I had my hand on the doorknob, ready to leave him for being “boring” and “absent,” when my dog did something that froze me in my tracks and shattered my heart.
It was Saturday night in the city. I looked flawless. New dress, hair blown out, and a coat of expensive lipstick I’d been saving for a special occasion. I had been waiting all week for a date night. Meanwhile, my phone was lighting up every thirty seconds with notifications. My friends were already downtown, posting stories of towering cocktails, thumping bass, and their fun, energetic boyfriends who were the life of the party.
At 9:45 PM, the lock finally turned.
Mark walked in. There were no flowers. There was no compliment on my dress. Just a cloud of drywall dust that drifted off his clothes when he moved. He smelled like sawdust and stale coffee. He didn’t have the energy of a man excited to see his girlfriend; he had the heavy, slow walk of a man who had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders for fourteen hours straight.
“I’m so sorry, babe,” he whispered, his voice cracking from dehydration. “Traffic was a nightmare. Let me just sit for one second to catch my breath, then I’ll shower. We’ll go. I promise.”
He sat on the edge of the ottoman to pull off his heavy work boots… and he never got back up.
Two minutes later, I heard the soft, rhythmic breathing of deep sleep. Mark had passed out half-dressed, one steel-toe boot off, the other still on his foot, his head hanging uncomfortably low.
I felt a wave of hot rage. Then, profound embarrassment. I thought: I got dressed up for this? Again? I’m twenty-six. I should be dancing right now, not watching a man who acts like he’s sixty.
I grabbed my purse. I was done. I wasn’t just going out; I was going to leave.
“Riggs, let’s go,” I snapped, grabbing the leash from the hook.
Riggs, our eighty-pound Boxer mix, usually loses his mind at the sound of the leash. He lives for walks. But tonight, he didn’t move toward the door.
He walked over to Mark.
Riggs sat down heavily next to Mark’s dusty legs. He let out a low whine and rested his big, blocky head gently on Mark’s dirty knee. When I tugged the leash, saying, “Come on, Riggs, leave him alone,” the dog didn’t budge. He looked at me with sad, brown eyes, and then pressed his body tighter against Mark’s shins, as if he were a living shield.
It was the first time my dog had ever chosen someone else over me.
I was furious. I marched over to pull Riggs away, but my foot kicked Mark’s heavy tool bag that he’d dropped by the chair. It tipped over, spilling a few screwdrivers and a crumbled piece of paper onto the floor.
I bent down to shove it all back in, but the paper caught my eye. It wasn’t a receipt. It was a printed listing from a real estate website.
It was a picture of a modest house about forty minutes outside the city. It wasn’t a mansion. It was old. But it had a massive, fenced-in backyard.
In the margins, in Mark’s messy handwriting, he had done the math. Overtime pay x 4 weekends = Down payment. Fence cost = 2 side jobs. And circled in red at the bottom: “Riggs can finally run here.”
The air left my lungs.
I looked at Mark’s hands. They were resting on his lap, twitching slightly in his sleep. They were rough. The knuckles were swollen. There were small cuts healing over older cuts. His skin was dry and cracked from the chemicals and the cold wind.
Suddenly, the “fun” boyfriends on my Instagram feed didn’t look fun anymore. They looked cheap.
While my friends’ partners were blowing their entire paychecks on bottle service to look rich for three hours on a Saturday, Mark was destroying his body to actually build us a future. He wasn’t ignoring me; he was sacrificing his present comfort to ensure I wouldn’t have to worry about rent in five years. He wasn’t “boring.” He was exhausted from building a kingdom for me and a playground for our dog.
My anger vanished, replaced by a lump in my throat so big it hurt to swallow.
Riggs knew. Dogs always know. He didn’t see a dirty, tired man. He saw a hero who was trading his life force for a few hundred square feet of grass.
I didn’t wake him up. I took off my heels and left them by the door. I gently pulled off Mark’s other boot. I went to the closet, got the heavy quilt, and draped it over him.
Then, I wiped off my expensive lipstick, sat on the floor, and leaned my head against his leg, right next to Riggs. The three of us sat there in the quiet of the apartment. It wasn’t a party. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was real.
