Page 7 of Embers in Autumn

Amber

The morning was cold, the kind that seeped into the bones of the old house and made the windowpanes rattle with rain. Drops slid in lazy rivulets down the glass beside my bed, blurring the view of the street below into soft grays and muted browns.

It was Monday, and for a moment I entertained the delicious thought of rolling over and opening the shop an hour later.

What was the point of being your own boss if you couldn’t carve out little luxuries for yourself?

An extra hour with blankets pulled up to your chin, listening to the rain, sounded like heaven.

But then reality pushed back. If I didn’t work, the business didn’t make money. The store wasn’t magic. It needed my presence, my energy, my hands arranging the shelves and my smile to coax hesitant browsers into buyers. Life wasn’t fair. It never really had been.

I sighed, stretched, and forced myself out of bed. The wood floor was cold against my bare feet, but the familiar creak of the boards followed me down the narrow stairs into the kitchen.

Coffee came first. Always. I scooped grounds into the filter, the rich scent blooming as the hot water hissed through. The aroma filled the small space, comforting and grounding, the way my grandmother’s house always used to smell.

While it brewed, I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl and whisked them until the yolks melted into golden ribbons.

My grandmother’s trick had been a splash of cream and a pinch of salt before they ever hit the pan.

I poured them into a skillet with a pat of butter that fizzed and spread across the bottom.

I stirred slowly with a wooden spoon, folding them back on themselves until they were soft and pillowy, almost custard-like.

At the last second, I shaved a bit of cheddar over the top and let it melt in.

I slid the eggs onto a plate and poured my coffee into a wide mug, the steam curling up like a welcome.

Settling at the small kitchen table by the rain-dappled window, I took a bite.

The eggs tasted exactly the way I remembered from childhood breakfasts—rich, simple, a little indulgent. A hug on a plate.

And as I sipped my coffee, my mind, traitor that it was, wandered straight to my date with Dean.

Date? Was it even a date? The word felt both too young and too heavy.

Did people even call them that anymore, or had the language shifted while I wasn’t paying attention?

When I was a teenager, a date was a movie ticket stub, an ice cream cone, a nervous kiss under a porch light.

Now? What was it? Coffee with a man who made me feel like my guard was lowering in ways I hadn’t planned?

It had felt like something.

And yet, we hadn’t even exchanged numbers.

Not one digit scribbled on a receipt or punched into a phone.

The realization made me groan softly into my mug.

How very old-fashioned of me. Young people these days probably swapped Instagram handles or sent quick follows, likes, comments.

Whole connections born of emojis. Meanwhile, I had walked away with only the memory of his smile and the echo of his voice saying my name.

Still, whatever you called it—date, not-date, moment, mistake—I found myself wishing I could talk to him again. Hear him laugh. See if his eyes still softened the way they had when he spoke about Lana.

I set my mug down and let the thought linger. The rain drummed on, steady and relentless, as if it was determined to keep me company.

By the time I unlocked the front door, the rain was coming down in sheets.

It wasn’t the pleasant, misty kind that whispered against the windowpanes.

This was a full cascade from the sky, like someone had tipped a bucket over the entire town.

The gutters gurgled with the force of it, streams of water racing down the cobblestones until the street looked like a shallow river.

I stood just inside the door, watching the storm blur the world into a watercolor of gray and gold. Drops lashed against the glass so hard the little bell above the frame rattled, and I muttered under my breath.

“I should have stayed in bed an hour longer.”

The thought prickled, half annoyance, half resignation. What good was opening early if no one would dare splash their way here?

Still. I had the shop to myself, and that was worth something.

I set my bag behind the counter, plugged my phone in to charge, and tapped the screen until soft autumn lo-fi drifted through the speakers. A gentle crackle, mellow beats, the occasional whisper of wind layered into the track. It turned the rain’s fury outside into a backdrop instead of a threat.

Rolling up the sleeves of my cardigan, I turned to the nearest shelf. Books had a way of shifting, even when no one touched them, and I liked putting them back in order. It felt like smoothing out the wrinkles of the world.

I pulled down a stack of paperbacks, dusted the ledge, and started arranging—spines out, colors balanced, titles angled just so.

