be a surroga

casual tone she used to announce she was

om-designed invitations, the ones I'd spent a month agonizin

sper. The clatter of the whisk I was holding

"It's not like we're sleeping together, Ethan. It's a platonic gesture. It was his f

ndifferent city. The woman I had supported through every grueling year of medical school and re

say, the words feeling like gravel in my t

of any warmth. "We can postpone having kids. My career

a struggling artist who clung to Nicole like a parasite, usi

my passion, and my loyalty into this relationship, and in one sentence

ord tasting like as

not up for discussion, Et

orming out of the apartment, the sound of her turni

nd heartbreak. When I finally collapsed onto a bench in some nameless

story, the words dripping with a

eeks. Need a new

s to Nicole. They had no idea that devotion was a corpse I'd been carrying for years. I turned off my p

ind in Wisconsin. I took a demanding job as a sous-chef in a high-end restaurant, not for my own ambition, but because the hours an

for his emotionally manipulative son. The pain was a physical thing, a crushing weight