The Brutal Truth:
A boy will tell you he loves you while spending his money on things that fade by morning. A man will show you he loves you by doing the things that no one else wants to do, so you can have the things no one else has.
Don’t chase the guy who has the energy to be at every club. Cherish the man who comes home with dirt under his fingernails and drywall in his hair. He’s too tired to party because he’s too busy building you a home.
Real love isn’t found in the noise. It’s found in the quiet sacrifices.
PART 2 — “I READ YOUR POST.”
If you read Part 1, you know how that Saturday night ended: me barefoot on the floor, my expensive lipstick wiped off, leaning against Mark’s leg while Riggs pressed himself against Mark like a living shield.
I thought that moment fixed everything.
I thought love, once recognized, turns tidy. Like a room after you finally pick up the mess.
I didn’t know that the real mess was just waking up.
The next morning, sunlight found every flaw in our apartment.
The half-zipped tool bag on the floor. The dust on Mark’s jacket. The single steel-toe boot still sitting where it had fallen like a tired punctuation mark at the end of his night.
Riggs lifted his head first. He blinked, then immediately looked at Mark like, He’s still here. Good.
Mark woke up slower.
At first he didn’t move. Just breathed, heavy and deep, like someone coming up from underwater. Then his eyes opened and he stared straight ahead, confused, as if he’d fallen asleep in one life and woke up in another.
He realized he was still dressed.
He realized he was on the ottoman.
He realized there was a quilt draped over him—our quilt, the heavy one we only used when the heat went out last winter.
And then he looked down.
At me.
At Riggs.
His face did something I wasn’t ready for.
Not gratitude.
Not softness.
Embarrassment.
His cheeks flushed like he’d been caught doing something shameful.
“Babe,” he rasped, sitting up too fast. He rubbed his eyes and looked at my bare feet like they were evidence. “Oh my God. I— I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to pass out like that.”
He looked around, frantic, like he expected a judge to step out of the kitchen and read him a sentence.
“I ruined it,” he said. “I ruined date night again.”
I reached for his hand. “You didn’t ruin anything.”
He pulled his hand back, not mean—just automatic.
Like a man trained by disappointment.
“I did,” he insisted. “You got dressed up. You were excited. And I came home like a dead battery.”
Riggs leaned forward and pressed his nose into Mark’s thigh like, Stop talking like that.
Mark swallowed hard, like he might cry, but men like Mark don’t cry in the morning. They push it down with coffee and leave for work early.
I stood up and said, “Stay. Just today. Call in. Rest.”
He laughed—one sharp, humorless sound. “Call in? Babe, I’m not… I’m not that guy.”
And there it was.
Not “I can’t.”
Not “I don’t want to.”
I’m not that guy.
Like rest is a personality type other people get to have.
Like sleep is for men whose hands don’t crack in winter.
I walked to the kitchen and started making breakfast anyway. Eggs. Toast. Anything that felt normal.
He followed, moving stiffly. He opened the fridge and stared like he didn’t recognize the inside of it. He took a sip of water from the sink like someone who forgot water existed.
“I saw the paper,” I said gently, not looking at him. “The house listing.”
Silence.
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t smile. He didn’t say, Yeah, I’m doing it for us.
His jaw tightened.
He looked at the floor like it personally offended him.
“It was stupid,” he said.
My head snapped up. “What?”
“It was stupid,” he repeated, louder now, like he needed to kill the dream before it killed him. “It’s just something I look at when I’m waiting in the truck. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“That’s not true.”
He exhaled through his nose. “It’s a fantasy. You deserve more than a forty-minute commute and an old house.”
The words hit me like cold water.
Because in Part 1, I thought I’d found the beautiful truth.
In Part 2, I was staring at the other truth:
He didn’t think he was enough.
Not for me.
Not for the life I kept scrolling past on my phone.
He grabbed his keys like the conversation was a fire alarm.
“Mark,” I said, stepping in front of him. “Look at me.”
He tried to smile. It came out crooked.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
Riggs whined.
Mark scratched his head like it itched from the inside. “I’m gonna be late.”
Then he looked at me—finally, fully—and I saw something in his eyes that scared me.
Not anger.
Not boredom.
Fear.
Fear that I was one argument away from leaving.
Fear that if he stopped moving, everything would collapse.
