I read the first paragraph, then stopped. A part of me wanted to know whether the rest contained the perfect apology I had once imagined hearing. Another part understood that I no longer needed it to decide how I felt about what had happened. I did not answer, and after a few days I deleted the email from my inbox.
That decision was not intended to punish her. If she was genuinely changing, my attention was not a prerequisite for that change, and she did not need a response from me to make an apology sincere. I had spent too long thinking that the end of our relationship depended on both of us agreeing about why it ended. It did not. Sometimes people leave with different versions of the past, and the future still goes on.
Near the end of the sixth month, my brother invited me to a small gathering at his place. I almost declined because I had spent a long week preparing for a presentation, but he promised there would be food and no speeches about my promotion. Several friends came, along with a few people I did not know. One of them was a graphic designer named Maya, who brought a lemon cake in a cardboard box and nearly dropped it when my brother's dog tried to greet her.
I caught the box before it hit the floor. She laughed, thanked me, and said that saving dessert was an excellent first impression. I told her I had years of experience preventing domestic disasters, which sounded like a joke until I heard myself say it. She asked what sort of disasters, and I told her mostly spilled coffee and furniture assembled without instructions.
Maya had a way of listening that made conversation feel less like performing and more like discovering something together. She asked about my work and seemed interested when I explained the parts that were usually difficult to make interesting. When I mentioned painting, she wanted to know what I liked to paint, not whether I had sold anything or planned to turn it into a business. I found myself talking about light on buildings and the absurd watercolor tree my brother had framed.
"I need to see this tree," she said.
"It's a terrible tree," I warned.
"Then it should be easy to find in the living room."
She laughed at my jokes, including ones that deserved only polite silence, and told a story about accidentally sending an unfinished design to a client whose logo looked like a pair of upside-down shoes. I laughed so hard that I had to put down my plate. Later, when the gathering began to thin out, she asked whether I wanted to get coffee sometime. I said yes before I could find a reason to hesitate.