"I'm not coming back," I said. "And I need you to stop showing up at my work and my home."
She lowered her hands. "So that's it? Four years, and you won't even try?"
I reminded her of the dinners, the conversations I had asked for, and the way I had tried to discuss our distance long before the night she left. I told her she had received more chances than either of us could count, but that chances were not something I could keep supplying after she ended the relationship. She began shaking her head, first slowly and then with anger.
"You don't understand what I've been going through," she said.
"I understand that you're hurting. I don't understand why you think hurting means I have to stop protecting myself."
She dropped into a crouch beside the curb, her face in her hands. I did not enjoy seeing her like that, and I did not believe humiliating her would prove anything. I suggested she call someone she trusted and offered to contact a friend if she needed help getting home, but she shook her head and asked me to hold her. When I told her I could not, she looked up with disbelief.
"You used to say you'd always be there," she whispered.
"I believed we were there for each other," I said. "That is not the same promise."
A coworker came out of the building and slowed when he saw us. I asked whether he could wait nearby while I finished the conversation, and he agreed without questioning me. Sarah noticed him and stood abruptly, wiping her face with the sleeve of her jacket. The presence of another person seemed to embarrass her, and for a moment I remembered all the times she had accused me of trying to make her look bad merely by asking a question in public.
I told her again that she needed to leave and not return to my workplace. She said she loved me, and I replied that whatever she felt, I could not build a relationship from declarations that appeared only when I was pulling away. She began calling my name as I walked to my car, but I did not turn back. I drove home with both hands tight on the wheel.
I did not feel the dramatic freedom I had expected from refusing her. I felt exhausted, relieved, and ashamed that a part of me still wanted to stop the car and check on her. I sat in the parking space outside my apartment for several minutes before going upstairs. Then I called my brother, told him what had happened, and asked him to stay on the phone while I made dinner.