Page 18 of Shattered Promise

Still here. Still standing.

And for tonight, that’s enough.

7

ABBY

Light filtersthrough the slats in my blinds—pale and uninvited.

I don’t move. Not at first. Not until the ache in my cheek pulses in time with my heartbeat, sharp and impossible to ignore. I shift slightly, and the pressure in my ribs pulls tight—a slow, dull throb that gets worse when I breathe too deep.

I glance at my phone and see it's just before seven. The screen glows with notifications—texts, emails, calendar alerts—but I don’t check any of them. I set my phone to sleep mode the moment I plugged it in last night. Which is ironic since I haven’t slept. Not even a minute.

My car’s still parked in front of The Blue Door. I caught an Uber home with a wad of paper towels pressed to my face like that would somehow stop the damage that had been done.

And at some point today, I’ll have to go get it. I should do it before the bar opens, lessen the chance of someone seeing me.

The thought of being recognized—of pity, of questions I don’t want to answer—sours my stomach. I don’t think I could take it. Not today.

Everything feels muffled. Like the world outside this room is moving behind glass, and I’m trapped on the other side. Stuck in a version of myself I don’t recognize.

But shame still wraps around my chest—tight, cloying, inescapable. Because I should’ve known better. I should’ve gone home. I should’ve changed out of my heels and washed off my makeup then crawled into bed like a normal, tired adult.

Instead, I sat there like a fool—half-drunk on adrenaline and some soft, sentimental idea of what champagne was supposed to mean.

I wasn’t reckless. I wasn’t even drinking heavily. But still, I put myself in that position. I stayed too long. I didn’t leave when the tension started building. I hovered near a table full of shouting men like I didn’t know better.

And that’s the part I can’t let go of.

How stupid I feel. How stupid I must’ve looked.

It wasn’t my fault. But the humiliation in my chest says otherwise. It coils tight, wrapping around the bruise on my face like it belongs there. Like I earned it somehow.

And I can still feel it. The hum of fluorescent lights. The scrape of sticky floors beneath my palms. The heat of a hundred eyes on my back. The chaos. The volatile charge in the air, electric and dangerous.

I keep replaying it. The words. The crack of glass. The shock of pain exploding across my face. If I could pinpoint the second it all tipped sideways—just one breath earlier—I could undo it.

I brush my fingertips along the top of my cheekbone and flinch. The skin is hot, tender and swollen. Still hunched over, I reach blindly for my phone and swipe it off the charger. I tap the camera open and flip it, turning the screen toward myself.

The image hits like a punch. A black-purple shadow spreads from my left eye, already blooming across the delicate skin like spilled ink.

My stomach turns. That’s not me. That’s not my face. A strange, dizzy kind of detachment takes hold—like I’m staring at someone else entirely.

"I can't show up to work like this," I mumble as panic spears through my chest, fast and bright. There's no way I can walk into the conference room on Monday to give the debrief on our event with a black eye.

I sit up too quickly and the room tilts, pain radiating from behind my eye like someone’s pressed a live wire into my skull. I bend forward on instinct, hands braced on my thighs, forehead nearly to my knees.

Box breathing. In for four. Hold. Out for four. Hold.

Again.

The therapist I saw—once, over video—walked me through it. I’d meant to go back. But then work got busy. Or I told myself it did. And I never made another appointment.

My breath catches. Sharp and shallow.

Anxiety blooms fast, crowding out everything else. My chest tightens, ribcage pulling taut like it’s braced for impact. My fingertips tingle. My throat locks up. It feels like the room is shrinking around me—too many walls, too little air.

Some distant part of me registers the edge of panic. But I can’t stop the spiral. The thoughts come fast, tumbling over each other like dominoes. I can’t go into work like this. But I can’t stay here, either. Not in this apartment with its too-clean counters and the ghost of last night hanging in the silence. Not where the walls feel like they’re closing in.