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529words2026-01-26 09:08

The knife trembled in my hand as Lily Harper's saccharine voice sliced through our apartment. "Ethan, darling? Aren't you going to invite me in?"
I didn't need sight to recognize her - three years of hearing Ethan whisper that name in his sleep had branded it into my bones. Carrot segments scattered as my pretend-blind gaze drifted toward the foyer. Ethan's sharp inhale was audible even over the knife's rhythmic thud against the cutting board.
Ethan: (hushed, strained)

"What are you doing here?"
Lily: (fingertips tracing his collar)
"Missed you. Is that a crime?"
Her pinky hooked his belt loop - a possessive gesture I felt rather than saw.
Me: (voice carefully vacant)
"Ethan? Who's there?"

Lily: (stepping past him, syrup thickening)
"Just me, Claire! Lily Harper? We need to... discuss Ethan's gallery opening."
Her Chanel No. 5 enveloped the kitchen - the same scent on Ethan's shirt last week.
The silence that followed was thick with betrayal. Through lowered lashes, I watched Lily rise on stilettos, her manicured hand cradling Ethan's jaw. He stiffened - a fraction of resistance - before his eyes darted to my hollow stare. The moment he registered my "blindness", his shoulders slumped in surrender.

Crunch.
The knife bit deep into the cutting board as their mouths met.
What began as tentative grew hungry - Ethan's hands gripping Lily's waist, her moan vibrating against his lips. My knuckles whitened around the knife handle. The facade cracked; a sharp gasp escaped me.
They sprang apart, Lily's lipstick smeared like a wound.
Lily: (breathless, triumphant)
"Dinner? Why not?"
Her smirk was a dagger twisting in my ribs.
I turned back to the ruins of vegetables - carrots mutilated beyond recognition. Each thwack of the knife mirrored the shattering of three years:
FLASHBACK
Harvard Yard, autumn.
Ethan Caldwell - golden boy, rowing team captain - walking with her. Lily's laugh ringing across the quad as she twirled in his jacket. We admirers were mere satellites orbiting their supernova love.
Then the implosion.
Lily's scholarship to Sorbonne.
Ethan sprinting after her taxi, screaming her name until his voice shredded.
I found him weeks later drowning in Jack Daniels at Tatte Bakery. "She was my oxygen," he slurred into my shoulder. For three years, I became his iron lung - nursing his pride, stitching his ego, coaxing smiles from his brokenness.
The night I confessed my love?
He kissed me with the desperation of a man grabbing a life raft. Not love - survival.
And when Lily's return text chimed during my birthday dinner?
He fled like Cinderella at midnight.
That same hour.
My Uber skidding on black ice.
Metal screaming.
My world going dark before the headlights shattered.
While EMTs cut me from the wreck, Ethan was pressing Lily against her brownstone door, whispering "I never stopped." My 27 missed calls glowed unanswered in his discarded coat pocket.
Thunk.
The knife lodged in the cutting board, trembling.
Ethan's conflicted gaze burned my skin as Lily traced his lower lip with her thumb - marking territory. Saltwater blurred the ruined vegetables. Not blindness this time - just the final dissolution of a dream I'd been too foolish to release.