That evening my brother took me to dinner. We went to a place that served enormous plates of barbecue and kept paper towels on the tables in rolls, and we ate until both of us were uncomfortable. He raised a glass of soda and said he was proud of me. I laughed and told him I had only been promoted to managing a team, not elected to run the country.
"Not talking about the job," he said.
I looked down at my plate. I knew what he meant, and it was harder to hear than praise for my work. He had seen me apologize for wanting ordinary things, had watched me cancel visits because Sarah might need something, and had learned to stop asking whether I was happy. For him, seeing me make decisions without first calculating somebody else's displeasure was not a minor improvement.
"I still miss her sometimes," I admitted.
"I know," he said. "That doesn't undo any of this."
He offered to help me choose a better couch now that I had a little extra money. I told him I liked the scratched one. He said the scratch looked like a small animal had tried to escape from inside it, and I told him that made it a conversation piece. We spent the rest of dinner arguing about whether a person could legitimately describe a damaged sofa as vintage.
The following week Sarah appeared outside my workplace. I was leaving after a late meeting, carrying my laptop bag and thinking about the errands I needed to run before dinner, when I saw her beside my car. Her arms were folded, her hair looked unwashed, and her expression changed the moment she recognized me. She tried to smile, but the effort collapsed before it reached her eyes.
I stopped a few feet away. The parking lot was still busy, and I was relieved there were other people around. "You can't come here like this," I said. "This is my workplace."
"I know," she whispered. "I just needed to see you."
I asked her to step away from the car. She did, reluctantly, and began crying before I had said anything else. She told me she had made a terrible mistake and that she wanted to apologize without excuses. For a few seconds I thought she might actually do that. Then she said she had been scared by how much she loved me and had pushed me away because it was easier than admitting she needed me.
"You told me you were going to meet someone more exciting," I said.
"I know. I know what I said. It was stupid."
"You also told me we were over. Those weren't accidental words."
She pressed her palms to her face. "I didn't know you would actually leave."
The sentence cut through everything else. She was not admitting only that she had hurt me; she was admitting she had expected the hurt to have no lasting consequence. She had counted on my staying as surely as she counted on finding a warm apartment after a night out. I looked at her and felt the old desire to make the pain stop for both of us, but it no longer felt stronger than the need to protect the life I was making.