Chapter 1

Randy McConnignton

Randy had never lived alone before. Not really.

At thirty-six, you’d think he would’ve had at least one stretch—some brief stint in a bachelor pad, maybe a shared apartment in his twenties. But no. He went straight from his parents’ house to a dorm at UIUC, where he shared a room with his buddy Kyle, then he met Sarah in junior year, fell hard and fast, and moved in together by senior spring. From there it was one thing after another: engagement, wedding, career, kids, mortgage. Almost two decades of motion, of building and maintenance. Now, all of it dismantled. No one cheated, no one was abused, no huge fights… just indifference… Two people who were deeply in love and slowly started to become two people coparenting together and sometimes sleeping in the same bed.

He stared at the beige walls of his new apartment.

“Vintage,” the realtor had said, eyes glittering like she’d swallowed a Pinterest board. She said it like it was a feature, not a flaw. Randy had nodded like he understood what that meant. Now, with the sagging cabinetry and the sour smell of someone else’s memories baked into the carpet, he understood. Vintage meant old. Vintage meant cheap.

The apartment was two bedrooms, technically. The second room was more of a bathroom with aspirations, it did fit two beds for his children, so it was fine. Still, the location was good—Lincoln Park, close enough to feel like he still belonged to the city he’d once known when he had reasons to leave the house. The rent was just under his budget. It had working plumbing and didn’t actively smell like mold. That was enough.

Boxes were still stacked in the corners. He’d unpacked only the essentials: his laptop, a few clothes, the coffee maker, his toothbrush, a couple of dishes he bought at Target on move-in day. On one wall, he’d hung a framed poster of Blade Runner—the only decoration he brought from the house he used to share with Sarah. It looked out of place, like a relic from a different life.

Randy stood in the middle of the living room, barefoot, wearing a white tank top and gray sweatpants. The tank top clung to the new contours of his body—what had once been lean and cut was now soft and undefined. The mustache he used to keep perfectly trimmed now hovered just above scruffy stubble. He looked like the ghost of someone who used to be on magazine covers for startup tech firms.

He had tried, earlier, to reclaim some spark of youth. It was his college friend Kyle’s idea—“Let’s hit the bars, bro! Like old times.”

Old times were gone. Their backs and knees were the proof of that.

Kyle, Marcus, and Pete had all gotten fat after their respective marriages. Not just thicker around the middle, but ballooned. One of them wheezed after walking half a block. They wore too-tight button-downs that stretched around their guts, pretending they were still the kings of the campus. And then there were the girls—women, really, though they barely cleared twenty-two. Smiling with that mixture of amusement and pity, like they were meeting a substitute teacher at a frat party.

Randy had lasted two hours. He nursed one drink, made the requisite small talk, laughed politely at jokes that didn’t land. At 10:42, without saying goodbye, he slipped out the side door and into the cold Chicago air.

Back in the apartment, he dropped his phone on the counter and looked around. The silence wrapped around him like a vacuum. No clatter of kids fighting over the remote. No hum of Sarah in the next room on a Zoom call. Just the faint buzz of a ceiling fan that clicked once every rotation.

He picked up the phone again. Texted his son, Elliot.

Hey Eli! You free? Thought we could talk.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Then a message:

Playing COD with the guys. Can I call later?

He stared at it for a moment. Typed “sure” and hit send.

Then he tried his daughter. Ellie.

Hey kiddo, can I call?

She replied quickly:
Playing volleyball! Love you tho

“Love you tho.” The “tho” was a dagger wrapped in glitter.

Randy sighed and dropped the phone again. He walked into the kitchen, looked at the stove, and thought, How hard can this be?

He found a dusty box of pasta in one of the cabinets. There was a jar of marinara sauce in a bag still on the floor from three days ago. No can opener. He improvised with a screwdriver.

The water boiled over. He hadn’t salted it. Then he burned the sauce. The noodles were both undercooked and mushy. The kitchen filled with smoke and the smoke alarm went off, screaming at him like a drill sergeant. He swatted at it with a broom until it stopped.

The ruined pot sat in the sink, black crust clinging to the sides like barnacles. He opened the fridge. A bottle of craft beer and a half-stick of butter stared back at him.

“Fuck it,” he said aloud, to no one.

