I know I’ll have to accept that I need to let Hugh go, but it’s easier said than done. When, a couple of days later, I hear someone with an Australian accent in the grocery store, it’s all I can do not to burst into tears in the condiment aisle.

The next time Millie asks me about the conference, I almost tell her I can’t go. I open my mouth to explain that some days I feel so sad I don’t even want to take a shower, that going somewhere Hugh was supposed to be feels impossible, but my gaze catches on the new wrinkles that have formed across Millie’s forehead and I hold my tongue. She teasingly pulls the ‘I got a double mastectomy’ card enough that I know that’s what she’d do if I said I was having second thoughts.

‘One day you’ll have to stop using that,’ I tell Millie after she guilts me into bringing her a latte on my way to work.

‘You’re the one who always falls for it,’ she replies with a smile, happily sipping her steaming coffee.

The cold in Columbus is bitter for weeks in a row, but day by day I weather it for a little longer with Murphy. I stay quiet about not wanting to present, and instead try to focus on what good opportunity it is. I fall into a rhythm at the lab. I like my co-workers; most of the other lab techs are a little younger than me, but we go to the bar next to the office for trivia together every week and it’s fun and lively and I feel like I’m finally getting back to having a life.

There’s one co-worker in particular that I get along with really well. His name is Blake and he’s twenty-four. I assumed I was too old for him to even think of me that way, but one day he asks me out. He does it so casually that I don’t register it for a minute or two, and I leave him hanging a beat too long.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say finally. He has big brown eyes and long eyelashes. He’s cute. Young, but cute.

‘I’m kind of hung up on someone,’ I explain. Ever since I found out Hugh cancelled his trip to Boston, the thought of him makes my heart feel like it’s being squeezed by a giant fist. I’m not ready to be seeing anyone else. I’m in no place to date someone, especially not a co-worker.

But the hole Hugh left is slowly filled by my new job. Millie and I spend more time together now because we see each other at work, and the insecurity I used to feel in her presence, that I was constantly being compared and deemed the worse sister, has significantly dimmed.