I began changing how I used my phone. I stopped following accounts that treated jealousy, humiliation, and rejection as romantic entertainment, not because I believed every creator was dishonest but because I knew I had been using those stories irresponsibly. I muted the couple whose airport reunion I had watched so often, and I stopped saving videos about tests that supposedly revealed a partner's real feelings. The algorithm resisted for a while, serving me more of what I had watched before, but gradually my feed filled with pottery tutorials, small-apartment cooking, and clips of people rebuilding old houses.
I bought a cheap sketchbook and signed up for another pottery class, something I had wanted to do since Donovan gave me that birthday experience. The first class went badly. My bowl collapsed twice, I got clay on my sleeve, and I spent the drive home thinking how Donovan would have laughed and reminded me that bowls were easier to buy than to make. I almost took a photograph of the crooked result to send him. Instead I sent it to Kendra, who replied that it looked like a dish designed specifically for extremely disappointed olives.
I laughed so hard that I cried again, this time for reasons I could not neatly separate. Losing Donovan had not made every happy moment impossible. It had made me aware that happiness did not depend on an audience, and that loving someone did not entitle me to drag him into every moment I wished to share. Those were lessons I would have preferred to learn gently, but I had chosen a crueler teacher.
November brought Thanksgiving preparations. Lorraine did not invite me, and I could not blame her. I spent the holiday with my mother and Kendra's family, helping chop vegetables and listening to arguments about football that carried no threat of anyone leaving. During dinner, Kendra's younger brother announced that he was moving in with his girlfriend after six months of dating. Several relatives offered opinions, and the two of them listened without letting the conversation decide for them.
I noticed how often people used phrases I had ignored before: "Have you talked about money?" "Do you both want the same thing?" "What happens when one of you needs quiet?" Nobody suggested staging a breakup to see whether the other person cared enough to reject it. I thought about Donovan's small tag with its careful sentence, "Only if we choose it together," and recognized how much trust had been contained in those six words. He had not offered me a fantasy home. He had offered me a conversation.