Steeped in Truth

CW: Brief sexual content.

The electric kettle hadn’t even clicked into its rolling boil when Felix’s name flashed across my phone screen.

Tea had always been my reset button. When the world got too loud.

I was preparing loose-leaf chamomile, the blend Felix and I bought in Chicago last summer. We’d ducked into a tea shop off Michigan Avenue to escape a downpour. Back then, the scent felt like a souvenir. Now, as the sky over Atlanta turned the color of a bruised plum, it felt like a warning.

I stared at the phone, my hand trembling. In the three days since the jagged end of our relationship, the silence had kept me numb. I wasn’t ready to give that up. But the red crawler on the TV kept forcing its message: WINTER STORM WARNING. ICE POSSIBLE. LIMIT TRAVEL.

My thumb hovered over the “decline” button. I knew Felix. He rarely thought things through; tonight, he was likely seeking my help rather than handling this himself.

I answered. I didn’t say hello. I just waited.

“Milly,” he said. His voice hit me in the center of my chest, a familiar frequency that I was trying to scramble. He sounded exhausted. “I know I shouldn’t be calling. I know what you said about space.”

“Then why are you calling, Felix?”

“The storm. I’m on I-285, and it’s a parking lot. The temp is dropping faster than the news predicted. People are already sliding. I’m… I’m about five miles from your exit, and I don’t think I can make it back to my side of town.”

I looked out my window. The first few beads of sleet were beginning to bounce off the glass. “You should have stayed where you were, wherever that was.”

“I was trying to get home. I wasn’t thinking.” He paused, engine rattling in the background. “Milly, please. I’m not calling to fight. I’m calling because I genuinely don’t want to end up stranded on the highway overnight.”

Reluctance seeped into my bones. My condo was my sanctuary. I’d been fiercely committed to reclaiming these walls as my own since the breakup. “Hold on,” I said, jaw tight.

I didn’t hang up. I put him on hold and immediately dialed Dez on my iPad.

Dez answered on the first ring, her face filling the screen. She took one look at my expression and sighed. “Tell me you’re looking at this weather and not thinking about calling that man.”

“He’s on the other line, Dez. He’s stuck on 285. He wants to come over because he can’t make it to his place.”

“No,” Dez said. The word was a brick wall. “Milly, absolutely not. That is a trap wrapped in a weather report. You finally got your peace back. You finally got the smell of his Tobacco Vanille out of your rugs.”

“It’s an ice storm, Dez. Atlanta doesn’t do ice. If he stays out there, he’s going to be in a wreck or freezing in a ditch. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

Dez leaned closer to the camera, her eyes narrowing. “He is a grown man with a GPS and a brain. He could find a hotel. He could find a Waffle House. He’s calling you because he knows you’re his soft place to land.” She paused, her voice dropping an octave. “And listen to me: do not fuck him. I mean it, Milly. We both know that’s exactly where his head is at. He’s intending to stay the night, and he’s going to use that ‘stuck together’ energy to try and slide back into your bed.”

“I’m not sleeping with him, Dez. I just… I can’t let him freeze.”

“You say that now. But it’s dark, it’s cold, and he knows how to push your buttons. Set your boundaries before he even walks through that door. Make it clear you intend for him to sleep on the couch, nothing more.”

I hung up with Dez, her warning echoing in my head, and switched back to Felix. “The gates are open. If you can make it to the exit, come straight here. Felix, I want to be clear, this isn’t a reconciliation. This is only me helping you in an emergency. You’re sleeping on the sofa, and the second the salt trucks hit the road, you’re gone.”

“I understand,” he whispered. “Thank you, Milly. Truly.”

Felix arrived forty minutes later. By then, the world was beginning to glaze over. He looked like a man who had been through a war, his wool coat soaked through, his eyes bloodshot, his hands shaking as he handed me a grocery bag that clinked.

“You said a storm,” he said, his voice cracking. “I heard apocalypse. I bought three bottles of the good stuff. The stuff you like.”

I didn’t offer a hug. I didn’t offer a smile. I just offered the heat of the condo. “Set them on the counter. Put your coat in the guest bath to dry.”

I watched him move through my space. It was a strange sensation, seeing a man who once owned the air now move like a trespasser. He glanced at the kitchen. I had redecorated since the breakup: new canisters, a different rug, fragile, hard-won victories he passed by without a word.

“You changed things,” he noted.

“I reclaimed things,” I corrected.

The evening was tense. I moved with deliberate focus, cooking chicken and rice with garlic and ginger. The kitchen’s rhythm, usually soothing, was brittle as Felix sat at the island; his presence set my teeth on edge.

He tried to help, reaching for a knife to chop the bell peppers, but I shook my head. “I’ve got it, Felix. Just sit.”