He grabbed his phone, opened Yelp, and found the first pizza place with more than three stars within two miles. It was called Tony’s Famous Slice, and the logo was a cartoon tomato with sunglasses.

Forty-five minutes later, the buzzer rang.

He pressed the button and said, “Come up.”

A few minutes passed. Then a knock. Randy opened the door.

The guy standing there was in his early twenties, maybe younger. Curly brown hair poking out from a backwards cap. He wore a red insulated bag over one shoulder and had a big, crooked smile that didn’t seem forced.

“Large pepperoni with mushrooms?” he said.

“Yep.”

“That’ll be twenty-two seventy.”

Randy handed him a twenty and a five.

“Keep it.”

“Thanks, man.” The kid handed over the pizza, then lingered a second. “Divorce dad, right?”

Randy blinked. “…Yeah.”

“I knew it. You’ve got the trifecta: tank top, dadbod, and a high-rent unit with zero furniture.”

Randy laughed. A short, honest one. “Is it that obvious?”

“Dude, we have a running tally back at the shop. Divorce dads keep us in business. You guys don’t cook, you tip better than college kids, and you always order at least one topping too many.”

“You got a name?” Randy asked, shifting the warm box to one hand.

“Jake. My old man owns the place. I’m just the underpaid heir.”

“Well, Jake, thanks for the food and the emotional support.”

Jake grinned. “Anytime. I’ll be back next Friday. Same time?”

“Probably.”

“Don’t forget to buy some furniture. Your living room’s making me depressed.”

Randy laughed again. “Noted.”

Jake gave a salute and trotted down the stairs.

Randy shut the door, set the pizza on the counter, grabbed the beer from the fridge, and sat down on the floor. No table. No chairs. Just a flattened box under him and the glow of the TV, where he flicked through sitcoms until he landed on something with a laugh track and familiar faces.

He ate straight from the box, beer bottle clinking against his teeth.

Outside, the streetlights flickered. Inside, the only sounds were canned laughter, the faint hum of the fridge, and the rustle of pizza crust being torn apart.

That was Friday night.

And for the first time in a long time, Randy didn’t feel sad. Not exactly. Not happy, either. Just real. Just present. Just… here.

He didn’t sleep much that weekend.

Not because of sadness, or even because he was overwhelmed—just a strange restlessness. A low, ambient buzz that ran under his skin like static. He stayed up late watching movies he half-remembered from college, old comedies and thrillers that seemed way more clever when he was twenty. He tried doing laundry and discovered the dryer sounded like it was running on loose coins and caffeine. He stared out the window a lot, sipping beer and thinking about everything and nothing.

Then, on Sunday afternoon, his college buddies came over. Kyle, Marcus, and Pete—the same crew from the bar on Friday, just reassembled for a more comfortable and socially acceptable form of male bonding: football.

They arrived one by one, bringing six-packs and bags of chips, paper plates, and a football-shaped serving tray Pete thought was hilarious. Kyle brought a half-flat bottle of bourbon he called “the good stuff,” which turned out to be a $25 bottle with a screw top. Nobody cared.

“Damn, it smells like freedom in here,” Marcus said as he walked in, throwing his jacket on a box labeled winter coats?.

“Or failure,” Pete added, handing over a pack of napkins like it was a housewarming gift.

They laughed, kicked off their shoes, and spread out on Randy’s sagging thrift-store couch and a couple of folding chairs he’d borrowed from the neighbor. The game played on the mounted TV—Randy had splurged on a new one. That, at least, was worth the money.

They drank. They told stories. They talked shit about players who made ten million a year. They got loud. Then they got quieter. Conversation slid into more honest territory.

“Sarah posted the update,” Pete said, mouth full of wings. “I saw it. You’re officially single now. Facebook knows.”

“Yeah,” Randy said. “I guess that makes it real.”

“You okay?” Kyle asked, not looking at him.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I know. Still am.”

There was a knock at the door during the third quarter. Randy opened it and found Jake again, this time with four boxes stacked up in his arms and a grin already on his face.

“Holy shit,” Jake said, looking past Randy into the living room. “Did I just walk into the Divorce Dad Super Bowl?”

“Something like that.”

“You guys are my favorite customers now. This household is keeping Tony’s afloat.”

Randy handed him a wad of cash. “We’re loyal.”

