The last drops of wine collected at the bottom of her glass like a fat well of reddened tears, falling in reverse. Sophie sat the glass down on her kitchen windowsill and ran a hand over the pale gooseflesh on her arms.

She hated New Year’s.

The glass made a soft ticking sound as it met the sill, a tiny, accidental toast to a year she wanted no part of. Outside, fireworks were already starting, thin, reedy pops in the distance, like someone snapping bones. Sophie wrapped her arms around herself. Gooseflesh wasn’t the cold’s fault; the heating was on, the kitchen warm. It was the memories that chilled her, the ones that crept in whenever the calendar threatened to turn over.

New Year’s had a way of dragging everything up.

The promises he’d made.

The promises he’d broken harder.

She could still see the last one, his face lit by the glow of the TV, saying next year will be better, Soph, I swear. And she’d believed him, because back then she still believed people didn’t say things they didn’t mean.

The bruise on her ribs had bloomed purple the next morning.

She exhaled, slow and shaky, and pressed her fingertips to the counter to steady herself. Recovery was such a stupid word. It made it sound like she’d misplaced something and simply needed to find it again. But she hadn’t lost anything. Something had been taken from her. Bit by bit. Year after year. And now, standing alone in her kitchen with the last of the wine staining the glass like a wound, she was trying to stitch herself back together with hands that still trembled.

A firework burst outside. She flinched.

“Happy bloody New Year,” she muttered, though no one was there to hear it.