"Ethan, what have you done?" Her voice was breathless and sharp.
"I've cancelled the wedding. I told you."
"You called my parents. You sent emails to everybody. You told Nora. Do you understand how humiliating this is?"
I closed my eyes. "Yes, Lauren. I understand humiliation very well tonight."
"You went behind my back."
"I wasn't going behind your back. I was telling the people affected by my decision that I wasn't getting married. You went to Alex after telling me exactly what you intended to do."
"Nothing happened yet," she said quickly. "We were talking. You could have waited until morning."
"You told me you were going to sleep with him. You told me my objections would make me insecure. Whether you changed your mind after I left doesn't change what happened in our living room."
"You said okay."
"I said I heard you. I didn't promise to marry you afterward. When I asked you to confirm your plan, you confirmed it in writing."
She was silent for several seconds. In the background I heard a door shut and a muffled voice, but I could not tell whose it was. Then she lowered her voice. "Alex told me he and Nora were separating. I didn't know they were still together like that."
I felt tired beyond anger. "You knew he had a wife. You didn't know exactly what he was telling her. I didn't know you were making plans with him. There's enough dishonesty here without arguing over which version hurt someone most."
"Ethan, I'm coming home."
"Don't come to Caleb's. I need space."
"Please. Tomorrow is supposed to be our wedding. We can fix this."
"I can't fix it tonight, and there won't be a wedding tomorrow."
The word won't seemed to land differently from the word cancelled. She began crying, not the soft tears I remembered from happy moments, but the rough, disbelieving sound of someone whose plans had stopped obeying her. I wanted to comfort her. The instinct was so familiar that for a moment my body leaned forward as though I could reach across the distance. But comforting her would have required me to step immediately back into the role she had assigned me, the person whose feelings would be postponed until hers became manageable.
"I love you," she said.
"I loved the future we were planning," I replied. "I don't know how to stand inside it anymore."
"Don't say that."
"I'm going to hang up now. Please call your parents. They're worried about you."
I ended the call before we could begin circling the same arguments again. My hands shook then, finally, as though the whole evening had been waiting for permission to enter my body. I put the phone on the bed and covered my face. For the first time since Lauren spoke in our living room, I cried. It was not cinematic or tidy. It was the exhausted, embarrassing kind of crying that leaves your chest aching and your nose blocked, and it went on long enough that I lost track of time.