Jake raised an eyebrow. “So was Blockbuster. Look how that turned out.”

They laughed. Jake left. The guys devoured the pizza. The night stretched out into something warm and familiar. When they finally left—burping and hugging and promising to do it again—Randy stood at the doorway for a long time, looking at the city glowing in the cold. He didn’t feel better. But he didn’t feel worse. That felt like a kind of progress.

Monday morning came sharp and gray.

Randy got dressed in the same rotation he always had—pressed slacks, collared shirt, belt, loafers. He left the tie off. Something about it felt like a lie.

On the way to work, he swung into a McDonald’s drive-thru. Two sausage McMuffins, hash browns, black coffee. He parked in a side lot with a view of nothing special: a few cracked parking lines, a Dumpster, and a strip of sidewalk that led to the main road.

As he unwrapped the first sandwich, he saw them. A young couple—early twenties, maybe. She wore leggings and a hoodie, the kind of thrown-together look that still somehow worked. He had a clean fade and carried a baby in one of those chest slings, bouncing it lightly as they walked toward the entrance.

They were smiling. Like, really smiling. Talking about nothing, probably. The baby grabbed at the father’s chin, and the guy laughed like it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Randy chewed and watched.

Give them ten years and 60 extra pounds on the husband and let’s see if they stick together, he thought, not bitter, not angry—just tired… and well… maybe a little bitter. He sipped his coffee, and it scalded the roof of his mouth.

The office was a glass-and-concrete startup hybrid in River North. Too sleek to feel personal, too modern to feel grounded. He used to love it here. Now he didn’t know.

As soon as he stepped through the doors, the energy shifted. Conversations paused. People looked up. Heads turned, eyes darted, voices lowered.

He was the boss—Chief Systems Architect and co-founder of AltWave Solutions. Normally, he walked in and got nods, a few “mornings,” and back to work.

Not today.

Today, it felt like someone had died.

“Ayy, Randy,” said Greg from DevOps, too cheerfully. “Lookin’ good, man.”

“I’m not,” Randy replied, not unkindly, and walked past.

His assistant, Nina, didn’t ask for anything. Just offered him a steaming mug of the good coffee, the kind they kept in the break room for upper management only.

“I made this for you,” she said quietly.

“Thanks.”

She hesitated. “If you ever wanna talk… I’ve got two ex-boyfriends and a bat in my car.”

Randy smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

As he moved through the office, he caught the glances—the kind that tried to look like they weren’t glancing. The curiosity sat heavy in the air.

Jared, the company’s only openly gay engineer, sidled up beside him in the hallway. “So. Spill.”

“Spill what?”

“The tea. I heard it was amicable, but I don’t buy that. Nobody actually divorces because of ‘mutual indifference.’ What’s the real story?”

“That is the story.”

Jared sighed, disappointed. “Boring. At least tell me someone slept with a barista.”

“No baristas,” Randy said. “Just time, two children, busy work schedules… this paunch” he jiggled his small belly “And time, mostly time.”

Jared touched his arm briefly. “Sorry, man. You know where to find me if you ever want a rebound and an awkward brunch.”

“Duly noted.” Randy laughed, maybe for the first time in the week. Granted, it was Monday. He wasn’t that depressed.

Back at his desk, there were two Post-It notes from department heads with “Just checking in” scribbled on them. An email from HR with a subject line: Support Resources Available. And a small Tupperware container on his chair.

It was filled with homemade cookies. Oatmeal raisin, still soft.

He turned it over and found a small note stuck to the bottom:
– Ruth. Just in case you need a little sweetness.

Ruth had been the front-desk receptionist since the company opened. She never missed a day. When his father had died last year, she gave him her condolences, a quick hug and then spent the day indifferent, she hadn’t even looked up from her crossword puzzle.

He laughed, quietly.

Apparently, a failed marriage earned more sympathy than a dead parent.

By noon, Randy had eaten three cookies, ignored fourteen emails, and updated the team roadmap. He leaned back in his chair, stared out the office window at the gray-blue haze of the city.

The pity would fade. The stares would stop. The silence at home wouldn’t. Not for a while. But maybe—maybe that wasn’t all bad. Maybe that silence would teach him something.

Or maybe he’d just order pizza again and call it a night.