Life had to go on, but it was like all the color had been drained from the world. It didn’t help matters that I was living alone. It let me really steep myself in my depression.

Shelby came over the night after he walked out of my mother’s house and just held me while I cried and told her all the ways I had messed up and how I didn’t know how to live without him.

“I’ll tell you how. You get up in the morning and take a shower and keep living your life. You build your business. You find a new roommate. You move on, and hopefully every day it will hurt a little less.”

She never said I told you so, but maybe she should have. Because she’d been right about everything. Again. And I’d lost the person I loved most in the whole world.

My mother kept calling to apologize and see if I was okay. But she wasn’t to blame and it was exhausting pretending I felt better than I actually did. I found myself dodging some of her calls.

One night Shelby stopped by to check on me. It might have been two weeks later. Maybe three. Time had sort of lost all meaning. She let herself in because she still had her key.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

And I knew why she looked so concerned. Despite her counsel to take care of myself, I had fallen into a deep funk that included not leaving my house and forgetting about personal hygiene. I was also wearing the hoodie that Noah had lent to me and I’d never returned. It had never been washed. “Today I wanted to find out how many Snickers bars I had to eat to stop feeling sad. So far it’s not ten.”

“Sweetie, what can I do?”

Tell me about Noah, I wanted to say but didn’t. Whenever we talked or she visited, I was starved for information about him. But she wouldn’t talk about him. Even when I specifically asked, she would change the subject. I was torn between understanding why she was doing it, wanting to keep out of it because she had her own relationship with Noah, and feeling hurt that she wouldn’t give me every morsel and detail she knew because I was her best friend.

Not that I couldn’t get morsels and details of my own. It was really hard to break up with someone when there were millions of images of him online. When with a click of a button I could hear his voice whenever I wanted. See his beautiful face. Watch him gazing adoringly at Aliana the same way he used to look at me.

I’d been so stupid.