He leaned down, kissed my forehead like an apology, and whispered, “I’ll make it up to you.”
Then he left.
The door clicked.
And in the quiet, Riggs didn’t follow me.
He stayed by the door for a full minute, listening.
Waiting.
Like he didn’t trust the world to keep Mark safe.
By noon, my phone was buzzing.
My friends were sending messages like confetti:
Brunch?
We’re going to that new place.
Bring the hot boyfriend.
Then: lol sorry. bring the tired one.
I stared at that last message until my throat tightened.
Because it wasn’t just a joke.
It was a worldview.
A world where exhaustion is unattractive.
Where sacrifice is invisible.
Where the men who build things don’t photograph well.
I didn’t respond.
I put on a hoodie and took Riggs outside.
The city smelled like garbage trucks and ambition.
On the sidewalk, couples strutted past with their matching outfits and their matching coffees, speaking in a tone that said, We’re winning.
Riggs walked close to my leg, scanning everything. He was calm, but I could feel his attention like a quiet electricity.
I passed a man on a stoop, dozing with his head back, lunch pail beside him. Dust on his boots. Sun on his face.
Riggs slowed down.
He looked at him.
Then looked at me like, That one is like Mark.
My chest tightened again.
Dogs don’t care about charisma.
They care about character.
They care about the body language of a person who shows up.
When I got back upstairs, I did the thing I hadn’t done in months.
I opened Mark’s tool bag.
Not to snoop.
To understand.
Inside were the usual things: tape measure, gloves, a water bottle that looked like it had been run over, receipts crumpled into hard little fists.
Then I found something tucked into the side pocket.
A folded paper.
Not the house listing this time.
A schedule.
Extra shifts.
Weekends.
The kind of hours that aren’t hours—they’re your life, cut into pieces and handed over to someone else.
At the bottom, in his messy handwriting, was another note:
“If I can just get ahead, she won’t have to worry.”
My eyes burned.
Because I wasn’t worried about rent in five years.
I was worried about the fact that he was trying to buy safety with his spine.
I was worried about the way he drank water like it was optional.
I was worried about the way he said, I’m not that guy, when I told him to rest—like resting was a luxury for men who don’t love hard enough.
I sat on the floor with Riggs and stared at the paper until it blurred.
Then I did something I didn’t plan to do.
Something impulsive.
Something that would become the most commented-on thing I ever said.
I opened my phone.
I opened the app where everyone pretends their life is perfect.
And I wrote.
I didn’t name names.
I didn’t post a photo.
I just wrote the truth the way it hit me.
“Last night I almost left my boyfriend because he fell asleep in his work boots. My dog stopped me. I found a house listing in his tool bag—he’d done the math to build us a backyard. He’s not boring. He’s exhausted. Some people want a ‘fun’ boyfriend. Some people want a partner who comes home covered in dust because he’s trying to build a future that doesn’t fall apart.”
Then I added a line I knew would land like a match in gasoline:
“If your idea of love requires constant entertainment, you don’t want a relationship—you want an audience.”
I hit post.
And I didn’t think about it again for ten minutes.
Then the notifications started.
At first it was friends.
Then strangers.
Then people with no profile picture and way too much confidence.
My phone vibrated so hard on the counter it looked like it was trying to crawl away.
This is so sweet.
This is the bare minimum.
Congrats, you discovered a working man.
You’re romanticizing burnout.
This is toxic.
This is beautiful.
This is pick-me propaganda.
This is why women settle.
This is why men stop trying.
I stared at the screen.
My heart was pounding.
Because I’d asked for nothing.
I’d offered nothing.
I’d simply described one night in my apartment.
And it had lit a fire under everyone’s opinion about love.
By three p.m., the post had been shared hundreds of times.
By four p.m., thousands.
By five p.m., someone had screenshotted it and posted it somewhere else with a caption like I was a villain in a story they wanted to win.
“Ladies, don’t fall for this.”
“Men, stop killing yourselves for women who will still complain.”
“Women are ungrateful.”
“Men are emotionally absent.”
The comments weren’t just comments.
They were battle flags.
And suddenly my living room—my quiet little Saturday—was a public debate about gender and work and what love should look like.
Riggs sat beside me, staring at my vibrating phone like it was a threat.
