“Why pay to rave when you can have a rave for free at home?” Val adds with a shrug. “Besides, I like not having to leave the apartment or deal with lots of people.”

A small laugh finally escapes my mouth. Even though Kiara and Val are very different, they’re still two peas in the same chaotic, but good, pod.

Val grabs one side of my box and tries to lift it up. “Geez!” she hisses. “How did you bring this heavy thing across the city? And walk up and down the hills?”

Kiara grabs the other side, while I hold the middle.

I shrug. “Just pure stubbornness I guess.”

“Well, you don’t have to go through everything alone anymore,” Kiara says. “You’re stuck with us now. For better or worse.”

Quietly laughing, we carry the box up the stairs.

The first Monday after the breakup is even more excruciating than I thought it would be. For the most part, I love working for Horizon Magazine, one of the only surviving regional magazines in the San Francisco Bay Area, but even that feels like a big middle finger from life when I run into James on the elevator.

Yes, my ex is also my coworker. And yes, I’ve read the million think pieces about how you should never date someone from work. I’ve written some of them.

But in my defense, I met James in college during my senior year, so it’s not like we started out as an office romance. Since we were two job-searching seniors, we dated casually at first. After what happened with Celeste, I was in no rush to get into another relationship. But when we were both hired by the same magazine fresh out of college, it seemed like destiny. And things got serious fast, especially after James’s very well-off parents bought us a condo in San Francisco and we moved in together, four months after we met.

In retrospect, what James and I did was ill-advised. But back then, everything was so fun and exciting. We spent most of our twenties exploring every inch of the Bay Area together when we weren’t at work, sometimes even for work, since I had to constantly visit new places for my articles. A good chunk of the memories I made since moving to the area, like eating clam chowder for the first time at Fisherman’s Wharf or renting a convertible to drive down to Santa Cruz, were with James.

But today, James gets on the elevator, not even saying hi or otherwise acknowledging that I exist. It’s so obvious from his unnaturally stiff posture that he’s actively trying to avoid eye contact with me as we make our way up to where our office is on the fifth floor.