By seven-thirty Thursday morning, eleven pieces of my life had been cut off my backpack, and the man sleeping in my bed acted as if he’d handed out leftover pizza.
Chapter 1
I stood in the living room holding the battered navy canvas bag against my chest, staring at pale rectangles where patches had been sewn for years. Threads dangled from the fabric. One spot had been sliced so roughly that the tip of a knife had gone straight through the outer pocket, leaving a narrow wound in the canvas.
For a few seconds, I honestly couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I kept counting the empty places, thinking maybe I was tired, maybe I’d forgotten moving something, maybe there was some explanation that didn’t involve the backpack looking as though somebody had attacked it with scissors.
Eleven patches were gone.
That backpack wasn’t expensive. The bag itself had cost less than eighty dollars, and some of the patches probably weren’t worth five. But I’d started collecting them at fourteen, when my father bought me my first real school backpack and told me plain things didn’t have to stay plain if you gave them a history.
So I did.
There had been a patch from the first Broadway touring show Dad took me to in Baltimore, one from the Smithsonian during a family trip to Washington, one from a tiny jazz club in New Orleans that I’d visited in college, and another from the semester I spent studying in Florence. Friends had brought me patches from Yellowstone, Seattle, Nashville, and places I’d never been. Every few years, when the backpack wore out, I’d sit at the kitchen table and carefully transfer the collection onto a new one.
Dad used to help.
He died the previous spring.
I was thirty-two years old when I lost him, old enough to know death was part of life and young enough to discover that knowing didn’t make it hurt any less. During the last months of his illness, he’d still send me links to strange little embroidered patches he’d found online. He’d bought me three limited-edition ones from a museum collection and given me an old patch of his own—a faded red-and-gold mountain emblem he’d carried since 1994.
All four were now missing.
I dropped the backpack onto the couch and hurried into the bedroom.
“Jake.”
He grunted and rolled over.
“Jake, wake up.”
“What’s wrong?”
I turned on the lamp. “What happened to my backpack?”
His eyes opened halfway. For one hopeful second, I expected confusion. Then his face changed in a way that made my stomach drop.
“Oh,” he said.
Just that.
“Oh.”
I stared at him. “What does that mean?”
He sat up, rubbing his face. Jake was thirty-five and had the kind of calm personality people admired instantly. Nothing seemed to rattle him. Traffic, restaurant mistakes, delayed flights—Jake shrugged at all of it. That easygoing nature had been one of the things I loved most about him because I was the opposite. I worried. I planned. I rehearsed conversations before having them.
For six months, I’d thought Jake balanced me.
That morning, his calmness didn’t feel comforting.
It felt obscene.
“Some guys stopped by last night,” he said.
“What guys?”
“Chris, Nolan, Ben. A couple others.”
“After I went to bed?”
“They were bar hopping downtown. They texted me because they were nearby.”
I could hear my pulse in my ears. “And?”
He looked toward the living room.
“One of them liked your backpack.”
I waited.
Jake sighed. “They thought the patches were cool.”
“Jake.”
“So I told them they could take a few.”
I didn’t move.
The room became unnaturally quiet. I could hear the air conditioner turning on in the hall and a delivery truck backing up somewhere outside.
“You told them what?”
“I didn’t think you’d care.”
Something inside me snapped.
“You told drunk men they could cut patches off my backpack?”
“They weren’t all drunk.”
“Oh, good. That’s the part I was worried about.”
He frowned. “Emily, come on.”
“No. Don’t ‘come on’ me. Eleven are missing.”
His eyebrows rose as if the number surprised him. “Eleven?”
“Four were from my father.”
That finally got his full attention.
I listed them. The museum patches. The mountain emblem from 1994. My voice shook more with each one.
Jake swung his legs out of bed. “Okay. I’ll ask about those.”
I thought I’d misheard him. “Those?”
“Yeah. The ones from your dad.”
“What about the others?”
He looked uncomfortable. “It would be pretty awkward to ask everybody for everything back after I told them they could have them.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
Then I asked the question that ended our relationship before either of us knew it was over.
“Are you more worried about looking stupid in front of your friends than about what you did to me?”
Jake hesitated.
It wasn’t long. Maybe two seconds.
But grief teaches you something about time: two seconds can hold an entire truth.
“Get out,” I said.
“Emily—”
“Get out of my apartment.”
“You’re really throwing me out over some patches?”
I pointed toward the door. “Now.”
He dressed while complaining that I was making the situation bigger than it was. I stood there shaking, arms folded around myself, listening to the man I loved explain why the destruction of something precious to me should not inconvenience him.
Before he reached the door, he turned around.
“I’ll text the guys this weekend.”
“This weekend?”
“People have work, Em.”
“My father’s dead every day of the week, Jake.”
His face hardened. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
After he left, I sat alone on the kitchen floor with the damaged backpack beside me.
Then my phone buzzed.
It was a message from one of the men who had been in my apartment.
Emily, I’m so sorry. I have two of your patches. Jake said they were basically extras. I knew it seemed weird, but I went along with it. I’ll bring them back tonight.
I stared at the message.
Basically extras.
That was when I realized the patches weren’t the worst thing Jake had given away.
He had given strangers permission to decide which parts of my life mattered.
