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I nodded, my throat too thick to speak. I loved how my friends understood me more than I did myself, without even knowing the reasons.

He gave me one last of his signature Mikey smiles before pressing a small kiss on my cheek and dashing away.

As I stood in the middle of my new apartment, I felt more at home in mere minutes than I ever did in all the years I spent in that glass house back in LA. Maybe it wasn’t the house itself; it was all the painful memories those clear walls saw.

Sighing a heavy breath, I ordered some food and padded to my bedroom, stalling the next thing I have to do.

Call him.

It wasn’t like we completely ghosted each other. We still communicated here and there.

It was weird to break up with someone you’d been with for eleven years. I spent almost half my life with Lan, and we lived together for half of that. And there was no clean slate from something like that.

I was so used to his constant presence, beside my bed, in our home and in every second of my life that it felt like I was almost missing an arm being away from him.

Like a phantom pain of a lost limb, the ache dug deeper and deeper every day.

I missed him.

I had no clue how he was going to react after I tell him about Luka and asked him to move in with me and be a family with us.

He said he wouldn’t come back unless I found me.

But what if this was the only way I knew how?

Could Lan accept that part of me?

I halted my thoughts and started to empty my suitcase.

A soft smile played on my lips at the sight of the pretty dresses and cardigan. Looking at it almost made me feel like myself again.Almost.

Instead of bringing in my old wardrobe, I popped into the first store I found and picked a few dresses I liked. I didn’t want to wear any of my old clothes anymore. It only reminded me of the plastic reason behind each one I purchased.

I threw everything else away. I didn’t want them anymore.

I had a whole wardrobe that people would be jealous of back in LA and I had already told Chris to donate every last one of them.

Humming under my breath, I hung the row of ten dresses I brought, all flowy dresses with flowery patterns, almost all of them having a tinge of red in them.

Because red was my favorite color. Not even the fake Katy could take that away from me.

It was only when I put up the third dress on the wooden rail that I noticed something and my blood chilled.

What the fuck?

The familiar nine-carat solitaire diamond on my ring finger was missing. How could I not even notice the weight of it missing from my finger?

Panicked, I rummaged through my purse and my suitcase. But it was nowhere in sight.

Fuck, did I leave it in the hotel room?

For the next thirty minutes, I called the hotel, the place I donated my things, and even swept inside my brother’s apartment next door, but no fucking luck.

Deflated, I crashed on my couch, my eyes stuck on the gleaming windows showing off the glittering city line. It wasn’t the loss of the ring itself that made me sad; it was the thought of what Lan would think of me for losing the one ring I insisted he buy me.

It was flashy, almost close to a million because I needed to appease a certain crowd that Lan proposed to me with a one-of-a-kind ring.

But it wasn’t really my favorite.