Page 14 of June

I'd been going through the motions for weeks. Work. Shower. Whiskey. Sleep—barely. Rinse. Repeat. I felt like a ghost in my own life. Just a body on autopilot, moving from one meaningless task to the next. I didn't even flinch when I nearly walked into traffic two days ago. I just stood there like a jackass until someone honked.

This is what it felt like to lose her.

Not June, the woman. June, the life. The anchor. The sun, and I was drifting without her. Spiraling.

The night I left Selene, after a month living together, it was raining. Of course it was. Her apartment still smelled like lavender and cinnamon—comforting, and wrong. My duffel bag was already packed. I'd made the decision the moment I found June's ring. I held it like it burned. Selene walked in to find me standing there with the ring in my hand.

She didn't move. Didn't blink.

"Oh,"

she said, voice flat and sharp as glass.

"So that's what this is."

"I can't do this anymore,"

I said, my voice low, shredded.

"I should've never—"

"Never what?"

she cut in, stalking forward now.

"Never come back? Never showed up on my doorstep like a ghost with nowhere else to go? Never crawled into my bed and cuddled and let me believe I meant something again?"

"I—"

"—Never kissed me like you remembered me?"

she shouted, eyes blazing.

"Never whispered things in the dark like they meant anything? God, Aaron. You didn't just stumble into this. You came running the moment you saw me."

"I didn't mean—"

"Oh, shut up with the intent,"

she snapped, her voice shaking.

"You didn't mean to hurt me? Congratulations, you still did. You think that makes it better? You used me like a damn Band-Aid."

"I was lost,"

I murmured, shame curling hot in my gut.

"And I was convenient,"

she fired back, bitter.

"You needed someone to hold your hand while you figured your shit out."

"I was hurting."

"And now I am hurting!"

she cried, jabbing her finger into her chest.

"I let you in. I still hoped. Because no matter what we'd been through, I thought... maybe we still had a shot."

I couldn't look at her. The ring in my hand felt like a stone pinning me to the floor.

"I was selfish. And scared. But I'm not hiding from that anymore. What I did—to you, to her—it was wrong."

She folded her arms tightly across her chest.

"Say it, then. Out loud. You're still in love with her."

"Yes,"

I said, steady this time. "I am."

The room went still.

Selene's voice dropped, small now.

"Then why the hell haven't you gone after her?"

I let out a broken, bitter laugh.

"Because she thinks I picked you."

She stared.

"Well...Didn't you?"

I flinched.

She laughed again, but there was no humor in it—just disbelief and something close to fury.

"Good luck, Aaron. You think she's just waiting for you? That you can shatter her and stroll back in like nothing happened?"

"I don't think it'll be easy—"

"No, it won't,"

she snapped, stepping forward.

"You left her in a second. No hesitation. And it's going to take years to get her back. she might still cry over you, but she won't trust you. Not for a long time. Maybe never."

Her words slammed into me like a punch to the gut. I felt cold all over.

"You don't just come back from what you did,"

she said, voice low now, like a final curse.

"You'll spend the rest of your life trying to prove you're not that man anymore. And she'll spend just as long wondering if she can ever believe you again."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Because she was right.

She turned away then, arms folded tight across her chest, like she was holding herself together.

Silence stretched between us.

Then she turned her back on me and said, cold and final.

"Take your shit. And go."

So I did. But her words followed me all the way out the door. And they still haven't let me go.

I didn't go back to my apartment. I couldn't.

Too many shadows waited for me there—shadows shaped like her laughter echoing off the kitchen walls, her favorite coffee mug still on the rack, the ghost of her handwriting on sticky notes stuck to the fridge.

It wasn't just a space. It was a museum of our beginnings.

Memories clung to the furniture like dust I couldn't wipe away—her laughter when we built that crooked Ikea shelf together, the way she kissed me with paint on her nose and a smudge of it on her cheek. The nights we stayed up late naming future kids we weren't ready for.

That apartment had once felt like home.

Now it felt like punishment.

So I drove to Grandma's. She didn't look surprised to see me.

"You look like roadkill,"

she muttered, pulling me into a tight hug.

"Get in before you get rained on more."

I sat at her kitchen table while she reheated soup, clinging to the scent of thyme and something safe.

"I lost her,"

I said finally, my voice breaking.

She set the spoon down with a thud.

"No. You left her. Big difference."

"I didn't mean to—"

"But you did. Intent does not erase impact. And now you've got to live with the mess you made."

She sat down across from me, hands folded.

"You're an idiot, Aaron. But you've always been my idiot."

I cried like a kid. She let me.

Mom came later and sat on the edge of the guest bed, arms crossed like a disapproving angel.

"You were living with Selene?"

"I—yeah. For a while. Not anymore."

She shook her head slowly.

"I don't get it. I don't get you. You built a whole life with June. And the second it got hard, you ran back to the past like it had the answers."

"I was hurting, but I swear I love her" I said.

"So you threw her away like she meant nothing?"

her voice felt like knives. I could barely meet their eyes.

"Instead of talking to your future wife, you left her? How could you?"

I dragged my hands over my face, jaw clenched tight.

