After the Cake.

For a while, Mara thought about the cake more than she expected to.
Not the moment it cracked, but what happened after.

How quickly it was lifted.
How decisively it was thrown away.
How little room there had been to pause.

She understood it now.

Jon hadn’t meant to hurt her.
He simply didn’t know how to stay with broken things.
Or with the discomfort of noticing them.

That didn’t make him a bad man.
It meant the skill of staying hadn’t been learned.

What she needed was not perfection.
It was presence.

Someone who could see a crack and not rush to erase it.
Someone who could ask,
“How does that feel for you?”
and be willing to answer the same question himself.

Someone who understood that repair isn’t a mess.
It’s a connection.

Mara stopped replaying the moment.
She had learned what she needed to learn.

Some people leave when things break.
Others stay and make room for repair.

She knew which kind of love she was waiting for now.