And deep down, I knew the real problem:
Mark was going to see it.
At 6:12 p.m., my phone rang.
A number I didn’t recognize.
My stomach dropped anyway.
I answered.
A woman’s voice, brisk and tired: “Is this… is this Mark’s emergency contact?”
My mouth went dry. “Yes. What—what happened?”
There was a pause, like she was choosing words that wouldn’t explode me.
“He got dizzy on site. Almost fell. One of the guys caught him. We’re— we’re taking him to get checked out. He didn’t want to go, but… he looked bad.”
I couldn’t breathe.
I grabbed my keys.
I grabbed Riggs’s leash out of habit, then stopped—because I didn’t know where I was going and dogs don’t belong in places with bright lights and quiet urgency.
Riggs watched me, ears up, reading my panic like a book.
“Stay,” I whispered. “Please.”
He whined once, low.
Like, Bring me.
I swallowed hard and shut the door.
The elevator felt too slow.
Every floor it passed felt personal.
When I saw Mark, he was sitting in a chair, still in his work clothes, still dusty, with a paper cup of water in his hand like they had to remind him to drink.
His face looked gray.
Not “tired gray.”
Overdrawn gray.
He looked up when I came in, and his expression was pure shame.
Not relief.
Not gratitude.
Shame.
“I’m fine,” he said immediately, like a reflex.
I walked up to him and crouched down so I was at eye level. “You’re not fine.”
He tried to laugh. It turned into a cough.
“Babe,” he said, quieter now, “I’m okay. It was just—heat. I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
My eyes stung. “Stop saying that.”
He blinked at me, confused.
I realized something in that moment that made me feel sick:
Mark wasn’t just working hard.
Mark was competing with an invisible standard.
One he’d built in his head from all the little moments I didn’t realize mattered.
Every time I sighed when he fell asleep early.
Every time I scrolled next to him and smiled at someone else’s “perfect” life.
Every time I said “We never do anything.”
Every joke my friends made.
Every time he came home empty-handed and I didn’t hide my disappointment well enough.
He was trying to outrun my dissatisfaction.
He was trying to buy silence.
He was trying to earn love like it was a wage.
A person in a uniform came by, said a few calm words about hydration and rest and “take it easy.”
Mark nodded like he was being told the weather.
Then the person left, and it was just us again.
Mark stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I felt something crack inside me.
“How is this your fault?” I said, and my voice shook. “How is you almost collapsing your fault?”
He swallowed. “Because I can’t… I can’t give you what you want. I’m always tired. I’m always… absent.”
He said my words back to me.
The exact ones I’d used in fights.
And it hit me:
My biggest complaint wasn’t that he didn’t love me.
My biggest complaint was that he didn’t perform love the way the world told me love should look.
No flowers.
No surprise plans.
No high-energy date nights.
Just a man dragging himself home and still trying to build something steady.
I reached for his hand again.
This time, he didn’t pull away.
But his palm was so rough it felt like sandpaper.
And his fingers trembled, just slightly, like his body was still catching up to itself.
“I posted something,” I said quietly.
His eyes lifted. “What?”
I hesitated. “About last night. About you. About the house listing.”
His face changed.
Not into anger exactly.
Into something colder.
A wounded pride.
“You posted about me?” he said.
“I didn’t use your name,” I rushed. “I didn’t show your face. I—”
He let out a breath like he’d been punched.
“That’s not the point,” he said. “It was ours. That was… private.”
My throat tightened. “I know. I wasn’t trying to expose you. I was trying to… honor you.”
He stared at me, exhausted and hurt and trying to stay calm.
“You know what it feels like,” he said slowly, “to work until your body hates you… and then see your life turned into… content?”
The word stung.
Content.
Like our relationship was something people consume between ads.
I felt my cheeks burn. “I’m sorry.”
He looked away. “I don’t want strangers talking about me.”
I nodded, tears rising. “I know. I messed up.”
Silence hung between us like a heavy curtain.
Then he whispered something that shattered me more than any comment section ever could:
“I just wanted to be enough.”
I covered my mouth.
Because the truth was—he already was.
But I hadn’t made him feel it.
Not consistently.
Not clearly.
Not in a way that survived the noise.