“I don’t want to be a guest,” he muttered, but he sat back down.

We ate in the dining nook, the only sound the sleet clicking against the glass. “I booked therapy,” Felix said suddenly. “For Monday. I realized… I realized I don’t know how to be happy without being in control. And I don’t know how to love you without being afraid of losing you.”

I felt a pang of weary empathy. “That’s good, Felix. You need to do that for yourself.”

“I want to do it for us.”

“There is no ‘us’ right now,” I said. “There is just you, me, and this storm.”

As the night wore on, the power flickered. The lights dimmed, then surged back to life. Each time, my heart thudded in my chest, panic tightening my breath. The darkness and isolation closed in, just as Dez warned. She’d said times like these made people lower their guard. Felix moved to the sofa, glancing at me as if to invite trust. Eventually, I sat on the other end, unsure if I sought comfort or distraction. He wrapped a blanket around us both. He didn’t push, but the heat of his proximity was dangerously electric, as if he hoped I might make the next move.

“I miss this,” he whispered. “Just the quiet.”

“The quiet only happens when we aren’t talking, Felix. That’s the problem.”

I eventually fell asleep on the sofa, worn down by the ache of keeping him at arm’s length. Later, I woke to find him pressed against my back, his arm gently claiming my waist. My heartbeat jumped, but I lay frozen, craving warmth even as my skin tingled with uncertainty. In the fog of sleep and cold, comfort blurred the edges of my boundaries.

Felix shifted then, his breath warm against the nape of my neck. I realized he was awake, his body humming with a tension that matched the storm outside. He didn’t say anything, but his hand moved, a slow, deliberate slide from my waist to the curve of his hip.

“Milly,” he whispered, his voice thick and rough.

I should have stopped it. I should have stood up and walked to my room; I intended to enforce distance. But the sleet was hitting the glass like a thousand tiny needles, and the silence of the city was so heavy it felt like it was crushing me. When he turned me in his arms, I didn’t resist. His eyes were dark, wet with something that looked like grief, and when his mouth found mine, it tasted like the wine we’d shared and the desperation we’d lived through.

The kiss was a collision of everything we hadn’t said. It was hungry, angry, and heartbreakingly familiar. He pulled me closer, his hands tangling in my hair, and I let out a jagged breath that caught in my throat. I was crying before I even realized it, hot, silent tears for the version of us that was already dead, even as our bodies tried to find a way to stay alive.

He felt the wetness on my cheeks and paused, his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry,” he choked out, his own voice breaking. “Milly, I’m so sorry.”

“Shut up,” I whispered, pulling him back down. I didn’t want his apologies. I wanted the heat. I wanted the distraction.

We moved with a frantic energy, the blanket falling to the floor. The sofa was too small, too cramped, but we made it work, limbs tangling as desperation flooded every touch. Felix slid down my body, his mouth finding the soft skin at my hip, then lower. He didn’t rush; his hands anchored me in place as his mouth worshiped me in slow, aching strokes. The storm outside was nothing compared to the storm inside my chest. I bit my lip, my hips arching against his tongue, tears mixing with the shudder of release. Every flick, every moan was an apology, a plea; his way of loving me the only way he knew how, even as everything else was falling apart. When he finally moved back up, his lips met mine again, and I tasted myself, salt and wine, on his tongue. We made love, if you could call it that, hungry, angry, heartbreakingly familiar, our bodies colliding in the dim, flickering light. It was raw, a final, sweaty, tear-stained attempt to hold onto something that was already slipping away.

Morning blasted in, light sharp as glass. I woke up in my own bed, Felix apparently having carried me there at some point, a gesture that left me aching, uneasy, after the storm of our emotions.

I slid out of bed, pulling my robe tight. The condo was silent. I walked into the living room, expecting to find Felix making breakfast or looking out at the ice.

Instead, I found him sitting in my reading chair. He was holding my iPad.

My stomach did a slow, sick roll. I hadn’t locked it after the call with Dez.

“Felix?” I said, my voice small.

He didn’t look up immediately. He swiped the screen with a jagged, aggressive motion. When he finally lifted his gaze, the repentant man from the night before was gone. In his place was the Felix I had fought so hard to escape.

“‘Kick his broke ass to the curb’?” he asked. His voice wasn’t loud; it was a hiss.

My heart hammered against my ribs. “You had no right to go through my messages.”

“I had no right?” He stood up, the iPad clutched in his hand like a weapon. “I’m sitting here, trying to figure out how to be a better man for you. And I find this? Are you laughing at me with Dez? You’re calling me ‘broke’?”

“That was a private conversation from a week ago, Felix! A moment of raw emotion after you disrespected me in my own home!”

