I still have grease on my face from the rag you threw.”

His hand froze in midair.

The color dropped out of his face as he understood, all at once, that the quiet, agreeable woman he had dated for two years was simply gone — that she may never have been quite what he thought.

I watched that understanding move across his face, and I felt something I had not expected to feel, which was a flicker of pity — not for him, but for the size of his miscalculation.

Casper had spent two years building a picture of me, and the picture was of a soft, pliable, conflict-avoiding woman who could be shaped into whatever a household needed her to be.

He was not entirely wrong to build it; I had been accommodating, I had smoothed things over, I had chosen peace over confrontation more times than I could count.