Jezabelle threw her needles across the chair and hurled herself down after them. The faint scent of his cigarette breath was still on the pillows. She tossed them away and sighed.
She was lonely.
There was no other way to say it, no sugarcoated term to make everything better - all the girls had figured it out by now and she just looked like an idiot whenever she denied it. "Have a date for Valentine's, Jez? Going to find that special someone this year?" No no, she would say, dropping a stitch and picking it up almost without thinking, there was no one in her life.
She snatched up the lime green pillow and looked at its fibers. Woven, something like tweed or another one of those fabrics that she rarely clutched between her fingers. They had kept the smell of him quite well, though she didn't know why. Maybe he'd laid claim to them when he started sleeping in the living room rather than their double bed. The perfect life she would no longer have.
Jezabelle's fiance had come and gone, leaving only a few blackened stains in her carpet. It wasn't like she'd had a chance to really recuperate. She had resolved to try dating again a few weeks after they broke it off... and then a few more weeks after... and then a month...
She bundled her knees up under her chin and sat with her eyes fixed on the knitting closet. Was this the consolation prize? The Charmant Knitter's Guild where she found nothing but happy mothers and young sweethearts? Where no one was without a man for more than two weekends? She glanced over at the knitting needles and the line of red yarn trailing from them like a stain.
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