“It doesn’t matter when it was!” he roared, his voice finally breaking. “IT’S how you see me! You think I’m some project, some charity case you’re tired of funding. Is that it? You’re so high and mighty in your condo with your fancy-ass soy candles and your ‘soft life’ that you think you can just look down on me?”

“I don’t look down on you, Felix. I look at you, and I see someone who refuses to grow up!”

“Refuses to grow up?” he stepped toward me, his face contorting. “I worked three jobs to buy that ring, Milly! I tried to give you the life you said you wanted. But it was never enough, was it? You always had to be the one on top. You always had to remind me that this was your house, your rules, your money.”

“You worked three jobs to pay for a lie, Felix!” I shot back, my voice trembling. “You looked me in my eye and told me that stone was a diamond. You let me believe you’d made this huge investment in us, but it was moissanite. It wasn’t just that you couldn’t afford the real thing, it was that you thought I was too stupid to know the difference. You wanted to own the image of a provider without actually being one.”

“You didn’t need me for anything!” he spat. “You treated me like a passenger, like I was just some accessory for your ‘aesthetic.’ Do you have any idea what it’s like to walk into a room and know that everyone sees me as the guy who’s just… there? The guy who can’t provide because his woman is already the provider?”

“You couldn’t provide because you were too busy trying to buy things you couldn’t afford to impress people who don’t matter!” I added, the sting of his dishonesty fresh again. “That ring wasn’t a symbol of love; it was a symbol of your ego. You wanted to own me, not partner with me.”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him. “I wanted to be your husband. I wanted to be the man who took care of you.”

“I didn’t need taking care of, Felix. I needed a partner who wasn’t intimidated by my paycheck! I needed someone who saw my success as a win for us, not a loss for his masculinity.”

The air in the room was thick with the rot of every argument we’d ever buried.

“You just like all of these other bitches,” he muttered, falling back on the same toxic defense he used whenever he felt cornered. “You build men up just so you can look down on them when they don’t reach your impossible standards. You’re cold, Milly. Cold as the ice outside.”

“No,” I said quietly, taking a step back, my stomach turning at the word. “I just stopped shrinking to make you feel tall. And that’s what you can’t stand.”

“So Ian was enough?” he snapped, his voice hitting a sharp, desperate note. “Is that it? Money? Image? Because you hold that man up like he’s the gold standard, but we both know the truth: he didn’t even want to claim you. He gave you the ‘soft life’ crumbs for a few years, but he wouldn’t give you a title, would he? You were good enough to keep his bed warm in that situationship, but not good enough to be his wife.”

The mention of Ian was the final straw. It was his go-to move, bringing up the ghost of my ex to justify his own failures. But the words didn’t just sting; they lacerated. He’d reached into the dark, private corner of my mind where I’d hidden the truth about Ian, the shame of the unclaimed years, the ‘situationship’ that I’d dressed up in designer labels to make it feel like love. I’d worked so hard to heal that wound, to tell myself I was the prize regardless of Ian’s hesitation. But Felix had just reached out and ripped the bandage off with a jagged fingernail, exposing the raw, unhealed skin beneath.

“Fuck you, Felix! Get the fuck out of my house!” I said. I wasn’t screaming. I was vibrating with a cold, absolute certainty. “The roads are still iced over, but I don’t care. Walk. Get out of my house.”

“You’re really going to throw me out in this?”

“You threw yourself out the moment you touched my privacy,” I said. “You proved every single thing I said to Dez was right. You haven’t changed. You just waited for the lights to go out so you could hide who you really are.”

He stared at me for a long beat, his face contorting with a mix of shame and rage. He dropped the iPad onto the chair. He didn’t say another word as he grabbed his coat and his bag. The sound of the front door slamming felt like the final period at the end of a very long, exhausting sentence.

I stood in the center of the living room, listening to my own breathing. I felt hollow, but it was a clean kind of hollow.

I walked into the kitchen and looked at the Fellow Stagg kettle. The digital display was dark. I didn’t want tea. Tea was for the Milly who wanted to “reset” a situation that was fundamentally broken.

I reached for the coffee beans instead.

I pulled out a bag of dark roast, oily, black, and unapologetically bitter. I dumped them into the grinder and let the machine’s roar fill the kitchen. I poured the water into the coffee maker and watched the black liquid drip steadily into the pot. The smell was sharp. It was wakeful.

I poured a single mug, no cream, no sugar. I took the mug and walked to the window. Outside, the ice was beginning to drip. The sun was doing its work, melting the glass prison that had held the city captive.

I took a long, hot sip. Felix was gone. The storm was passing. And for the first time in a long time, I was wide awake. I wrapped my hands around the warm mug, feeling the steady heat through the ceramic. I was Milly. I was the prize. And I didn’t need a safe harbor anymore; I was the sea.