"I know I can't make you forget what happened," she said. "I don't even know what I expect you to say. I just thought if we saw each other, maybe you'd remember that we were happy, too." I looked at her carefully and nodded.
"I do remember," I told her. "That's part of why this hurt so much. I didn't leave because the good years meant nothing. I left because the good years didn't make the other things disappear."
Her eyes filled again, and she glanced away before answering. "I've been trying to understand why I did it," she said. "I think I wanted Jason to know I wasn't still the girl he could make feel small.
And somehow I ended up making you feel that way instead." The admission was more specific than the excuses she had made in the parking lot, and I believed she was trying to understand herself. But the effort belonged to her future now, not to a repaired version of our past. I could acknowledge that without volunteering to become the reward for her insight.
"I'm glad you're thinking about it," I said. "I mean that." Chloe swallowed and asked, "Then isn't there some chance we could try again? Slowly, maybe.
No pressure, just coffee, or a walk, or something." The mention of coffee was almost painfully ironic, and she seemed to hear it as soon as the word left her mouth. She gave a small, embarrassed shake of her head. "That was a terrible choice of words," she whispered.
I might once have reached for her hand at that moment. I knew how to soothe her when she felt embarrassed, how to turn a difficult exchange into a joke, and how to offer reassurance before she asked for it. The habit rose in me and passed, leaving the quiet knowledge that she could find comfort elsewhere. "I don't think starting again would be fair to either of us," I said. "You'd be trying to prove you were different, and I'd be watching for every sign that the old pattern was coming back. That's not a life I want to build."
Chloe stared at the tabletop, where the grain of the wood ran between the coasters in pale lines. "I thought you were the safest person in my life," she said after a while. "I think I confused safe with someone who would never leave, no matter what I did." Mike shifted slightly beside me, and I could feel him preparing to give us privacy if we needed it. I shook my head almost imperceptibly, letting him know he could stay. This was a brief conversation at a public table, not an invitation to reopen our private life.
"I wanted to be someone you could count on," I said. "But counting on someone shouldn't mean you can stop considering what they feel. I made my own mistakes, too.