That night, we got home and Riggs nearly tackled Mark with joy.
Mark sank down on the couch and let Riggs climb halfway into his lap, burying his face into Mark’s chest like he was checking to make sure Mark was still alive.
Mark’s hand found Riggs’s head automatically, rubbing behind his ears.
And for the first time in months, Mark just… sat there.
No keys in his hand.
No “I should.”
No “I have to.”
Just breathing.
I sat across from him like a person in a courtroom, waiting for a verdict.
Finally, Mark said, “Can you take it down?”
My stomach dropped. “Yes.”
I reached for my phone.
He stopped me with a small gesture. “Not because you’re wrong,” he said. “But because… I don’t want to be a lesson.”
I nodded, tears falling. “Okay.”
I deleted it.
Just like that.
And even though the post was gone, I knew the argument it started would live on in people’s heads—because it wasn’t really about me.
It was about something we don’t say out loud enough:
We’re all exhausted. And we’re still judging each other for how we survive it.
The next week, my friends kept bringing it up.
Not the health scare.
Not the way Mark looked in that chair, gray and stubborn.
The post.
“You went viral,” one friend said, laughing like it was a prize. “You’re basically famous now.”
Another said, “I can’t believe you deleted it. People were eating it up.”
I stirred my drink with a plastic straw, watching the ice spin.
They were dressed perfectly. Hair flawless. Nails done. Smiling like their lives were sponsored.
Their boyfriends showed up late, loud, wearing cologne and confidence.
One of them slapped a credit card on the table like it was a personality.
Everyone cheered.
And I felt… nothing.
Because I kept seeing Mark’s hands.
The cracked skin.
The swollen knuckles.
The quiet way he tried to be enough without asking anyone to applaud.
My friend leaned in. “You know what people were saying, right? That you’re basically telling women to settle.”
I looked up. “That’s not what I said.”
“You implied it,” she insisted. “Like, ‘Oh look, he works. He deserves a medal.’”
I took a slow breath. “I’m not giving him a medal. I’m acknowledging reality.”
She rolled her eyes. “Reality is men use work as an excuse to avoid emotional labor.”
The phrase landed like a rehearsed line.
Maybe it was true for some people.
But I knew Mark.
Mark wasn’t avoiding love.
Mark was drowning in responsibility.
Another friend chimed in, “Also, the ‘boy vs man’ thing? That’s so… old school. People were calling it toxic.”
My chest tightened.
Because here’s the controversial truth nobody wants to hold in both hands:
Yes, women deserve present partners.
And also—
Men deserve rest.
And also—
No one should have to destroy themselves to be lovable.
We want a world where love is soft, but we keep rewarding performance.
We want “provider energy,” but we mock the men who come home tired.
We say “be vulnerable,” then recoil when vulnerability looks like exhaustion instead of poetry.
We say “show up,” then complain when showing up isn’t glamorous.
My friend smirked. “So you’re gonna be one of those girls who brags about her man working himself to death?”
The words hit a nerve.
Because that was the line in the sand.
That was the place where the viral message actually lived.
I set my drink down.
“No,” I said, steady now. “I’m gonna be the woman who stops pretending love is supposed to look like a highlight reel.”
They stared.
One of the boyfriends laughed like I’d said something cute.
I stood up, grabbed my bag, and left.
And for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was missing a party.
I felt like I was escaping a lie.
That night, I came home with a plan.
Not a speech.
Not a dramatic apology.
A plan.
Mark was sitting at the table, eating something simple, still looking tired but more present than he’d been in weeks.
Riggs lay on the floor near his feet like a guard dog for his heart.
I sat down across from Mark and slid a piece of paper toward him.
He frowned. “What’s this?”
“It’s my schedule,” I said quietly. “I picked up extra hours. Not forever. Just… for a while.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want you carrying this alone,” I said.
He stared at the paper like it was written in another language.
“I’m supposed to take care of us,” he said, and there it was again—I’m not that guy.
I leaned forward. “No. We’re supposed to take care of us.”
He swallowed. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to—”
“I don’t have to,” I cut in softly. “I want to. There’s a difference.”
Mark’s jaw worked like he was chewing emotion.
He looked down at his hands.
Then he whispered, “I’m scared.”
My throat tightened. “Of what?”
