"Every time you scare her, that's one more hour I have to spend calming her down." He jerked his chin toward the bakery across the room. "Go wait for me there."

I didn't push it. I went where he told me to go.

He was right about one thing. The girl wasn't easy to soothe. I stood by the window and watched them for an hour.

The first words out of Christopher's mouth when he walked in were designed to put me in my place. "Picking on a kid isn't a good look. I want this to be the last time you go near her."

I kept my voice even. "How long have you two known each other?"

"Three days."

I'd braced myself for three months. Maybe a year. But the real answer cut deeper than anything I'd prepared for. My nails dug into my palms so hard they nearly broke skin.

Then, somehow, a laugh slipped out. "I thought our cold war came out of nowhere. Turns out it was because of her."

Christopher lit a cigarette and held one out to me.

"I don't even know what started it," he said.

I wasn't the kind of person who could lie to myself the way he did, so I said it for him. "You got bored."

He didn't agree. He didn't deny it, either. Instead, he tossed out another line. "Don't you think she looks like someone?"

I didn't have to think. "The dress she's wearing. That was my style seven years ago."

Christopher smiled. Eyes half-closed, almost lazy, like it was nothing. "That's the one. The dress you used to wear. I gave it to her. You don't mind, do you?" A drag of his cigarette. "You shouldn't mind. It's not like you could fit into it anymore."

I tapped the ash from my cigarette, then stopped mid-motion.

The stainless steel ashtray caught my reflection. Fine lines at the corners of my eyes. Exhaustion etched between my brows. A black V-neck dress that had torn along the seam during the earlier scuffle.

She really did look like a younger version of me. More alive, even, than I had ever been.

And Christopher really had bought me so many dresses just like hers.

I hadn't understood before. Now, I finally did. That look in his eyes every time he watched me put one on, full of expectation, only to go flat with disappointment the moment he actually saw me in it.

Gradually, I grew to hate that hollow pretense of his. I started wearing the styles he despised most.

Seven years together, and none of it measured up to three days with her.

At the end of it all, he was simply bored of me.

"Christopher, people change."