She started crying harder. She said she was going to get help, find another job, and learn how to stop hurting people when she was unhappy. I wanted those things for her too. But when she added that she could do them if I gave her one more chance, I understood that she was still attaching her recovery to my willingness to return.
"You need to do those things because you need them," I said. "Not because I'm offering a place to come back to."
"How can you be so cold?" she asked.
I did not answer immediately. The accusation would have sent me scrambling for reassurance a month earlier, but now I could see the pattern from a little farther away. I had told her I was not returning, and she was treating the boundary itself as cruelty. I asked whether she could accept my decision without trying to make me feel guilty for it.
Sarah shook her head. "You don't understand. My life is falling apart. Derek doesn't want me, my friends won't answer, my parents are furious, and I've been sleeping in my car. You were the one person I could count on."
"And I was the person you laughed at when you said we were over," I replied.
Her expression changed. "You're still holding on to that one sentence."
"It wasn't one sentence," I said. "It was months of ignoring me, making me feel foolish for asking questions, and telling me I was too much whenever I needed something. That night was just the first time you admitted what you were doing."
She pressed her lips together and stared at the hallway carpet. Then she told me I was exaggerating, that I had not been easy to live with either, and that I had always acted as though she owed me gratitude for ordinary things. There were pieces of criticism in that which I could understand. Nobody wants to live under a running account of every favor, and perhaps I had let my sacrifices become a silent argument she could never win.
I told her I was willing to take responsibility for my part in our unhealthy relationship. I was not willing to pretend that the need for mutual change meant I should accept her version of the breakup. She looked angry that I could make the distinction. "You keep talking like this is a court case," she said. "Like somebody has to be guilty."
"Somebody doesn't have to be guilty for us to be finished," I replied. "But we are finished."
For a moment she said nothing. Then she gave a small, bitter laugh and told me I was probably right about everything. She said she had made terrible choices and regretted them, but as she spoke her voice grew harder.
"You want the truth?" she said. "I regret that Derek was a loser. I regret that my friends disappeared when I needed them. I regret that I lost my job and my apartment."
I waited. She looked at me as though she expected me to react to each confession with shock. When I did not, she continued. "Maybe I don't regret wanting something different. Maybe I regret that you left before I could figure out whether different was better."