He didn’t look up. “Of stopping. Of resting. Of… if I stop moving, you’ll realize you don’t want this life.”
I reached across the table and put my hand over his rough knuckles.
“Mark,” I said, “I almost left because I thought love was noise. I was wrong. But I’m not going to replace one mistake with another.”
He blinked, confused.
I took a shaky breath. “I’m not going to worship your exhaustion like it’s romantic. I’m not going to call it ‘proof’ you love me. I don’t want you dying for a backyard.”
His eyes flickered.
I continued, voice steady now. “I want you alive in it.”
Mark’s throat bobbed.
Riggs thumped his tail once, like he approved.
Two weekends later, we drove out to see the house.
Not because we were ready.
Not because the math magically solved itself.
But because I needed to see if the dream was real—or just a paper shield Mark held up against fear.
The drive was quiet.
Mark kept both hands on the wheel like he was gripping control itself.
I watched the city fade behind us.
The buildings got shorter.
The air changed.
We pulled up in front of the modest place from the listing.
Old siding. Slightly uneven steps. A yard that looked like it hadn’t been loved properly in a while.
Nothing glamorous.
Nothing that would impress my friends.
Then we walked around back.
And there it was.
The backyard.
Big.
Fenced.
Green.
A stretch of space that felt like a promise.
Mark stood still, like he was afraid to step into it.
I unclipped Riggs’s leash.
Riggs froze for half a second, like he didn’t trust the universe.
Then he exploded into motion.
He ran.
Not a jog. Not a polite little loop.
A full sprint.
His body stretched out like joy had physical form.
He tore across the grass, ears back, mouth open, looking like a dog in a commercial—except real.
Except imperfect.
Except ours.
Mark’s face broke.
Not into a smile.
Into something rawer.
He turned his head away fast like he didn’t want me to see.
But I saw.
A tear that slipped down like it had been waiting a long time.
“I wanted this for him,” Mark whispered.
I stepped closer. “I know.”
He nodded, voice cracking. “And for you.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Then we do it together.”
Mark looked at me, eyes red, and for the first time—truly—for the first time—
He didn’t look like a man trying to be enough.
He looked like a man letting himself be loved.
That night, back in our apartment, we didn’t go out.
We didn’t “make up for lost time.”
We didn’t post pictures.
We ate cheap takeout from a plain container and watched Riggs sleep like he’d just lived his best day.
Mark leaned back on the couch, exhausted.
But not defeated.
He looked at me and said, quietly, “I hate that people think being tired is a character flaw.”
I swallowed. “Me too.”
He rubbed his face. “I hate that I felt like I had to prove something.”
I nodded, tears hot again. “Me too.”
Then he said something that felt like the real ending to Part 2—the line that would make people argue in the comments like their identity depended on it:
“I don’t want to be a ‘good man’ if it means I’m a broken one.”
I took his hand. “Then don’t.”
The Brutal Truth (Part 2):
We’ve created a love culture that makes everyone defensive.
- We tell women: Don’t settle.
- We tell men: Provide.
- And then we act shocked when relationships feel like a performance review.
Some people will read Part 1 and cheer because it praises a hardworking man.
Some people will read it and rage because it sounds like a woman should accept crumbs.
Here’s what both sides miss:
Hard work isn’t romance. It’s reality.
And exhaustion isn’t love. It’s a warning sign.
If your relationship only “feels right” when it looks good online, it’s not love—it’s branding.
But if your relationship depends on one person sacrificing themselves until they disappear, that’s not love either.
Real love is not “a boy vs a man.”
Real love is two adults looking at the same hard world and saying:
“We’re not going to let it turn us into strangers.”
Some people want a partner who’s always entertaining.
Some people want a partner who’s always providing.
But the healthiest kind of love—the kind that lasts when the rent rises, when the hours get cut, when life gets heavy—
is the kind where nobody has to collapse in their work boots to be considered worthy.
And if that sentence makes people argue?
Good.
Because maybe the thing we’re all actually fighting about isn’t men or women.
Maybe we’re fighting about the fact that we’ve normalized burnout so deeply…
we mistake it for devotion.
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This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment and inspirational purposes. While it may draw on real-world themes, all characters, names, and events are imagined. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidenta