I ended my engagement after my fiancée asked for a break to see if her ex still meant something to her. She thought I would sit and wait inside the life we had spent four years building — until three days later, her mother called me, and Tessa finally realized I was never her backup plan.

I liked her immediately. She had a quickness to her. She was a freelance graphic designer, which meant her schedule had the same unpredictable rhythm mine did.

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Late calls, late emails, sudden deadlines, quiet Tuesday mornings that somehow turned into chaos by lunch. We understood each other’s work pace. Neither of us had glamorous lives, but we had good lives, and for a while that felt like enough.

After a year, she moved in with me. The house was small but comfortable, tucked into a clean, middle-class neighborhood with maple trees along the sidewalks and porches that filled with pumpkins every October. It had a narrow kitchen, a little patch of backyard, and a front room with enough sunlight in the mornings to make everything look warmer than it was.

The mortgage was in my name. I had bought it before Tessa and I got serious, but after she moved in, she started calling it ours. At first, I loved hearing that.

Our couch. Our kitchen. Our house.