The word hung between us. Marissa stopped moving, as if stillness might reverse the last several minutes. Then she looked at the suitcase and asked whether there was somebody else, whether I'd found another woman who didn't have friends. I said there wasn't, and that I hadn't been looking for one.
Her anger gave way to urgency. She followed me through the apartment while I gathered toiletries, reminding me of vacations, concerts, holidays, and meals we'd shared. I wanted those memories to mean what they meant to her, but the examples she chose were almost all group occasions: the concert where we'd run into Khloe and Adrien, the birthday dinner she'd planned for Finn, the time we made tacos for everyone in our kitchen. When I asked if she remembered our last date that had been only the two of us, she couldn't answer immediately.
She eventually said we'd gone out for breakfast the previous month. I reminded her that breakfast had been after dropping Tasha at the airport, and we'd left halfway through because Khloe called about an argument at work. I didn't say it cruelly; I barely had the energy to say it at all. Marissa looked at me as if I were being deliberately impossible, and I understood that she was experiencing the same events through a completely different story.
"We were happy," she said, almost pleading now.
"Sometimes," I answered. "I don't want to pretend those moments weren't real. I just don't think sometimes is enough anymore."
I told her I would return for the final boxes over the weekend when she was at Tasha's pool party, if she still intended to go. She stared at me as though I'd made a cruel joke about a tragedy. I asked her to read the letter again after she had slept and pointed to the paragraph about the lease, explaining that I would continue paying my share until we arranged a lawful change. I didn't want her to believe I was trying to leave her with a financial problem as punishment.
I put my key on the kitchen counter. We'd bought a small ceramic dish for our keys on our first trip to a weekend craft fair, and mine made a bright little sound when it touched the glaze. Marissa watched the dish instead of looking at me. "You don't have to do this tonight," she whispered.
I picked up the suitcase. "I know."
For a moment she looked exactly like the woman I'd fallen for at game night, frightened and open and unsure what to say. I wanted to hug her, and I knew doing so could be understood as a promise I wasn't prepared to make. Instead I told her I was sorry we hadn't figured this out together. She didn't answer, and I walked out before I let my own sadness turn the decision into another unfinished conversation.
The building hallway smelled like somebody had burned toast on the second floor. I remember that because it was the first ordinary detail I noticed after closing the door, and for a second I couldn't understand how the world could keep being so normal. In the parking lot I sat behind the wheel without starting the engine. I had expected freedom to feel bright and triumphant, but the first thing I felt was grief.