I could have stopped.
I could have looked at the man standing in the kitchen of the house we had just purchased together and asked why this mattered so much to him.
Instead, I laughed.
“Here we go.”
“You slept with him.”
“Years ago.”
“You still talk to him constantly.”
“We’re friends.”
“You call him when we fight.”
“That happened twice.”
“Four times.”
The fact that he knew the number made me angrier.
“Oh my God. Do you keep a spreadsheet?”
“No.”
“Because this is starting to sound obsessive.”
Liam stared at me.
We had been together for four years.
I knew his expressions.
I knew the tiny crease that appeared between his eyebrows when he was frustrated.
I knew how his mouth flattened when he was trying not to say something harsh.
But the face he had that afternoon was different.
Tired.
That was all.
Tired.
“I’m not asking you to erase your history,” he said.
“Then what exactly are you asking?”
“I’m asking you to stop maintaining an emotionally intimate relationship with someone you used to sleep with while telling me my discomfort is a character flaw.”
I crossed my arms.
“That is such manipulative wording.”
“How?”
“You’re making it sound like I’m cheating.”
“I didn’t say you were cheating.”
“You’re implying it.”
“No. I’m telling you what I can live with.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The ultimatum.”
Liam shook his head.
“It isn’t an ultimatum.”
“It sounds exactly like one.”
“An ultimatum would be me saying you’re not allowed to see Julian.”
“That is what you want.”
“What I want and what I have the right to demand are different things.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Very philosophical.”
He ignored that.
“You get to choose who stays in your life.”
“Thank you.”
“And I get to choose what kind of relationship I stay in.”
That irritated me even more because it sounded rehearsed.
“So now you’re threatening to leave me?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m not going to spend the next ten years having this same argument.”
I laughed again.
“Liam, if you trusted me, you should trust whoever I choose to keep in my life.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he said quietly:
“You’ve made your choice.”
I thought I had won.
That is the embarrassing truth.
I thought his calmness meant he had run out of arguments.
I thought he would shower, change clothes, host our friends, tolerate Julian, and eventually accept the new rules of our relationship.
My rules.
I did not understand that Liam was not conceding.
He was done negotiating.
He disappeared upstairs around five.
I assumed he was getting ready.
What I did not know was that he had already opened the co-ownership agreement we had signed when we bought the house.
The one I had joked about three months earlier.
We were not married.
We were engaged, but neither of us had been in a rush to set a date.
Because we were buying property together before marriage, Liam insisted on having an attorney draft a clear agreement regarding the down payment, mortgage responsibility, improvements, and what would happen if one of us wanted out.
I teased him about it.
“Nothing says romance like a dissolution clause.”
He smiled.
“Nothing says adulthood like knowing what happens if life changes.”
At the time, I signed without thinking much about it.
The agreement contained a simple provision.
Either owner could trigger a ninety-day buyout period.
The remaining partner could refinance and purchase the departing partner’s equity based on an independent appraisal.
If no buyout occurred, the house would be listed for sale.
No games.
No forcing the other person to remain tied to a mortgage indefinitely.
At 5:11 that afternoon, while I arranged flowers downstairs, Liam emailed the attorney who had drafted the agreement.
At 5:24, she replied.
At 5:41, Liam signed the formal notice electronically.
Then he packed.
Two suitcases.
Work clothes.
Personal documents.
Medication.
Laptop.