On the display table, I set a pumpkin-shaped candleholder in the center and tucked a few little gourds around it, then leaned a chalkboard sign against the base: Cozy Reads for Stormy Days.

The storm outside pounded harder, water rushing down the glass like the world was trying to wash itself clean. I placed the last book on the shelf, stood back to admire the neatness, and then… it hit me. A shiver along my spine, uninvited, dragging me back to a night I’d tried to bury.

Two years ago. A rainy night, weather not so different from this today.

The sound of it had been the same, rattling the old apartment windows, drowning the city in a relentless gray.

I’d sat on the couch with the lamp turned low, watching the clock tick past ten, then eleven, then midnight.

Dinner had gone cold hours earlier. I had stared at the uneaten pasta on the table, twisting the hem of my shirt in my fingers until my knuckles ached.

When the lock finally clicked, my heart leapt. But it wasn’t relief. It was dread, heavy and certain. He stepped in, shaking rain from his hair, smelling faintly of whiskey and smoke. His shirt was rumpled. His tie was stuffed into his pocket like an afterthought. He didn’t even look at me.

“Where were you?” My voice had come out small, but sharper than I intended.

He dropped his keys onto the counter with a clatter that made me flinch. “Work.”

“It’s after midnight,” I said. “Work doesn’t go this late. Not for you.”

His shoulders stiffened. He turned, his face darkening, eyes narrowing like I’d accused him of a crime. “So now you’re keeping tabs on me?”

“I was worried,” I said, standing slowly. My throat felt tight, but the words kept coming. “You’ve been coming home later and later. You don’t answer my calls. You don’t explain where you’ve been.”

He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “You think I’m cheating, don’t you?”

The word hung in the air like a blade. I wanted to take it back, to shove it into my chest rather than leave it exposed, but it was too late.

“I just…” My eyes burned. “I just want the truth. Please.”

He slammed his palm against the counter. The sound made me jump. “God, you’re pathetic. Always nagging, always suspicious. Do you have any idea how exhausting you are? I work all day, I bust my ass, and I come home to this? To you crying and accusing me of things?”

“I’m not accusing—”

“Yes, you are.” His voice rose to a shout, sharp enough to slice. “You think I don’t see the way you look at me when I’m late? Like you’re waiting to catch me in something. You’re paranoid. You’re insecure. You’re…” He waved his hand, disgust twisting his mouth. “You’re a mess, Amber.”

The tears came then, hot and uncontrollable. I pressed my hands to my face, trying to quiet them, but the sobs tore out of me anyway. The kind of crying that made your chest shake, your throat raw. Ugly crying.

He didn’t move. He didn’t soften. He just stood there, glaring, like my pain was another offense against him.

And over the sound of my own sobs, I remembered something my grandmother had said once, years ago.

We had been baking cookies, flour dusting her apron, her hands warm as she shaped the dough.

She told me, “A man who sees you cry and feels nothing but more anger is not a man who loves you. A man like that only loves himself.”

Her words came back so clearly that night I could almost hear her voice over the storm outside.

I dropped my hands from my face, my cheeks burning, my eyes swollen. He was still watching me with that same cold fury, like I was an inconvenience, a nuisance.

“Look at you,” he spat. “You wonder why I don’t want to come home? This. This is why. You make everything miserable.”

I couldn’t breathe. The room felt smaller, the rain louder.

My whole body shook. Somewhere deep down, a part of me knew he’d already given me the answer I feared.

Maybe not with an admission, but with his cruelty.

If there had been love left in him, he wouldn’t have left me standing there with nothing but my grandmother’s ghost to comfort me.

The memory clung so hard I didn’t realize I was clutching the shelf in the shop until I blinked and the present swam back into focus. The storm outside roared on, but now it was only water on glass. Not the soundtrack of a life falling apart.

I released the shelf slowly, my fingers aching. My chest still hurt with the ghost of that night. The shame, the helplessness, the way I had begged for scraps of kindness.

Maybe it was better that I hadn’t asked Dean for his number. Better that I didn’t have a way to reach him. Because what if I let myself hope again and it all ended the same way? What if I made the same mistake twice?

I pressed a hand to my chest and took a long, steady breath. The shop smelled like cinnamon and paper, safe and familiar. But inside, I felt like a woman still learning how to walk barefoot across broken glass.