Chapter 1

It wasn’t even a real office, just a cheap IKEA desk wedged into the corner of the so-called master bedroom in a cramped apartment I never planned to stay in long.

It never felt like home, and wasn’t supposed to. It was a stopover, a holding cell, the kind of temporary arrangement that felt beneath a fifty-year-old man coming off twenty-five years of marriage.

No fights. No cheating. Nothing thrown or broken. Just a slow, quiet unraveling of the life we had built.

It was a story as old as time; intimacy fading quietly as we poured everything into raising our daughter.

For years, we ran the house like clockwork, tag-teaming practices, carpools, homework, and half-cold dinners. Weekends blurred into errands and collapsing on the couch, too tired for more.

By the time we finally turned our attention back to each other, the space between us had calcified into something permanent.

In the end, we split everything with quiet resignation. She kept the house, the kitchen table where we had shared a thousand meals, and the couch that still carried both our imprints. I took the leftovers: a car, a few assets, some boxes I’d probably never unpack.

We signed the papers and walked away as good-enough friends, both knowing whatever had once held us together was gone.

Through the wall drifted Melissa’s voice, laughing with friends or doing whatever eighteen-year-olds do to cope with the collateral damage of divorce. In just weeks, she’d be off to the University of Florida, our alma mater, eighteen and gone, the topic of custody irrelevant.

My fingers hovered over the keys, shaking like they no longer answered to me. Then, against every instinct started typing the address of a site I was never supposed to visit, not in this life, not in any. A place that promised nothing but pure nightmare fuel, the kind no one would force on their worst enemy.

This wasn’t a late-morning jerkoff session. I wasn’t bored. I wasn’t horny. I was chasing something I didn’t want to find.

Chris, my best friend since grade school, had dropped it like a bomb the night before at the bar; buzzed, hesitant, and sweating more than usual.

We were halfway through our third round when he stopped pretending to watch the game and leaned in.

“There’s something you need to know, man,” he said, his voice low, like he was about to confess a crime.

Then he just sat there, staring into his beer, silent for so long I thought maybe he’d changed his mind.

When he finally spoke again, it came out like a slow exhale.

“It’s ... Emily.”

My chest pulled tight.

“What about her?” I cut in, barely letting him finish, the edge in my voice rising as I tried to figure out why the hell he had brought up my ex-wife of barely two months.

He shifted in his seat, eyes flicking toward the door like he wished he could be anywhere else. His mouth opened, then closed again, and for a moment I thought he might just swallow the words and change the subject.

When he finally spoke, his voice was slow and reluctant.

“It’s ... Mike,” he started.

The pause that followed was long and heavy, the kind that felt dragged out of him by nothing more than the weight of our friendship.

I stared at him, my jaw tightening. “What are you talking about?”

The words came out fast, sharper than I intended, as he shifted again, his leg bouncing under the table, eyes fixed anywhere but mine.

His face carried that look I’d seen on him before, a mix of guilt and the wish he could rewind the last thirty seconds and keep his mouth shut.

“What about him?” I followed, the annoyance beginning to show in my voice.

He hesitated, his throat working before he finally spoke, like the words were slipping out against his better judgment.

“He saw her...”

He didn’t need to say more. I already knew from his tone, and what “saw her” meant when it came to Mike.

Mike was that guy, a lifelong friend, the kind who seems to exist in every friend circle. The one who refused to grow up. Still single, still firing off X-rated clips in the group chat like we were all stuck in our twenties.

That friend with a knack for keeping tabs on women from the past. Classmates once out of our league, now thirty years older, some divorced, some still married.

The one who always seemed to end up with a bikini shot or a full nude, dropping it in the chat without hesitation, no one asking where they came from, nor ever suggesting he stop.

His words hit like a sucker punch I couldn’t accept, maybe just him being an asshole, or maybe thinking the statute of limitations on divorce jokes had already expired.

I didn’t give him a chance to say another word or explain himself. Even with a lifelong friend I could joke about anything with, this felt like a bridge too far.

I reached for my wallet, dropped a twenty on the bar, and stood without looking at him, the chair scraping hard enough to turn a few heads as I stormed out, every step a fight not to spin around and say something I’d regret.

Back at my desk the following morning, Melissa’s voice still came faintly through the wall, still on the phone, her words a low hum beneath the glow of the laptop that taunted me.

Thumb scrolling on its own, I re-read Chris’s messages again and again, as if they might say something different the tenth time around.

He had texted me three times after I walked out. all apologies; vague, careful, like someone trying not to make things worse.

By the time I fired back with “Mike is an idiot,” I’d already filled in the blanks myself. I didn’t ask. Didn’t wait for him to explain.