I took one personal day from work. My manager, Olivia Grant, didn't ask questions beyond whether I needed more time. She'd worked with me for three years and understood that my default answer to any problem was to say I could handle it. When she offered to shift a deadline, I almost refused out of habit. Then I remembered what Mike had told me about treating my feelings as an inconvenience and said, "That would help, actually."
For the first week, I was not the detached hero I might sound like when I describe the ending. I was a wreck in quiet, embarrassing ways. I'd wake in the dark and reach across the mattress for someone who wasn't there. I'd hear footsteps outside the apartment and momentarily think Zoe was coming home. Once I bought the cereal she liked at the grocery store and didn't realize what I'd done until I got to the checkout. I stood there holding the box, wondering whether to put it back, while the cashier waited with an expression of patient confusion.
I cried, too. Not in front of Zoe and not in the neat dramatic moment when a movie would have placed it, but on an ordinary Tuesday after finding a note she'd left in the pocket of a winter coat.
It was from the year we'd moved in, scribbled on the back of a receipt: "Don't forget you're my favorite person. Love you." The handwriting was unmistakably hers, and I believed she'd meant it when she wrote it. That was the part that undid me. I couldn't reconcile the woman who wrote the note with the woman who told me our life was a plateau.
I sat on the bedroom floor until the crying stopped. Then I folded the note, put it in a box with the photographs, and washed my face. I didn't want to destroy every good memory because the ending had been terrible. Those years happened. Some of the happiness was real. The betrayal was real, too, and I was learning that holding both truths at once was more painful than turning either of us into a simple character.
People have strong opinions about what someone ought to do after being cheated on. Some friends wanted me to go out and get drunk. Others suggested dating immediately, finding someone new before Zoe could think she'd won. One person offered to send screenshots of what she was posting from Vegas, as if each new photograph would help me measure my progress. I thanked them for caring and declined.
Mike was the exception. He came over one Saturday with groceries and asked whether I wanted company or wanted him to leave the food and go. That question nearly made me cry again because it left the decision with me. I asked him to stay. We watched a terrible action movie, made sandwiches, and talked about everything except Zoe for almost three hours. Then, as he was leaving, I told him I still loved her and hated myself for it.