Once the group was gone, Asher rattled around, stacking paper plates and wadding napkins. The apartment felt oversized and empty now, especially in bleak midafternoon, as he finished out the last months of his two-year rhetoric fellowship, coaxing freshmen to write essays they should’ve learned to draft in high school. Rachel had left him in the fall, and it hadn’t made sense to move. Now it was another overwarm January, bare trees fighting for respect against the flip-flops slapping the slopes of Druid Hills. Atlanta’s mild climate had eased Asher’s breakup. At least he had the sun, or whatever.

He halfheartedly swept around Ivan’s molehill of gravel. He always let the pile be until the day he inevitably stepped in it on the way to the bathroom. The gravel then scattered everywhere, and he scooped it up and stowed it in the least popular mug in the cupboard.

Rachel had hated that mug. She’d loved Asher like no parent had ever loved him, but she’d also picked at him like a parent: for letting dust thicken on his books, for brushing his teeth too loudly, for resting his ass on the kitchen counter. For saving gravel. He’d thought he’d be relieved when she was gone, but his chest ached like his heart had been removed, collateral damage from the mastectomy.

At first he’d thought the breakup was due to his transition. She’d been cool with the idea in theory, all the way until his surgery was scheduled. But as she’d packed to leave him, still butchering pronouns months into his social transition, he’d read her diary, desperate to uncover why she was really leaving. The entry revealed that she’d known about Asher’s crush, had suspected the real reason their sex life had shrunk from glorified masturbation to nothing: I hate her sometimes, Jesus. I thought she was just a slob but last night she was staring at that stupid mug of gravel like she was in love with it, like I’m not even here. She was, like, practically coming all over that gravel. Does she think I’m an idiot? I mean he, whatever. It’s like he thinks Ivan left a pile of dirt as a gift—so delusional. Ashley would fuck anyone who soils our rug. Anyone but me. I hate that I’m crying right now. Why do I still care?

In handwriting shaky with shock, she’d scrawled over these words the insult that became the acronym for Asher’s booklet title. And despite the insult’s nastiness—though the femininity was worse—she’d written it in a curly script better reserved for wedding invitations. Asher had photographed the entry with his phone, barely managing to slip the diary back into its box before Rachel burst into the room, face tight with the false lawyerly cheer that propelled her through the breakup.