"Both. Different days."
Monica nodded.
That was another thing I had learned: missing someone did not mean you had made the wrong decision by leaving them.
Memory was not a referendum.
Some evenings, I missed Ryan's laugh from the early years. I missed Sunday mornings before phones became more interesting than conversation. I missed the way he used to reach for my hand in crowded places without looking.
I did not miss wondering whether every business trip was real.
I did not miss being told my job made me selfish.
I did not miss shrinking questions before I asked them because I knew he would call them criticism.
Both sets of memories were true.
The healthier life was the one that allowed both without confusing nostalgia for instruction.
Ryan and I had almost no direct contact after the decree.
The remaining issues were administrative: tax documents, one final retirement transfer, a piece of mail that went to the old house and had to be forwarded. We communicated through email and kept the messages brief.
Then, fourteen months after Cancun, he asked whether I would meet him for coffee.
The request surprised me.
My first reaction was no.
My second was curiosity.
Maya asked what I hoped to gain.
"I don't know."
"Then decide what you will not offer."
That was useful.
I agreed to thirty minutes in a public cafe on a Saturday afternoon.
Ryan arrived early.
He looked different.
Not dramatically. He had not transformed into a monk or lost twenty years from his face. He simply seemed less polished around the edges. No expensive watch. No sport coat. Plain gray shirt, jeans, coffee already in front of him.
I sat across from him.
"Hi."
"Hi."
For several seconds, neither of us knew what to do with the fact that we had once shared a bed and now needed conversational opening lines.
Finally Ryan said, "Thank you for coming."
"You said you wanted to say something."
He nodded.
"I owe you an apology that isn't attached to asking you to stay."
That got my attention.
He looked down at his coffee.
"Every apology I gave you before was a negotiation. I was saying sorry because I wanted something back."
"The marriage. The house. My reputation. You. I didn't understand the difference then."
I said nothing.
He continued.
"I have been seeing Helen alone."
I had not known that.