When Kenna first saw this dress in a stall in Camden Market, it had been a ray of sunshine on that dull day.

She had hoped it would turn her as bright as those flowers bold enough to come before the swallow dares, as Shakespeare once said. Instead, she looked like a banana, battered after a long day of typing away at her laptop.

Articles didn't write themselves, and Kenna's deadline had hung over her head like a guillotine blade while she worked. At least she had submitted it on time.

Take a breath, Kenna. Nobody said that being in your twenties was easy. One thing at a time.

She and Tim had been planning this dinner for months. The thought of it had made her hands fly over her keyboard even though her mind strung words together as clumsy fingers would.

It had been too long since they had been out on a proper date. Kenna wanted to make it special, but a banana dress wasn't what she had in mind.

She lifted her long red hair off her shoulders with her pale, ink-splotched hands. The yellow figure-hugging dress looked wrong on her slender frame. Simply put, Kenna had very little figure to hug.

Sitting midway up her thighs, the dress was too short for her liking. Even worse, it was set on its length, bouncing back up whenever she pulled it down. Gloria had said it was "hot" that day in the market, but it just wasn't Kenna. Still, the dress deserved a fair chance, if only on her best friend's word.

Straightening up, Kenna smoothed over the yellow fabric. The unsightly creases over her chest disappeared. It was an improvement, but not quite enough to make the leap to daffodil, to beautiful and romantic, the substance of daydreams and love stories. With Kenna's pallor of skin, she'd need nothing less than magic to pull that off in this colour.

Who was she fooling? There was no way Tim would let her get into his car wearing this.

His life was a perfect puzzle of pressed suits, sleek cars and posh accents. Sometimes Kenna felt like the only piece that didn't fit into it. Maybe she was. She had never walked into his office and seen anyone else with her messy bun or notebook of hasty plot outlines.

Tim had gazed at Kenna with starry eyes on their first date almost two years ago, but he didn't look at her like that anymore. He had grinned and shaken his head at her messiness in the beginning, but lately, it only made him snap.

It had been weeks since they last spent the night together. Tim came over for supper and a movie on those rare evenings when he wasn't working late hours, but he always had an early morning ahead whenever Kenna asked him to stay over.

What if it's not an early morning that keeps him from me? What if it's something else?

Kenna's mouth went dry at the thought.

Surely Tim would've said so if something was wrong.

Sometimes Kenna looked up at him when he sat beside her, only to see that his eyes were distant as if his mind was somewhere else. He didn't give her those lingering kisses he used to at first, those ones that made her feel like he was tasting her soul so that he'd remember her forever. Now it was just a perfunctory peck on her lips before he was out the door and heading back to his flat.

Kenna shook her head. She was probably overthinking again.

This wasn't any different from the lull all couples experienced once they had been together a while. The spark they had felt at first had settled into steady, comforting flames—different, but not wrong. Right?

Kenna wasn't sure. She had never been with any other man long enough to know. Only one thing was for certain, and that was that the banana dress had to go.

Huffing out a sigh, Kenna peeled the dress from her body. She should've trusted her gut instead of her best friend's words in the stall that day.

Although well-versed in matters of fashion, Gloria often forgot that different rules applied to those without her generous curves and rich dark skin, a colour Shakespeare might've described as ebony, a sweet complexion.

Gloria had loved the lively yellow of the dress. She'd wear it better too. With that in mind, Kenna discarded the dress on her bed. She'd give it to her friend the next time they had a movie night.

That still left Kenna with a problem: what to wear to dinner. She should choose something Tim would like, something elegant and understated that would make him remember why he loved her.

A queasy feeling rippled through Kenna. Tim did love her, didn't he? He must have said it at least once the whole time they'd been together, even if he had stopped replying to her messages with heart emojis.

Overthinking was going to be the death of Kenna.

She shrugged off her doubts before they dragged her down to depths she couldn't return from. She could salvage anything with focus, and she had her sights set on her relationship.

Whatever was wrong, Kenna would make it right tonight.

Padding over to her wardrobe, Kenna browsed through the garments hanging inside for something suitable. No, more than suitable. Beautiful.

She had to show Tim that she was sophisticated enough to be at his side. She had to prove that they could work, even though it sometimes felt like they were from different worlds. Even though he was firmly rooted in the 21st century while Kenna floated through history in the wake of the literature she spent her days dreaming about.

Kenna's hand brushed over a lacy fabric. She pulled the dress it belonged to out of her wardrobe. It was emerald, a dark colour that brought out the best in her complexion. Kenna pulled it over her head and returned to the mirror.

The fitted bodice suited her figure better, as did the layers of dark green chiffon that fell to her knees. Kenna smiled at the fairy staring back at her from the mirror, a creature too ethereal for this world, too dainty to be compared to a fruit or even a flower.

Perfect. Tim loved this colour on Kenna because it matched her eyes.

From where it lay on her latest scribbled manuscript, Kenna's phone lit up.

Out of habit, her mouth curved into a smile when Tim's name appeared on the screen. It turned into a frown when she selected their chat and saw that he had sent her a voice note.

He was picking her up for dinner soon. What could he have to say that couldn't wait until then?

With a sinking feeling and shaking hands, Kenna pressed the play button.

"Hello, Kenna."

She couldn't lose herself in Tim's voice, not even when he said her name, dragging out the "a" in a way nobody else did. She needed to know what he had to say.

"I'm not going to make it to dinner tonight. I'm really sorry, but something came up."

He paused. Kenna let out a relieved breath.

He was cancelling on her. No big deal. She hadn't even put her makeup on yet.

They could reschedule. Maybe this time it wouldn't take Tim weeks to find a slot for Kenna in his calendar.

On the voice note, Tim took a breath. Kenna went still.

There was more?

She swallowed her dread and listened as Tim continued.

"I know things haven't been great with us for a while, and you must know it too. It would be best for us to go our own ways. I've met someone else, Ken... and I've enjoyed our time together, but I can't pretend that this is all I want. Take care of yourself."

With that, the phone went silent.

Kenna fumbled to replay the voice note.

Maybe a glitch had cut off the rest of Tim's message. This couldn't be all he had to say to Kenna. Not after they had been together for two years.

But it was, as the voice note confirmed when Kenna played it again.

An awful, sick, choking feeling rose inside her. Her hands stopped working, and her phone clattered to the ground. She didn't care to pick it up to check if the screen was cracked, even to see if Tim had sent any texts after the voice note.

Her heart clung to the possibility that this was a misunderstanding, but her mind knew that was a futile hope.

Kenna sank onto her bed. The world lost its colour. Even the vintage wallpaper that livened up her bedroom with its pink and orange roses faded. The rumble of the traffic outside her flat disappeared into the empty silence inside her. Nothing existed, not even feelings, and especially not a future with Tim.

No, Kenna couldn't think about it.

She scooped her phone off the floor to make a call, hugging herself and rocking on her bed while she waited to connect.