, going through some new inventory, when I heard a loud knocking on the ss door. I sighed when I saw it was Aurelie with two icedttes and a look in her eyes like she was about to stage an intervention.

“We’re closed,” I muttered, letting her in.

“Tell me you didn’t forget about the R Bar happy hour tonight.” She walked past me and set one of the coffees down on the counter beside the register. I immediately reached for a coaster—this table stained faster than you could say Who Dat.

“I didn’t?” I lied.

She arched a brow. “Naomi?—”

“It’s just been a long week…month,” I cut her off, offering her a tired smile.

Aurelie Perrault wasn’t just my best friend—she was my soul sister. A jazz singer with hair the color of honey, skin like burnished mahogany, and a voice like velvet smoke, she came from a family of artists and bartenders and poets and had made it her life’s mission to collect other oddballs into her orbit. Me included.

She leaned on the counter, studying me. “You’ve been avoiding me. You’ve been avoiding everyone.”

“I’ve been working.”

“You’ve been hurting.”

I lifted my shoulders in a helpless gesture.

“Well, we’re going,” Aurelie announced.

I waved a hand at the open boxes of silk andce. “I have to?—”

“I’ll help,” she interrupted smoothly.

And she did. Two hourster, we walked up Royal Street to R Bar, our spot where the regrs ranged from street performers to gallery owners to off-duty chefs. The bar was special—everyone knew everyone, and you could always hear music thrumming from the nearby Frenchmen Street. If you were lucky, someone would bring a trumpet and start an impromptu jam on the patio.

The bar, strangely, had a barber’s chair right smack in the middle, and on Monday evenings, you could get a haircut and a shot for twenty bucks. You were encouraged to tip the bartender and barber.

On Fridays, you could partake in crawfish and shrimp boils during the season and jambya cookouts, while on other days…well, there was always something going on around there. Guaranteed.

The bar was now famous as it had made an appearance on NCIS: New Orleans—Pride’s bar, where the team always went to regroup. Aurelie joked it was our safe house, too.

Gage had gone with me a few times, usually when our groups of friends crossed paths. I could still picture him, leaning against the bar, an Abita in hand, watching me with an intensity no one else ever had.

Now, I couldn’t be here without seeing him, which was why I hadn’te since we ended.

“I miss him,” I finally admitted to Aurelie, raising my Sazerac in a toast.

Aurelie didn’t say I shouldn’t. She didn’t say he didn’t deserve me. She just clinked her ss against mine. “I know.”

“He kissed me good morning,” I whispered. “Sat on my balcony like he was part of my world. He made space for me. And then…he didn’t.”

I hadn’t meant to cry, but a tear slid down my cheek, hot and silent. I wiped it away before it reached my jaw.

“I don’t regret loving him,” I added. “I just hate that he made me feel like it was a mistake.”

“You know it wasn’t,” she soothed.

I nodded. “I know.” I closed my eyes for a moment. “His T-shirt is still hanging in my bathroom. I don’t have the heart to get rid of it.”

“Then don’t.”

I regarded her thoughtfully. “Nomand to get rid of everything that’s his and move on?”

A flicker ofpassion crossed her face. “No, baby.” She put her hand on mine. “You do you. You fell in love. And…honest to God, Naomi, I thought….”

A broken inhale slipped past my lips. “Yeah. Me, too.”

I had thought we were building something real.

I had, foolishly, believed that he was in love with me or well on his way to being so.

The way he called me his, the way he made time for us, the way he….

And yet, he walked away when I told him what was in my heart. He took another woman to his bed, showing me how unimportant I was to him.

I couldn’t me him. I couldn’t even use him of anything.

Had it been cruel, kissing another woman right in front of me, knowing how I felt? Yeah.

But I understood how he’d justify it to himself. It was just him saying—loud and clear, the way he always had—that what we had was casual.

Except when we made love.

Except when he held me like I was anything but temporary.

“I’m not a ball and chain kinda guy, Naomi,” he told me early on.

We were having dinner at Café Amelie down the street. They made a damn good confit de canard and their wine list was excellent. A little Paris in the middle of the Quarter.

“Why?” I asked, curious.

He tipped back slightly on his chair. “It’s who I am. I’m thirty-three years old, baby, I ain’t changing.”

“You don’t want to fall in love and have a family?”

“I have a family. My parents, my brother, my sister…aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. I have everything I need and want.”

He had been imcable. “If that’s what you want, two and a half kids and all that, Naomi, we can walk away now, no harm, no foul.”

He didn’t mince his words; he was direct, and I appreciated him for it. He wasn’t bullshitting me like so many others tended to do.

But we’d been together for just a month then—how could I have known that I’d fall in love with him, and I’d let him break my heart despite all his warnings?