The next few days passed in that dull, soft-gray way life sometimes does — packed lunches, the same four dinner options, endless laundry cycles like waves smoothing down whatever edges she had left. Sydney felt herself moving through rooms instead of living in them.

Little things had started catching in her chest.

Her husband leaving dishes next to the sink instead of in it.

Her daughter pulling at her shirt while she tried to finish grading papers.

A text from him that simply read:

Pick up bread.

No hello.

No thanks.

No warmth.

Just function.

One evening, she stood in front of the mirror brushing her hair — the same messy bun, same dark circles — and for a moment she barely recognized the woman staring back. She used to wear lipstick for no reason. She used to laugh loud enough for people to stare. She used to feel like a person, not just a job.

She used to have Ryan’s hands on her waist under museum lighting, whispering jokes that made her blush and snort at the same time.

Sometimes the memories came gently, like soft rain.

Other times, they slammed into her without warning.

Tonight, they crashed.

She’d been in his car after a movie — windows fogged slightly from warmth and conversation. Ryan had leaned his head back, eyes on her like she was both answer and question.

“I thought about kissing you again,” he said, voice raw around the edges. “All day, actually.”

Sydney remembered her pulse tripping over itself.

She’d whispered, “So why don’t you?”

He smiled — small, reverent.

“Because I don’t want to do it like it’s casual. I want to do it when you’ll feel it for days.”

She had.

God, she had.

“Did you start the dishwasher?” her husband called from the couch.

She blinked away the memory. “Not yet.”

He sighed. Loud. Performative.

Like her existence inconvenienced him.

“You always forget,” he muttered.

She stood there, hands gripping the counter until her knuckles paled.

Always?

Always.

Never mind that she kept schedules in her head and doctor appointments straight and the kids fed and the house alive. The dishwasher was her failure today, so therefore she was always failing.

Something inside her shifted — not broken, but misaligned. A bone that healed wrong finally refusing to bear weight.

“I didn’t forget,” she said quietly. “I just hadn’t gotten to it yet.”

He didn’t respond.

He didn’t look at her.

The distance between them felt like an entire life.

Sydney pressed a hand to her ribs, breath catching like grief or longing — she couldn’t tell which. Maybe both.

And when she lay in bed later, spine turned away from her husband, she reached for the memory instead of the man beside her.

Ryan’s voice slid back like velvet:

I want you to feel it for days.

Her body remembered.

Her heart remembered.

Even if she wished it didn’t.

The past wasn’t gone.

It was waking up.