Naomi continued her career as a flight attendant, eventually earning a promotion to senior purser roughly a year after our divorce finalized, a professional advancement she’d apparently been working toward for years, work I understood she found genuinely meaningful independent of anything connected to our shared history.
I rebuilt my own career gradually, starting in a considerably more junior position at a different logistics firm, understanding that whatever professional standing I’d once held had been legitimately, permanently altered by my own choices.
I remember the particular humility required walking into that first interview, explaining honestly, when asked, exactly why I’d left my previous position, understanding my potential new employer deserved that transparency even though it made securing the role considerably more difficult than it might have been otherwise. My new supervisor, a straightforward man named Gregory Hess, hired me anyway, telling me plainly during my first week that he valued honesty about past mistakes more than a spotless record that might be hiding something considerably worse.
I found, somewhat unexpectedly, genuine satisfaction in that more modest position, understanding that my previous restlessness had perhaps stemmed less from the actual work itself and more from an internal dissatisfaction I’d never properly addressed before allowing it to devastate my entire personal life.
Selene and I never spoke again following that difficult conversation in our Verlaine hotel room, though I heard, secondhand through mutual former colleagues, that she’d eventually left the company entirely, pursuing a fresh start at a different firm in another city.
I don’t think about her often anymore, understanding, with considerable clarity in hindsight, that whatever connection we’d once shared had never actually represented anything beyond my own poor decision-making seeking external validation for internal dissatisfaction I should have addressed honestly from the very beginning.