"I don't know!"

I snapped, voice breaking like I hated myself for not having more than that.

"Then figure it out,"

she said.

"With help. Go to therapy. Get to the bottom of why you keep running from the hard parts. From love."

"I don't know if I can fix it."

My voice came out smaller this time. Ashamed.

"Maybe you can't,"

came the reply.

"But you owe it to her to try. You don't get to hurt someone and walk away because it's hard. And you owe it to yourself to stop being the man who keeps ruining good things because you're too scared to bleed for them."

Then it happened two days later. I was sitting on the couch, trying to make myself eat some soup Grandma left out. My phone rang.

"Mr. Reyes?"

a polite woman said on the line.

"This is Rita from SunView Bank. We just wanted to confirm a recent deposit into your account."

I blinked. "Deposit?"

"Yes. A direct transfer—quite a sizable one. From a June Cartwright. There's a note attached: 'Studio investment repayment.'"

I dropped the spoon. She gave me the amount. It was exactly what I'd put into her dance studio. Down to the penny.

I couldn't breathe. She didn't know about the debt. She didn't know how badly I needed that money. She just... gave it back.

Not out of spite.

Out of closure. Because she was done.

I stared at the wall for an hour, maybe two. The money was probably from her savings. Maybe even what we were putting toward the wedding. She'd washed me out of her life so cleanly it broke something in me.

I went back to my apartment, and I let it swallow me.

There was no dramatic collapse. No music swelling in the background.

Just silence.

And the weight of what I'd done.

It finally felt real. Final. Over.

The couch became my grave. I stopped counting the days. Maybe three. Maybe five. Maybe twenty. I told them I'd work from home—easy enough for an accountant. But I barely worked. I stared at spreadsheets and forgot the numbers halfway through. My fingers hovered over the keyboard but never moved with meaning.

Emails piled up. I stopped replying.

I didn't eat much. Didn't sleep right. The bed felt too big and too cold.

Her scent was fading, but I still curled up on her side, like some part of her might find me again if I waited long enough.

I was unraveling. Not in a loud, cinematic way. But quietly. Like a thread pulled from the hem of a shirt until nothing fit anymore.

Grief isn't linear—it loops, it stabs, it whispers. It tells you lies that feel more like truths. That you're worthless. That you deserved to lose her. That someone like June was never meant to stay in a life as fractured as mine.

Until one night, I heard a knock. Not the kind that waits. The kind that insists. Two sharp raps, followed by a voice that didn't belong in my hallway.

"Aaron! Open this damn door before I break it down!"

I dragged myself off the couch and opened it.

My mother and behind her Grandma, arms crossed, looking like she'd just climbed out of a storm and was ready to start another.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Mom snapped as she stormed in, coat still on, fury written across her face like war paint.

"I—"

I started.

"No. No excuses. None."

She shoved past the boxes, past the mess I'd become.

"You're not just losing her, Aaron. You're losing yourself."

Grandma came in next, slower, but her words were sharper than any slap.

"Get up and go to your woman, it has been over four months for God's sake!."

"She's not my woman anymore,"

I said, barely able to get the words out without breaking.

"I didn't want to hurt her again. I thought if I gave her space... maybe she'd heal."

Mom turned on me with fire in her eyes.

"She thinks you're still with that other woman. You're not giving her space. You're giving her doubt."

"I am afraid,"

I said, voice cracking.

"Afraid if I showed up, she'd slam the door in my face."

"She might,"

Grandma said dryly.

"And she should. If she's smart, she'll slam it twice. But that doesn't mean you don't knock again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. You owe her that much."

That was it. That was the moment I broke. It all came pouring out—the guilt, the ache, the loss.

"I still hear her voice in the quiet,"

I whispered.

"She's in every corner. Every breath. I wake up in an empty bed and it still smells like her. And I think—God, I think this is what it means to lose your soulmate."

"I love her,"

I said.

"But I ruined it."

My mother grabbed my face between her hands.

"Then fight for her."

Grandma nodded.

"You've been drowning in guilt. But you're not alone, son. Not anymore. You want to fix this? Start by working on yourself and then showing up."

I looked at them both—these women who had loved me through every mess—and something shifted, and it was time to stop waiting for permission to fight for the only person who ever made me feel like I could be more than the sum of my mistakes.

Later on, I looked at myself in the mirror.

Hollow-eyed. Stubble thick. Skin pale and dull.

This was not the man she fell in love with.

This was the man who let her down.

So I made a list. Not to win her back. Not yet.

But to become someone worth winning her back.

Therapy.

To face the dark rooms in my mind I always locked and left unlit.

Work. Real work.

No more zoning out in numbers while my life crumbled quietly around me.

An apology.

Not the kind that fixes. The kind that owns.

That says: I broke something beautiful, and I know it.

And then—

I'd fight. Not to convince her. But to show her.

To show her that I remembered the man she once looked at like he hung the stars.

To become that man.

Or at least, to claw my way toward him—bloody, breathless, and begging for one more chance to try.

Even if she slammed the door in my face.

Even if she never opened it again.

I'd still be there.

Because that's what you do when you finally understand what love really is.