Don't Let Him In

by Lisa Jewell

Nina nods. “I am,” she says. “I mean, it’s very unexpected. Obviously. I thought I was still grieving. I am still grieving. I really, really am. My heart is still…” She exhales audibly as if she’s just been kicked in her gut. “It hurts, all the time…” “Even when you’re with him?” “Yes. Even when I’m with him. But it’s like… it’s almost like I have a new heart alongside the old one, and the new one is fresh and unused, and it can be excited to be with someone and enjoy them and want to get close. If that…” She pauses, looks up at Ash. “If that makes any sense?”

The ADHD. He was diagnosed a couple of years ago and now he uses it as an explanation for every last fuckup and oversight. And she wants to sympathize and be kind, but sometimes she just wants to tell him that she knows people with ADHD, she knows children with ADHD, who are more considerate, organized, and reliable than he is. That he

cannot use it as an excuse for absolutely everything. But she can’t say that, because that’s what an uncaring bitch would say, and she does not want to be an uncaring bitch.

She hates me, and I play on it because it gives me a huge rush of energy, makes me feel like my sex, my age, my height, are my superpowers.

All I had to do was tell Amanda she looked good. Tell her she looked better than most women her age.

Documentaries The Tinder Swindler The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence Who TF Did I Marry? (on TikTok) Podcasts Who The Hell is Hamish? I am Not Nicholas Dirty John Chasing Charlie Books Sleeping With a Psychopath: Carolyn Woods The Psychopath: Mary Turner Thomson The Bigamist: The True Story of a Husband’s Ultimate Betrayal: Mary Turner Thomson No One Knew: My Emotional Journey of Being Married to a Sociopath and How I Learned to Heal: Renee Olivier