Then she asked if my renewed interest had anything to do with Jake. I was so taken aback that I laughed, which only made her angrier. She accused me of wanting to move her away from her friends so I wouldn't have to confront my insecurity. I told her I had wanted to work abroad long before I met either of them, but she looked unconvinced.
The following day, she apologized for losing her temper. She said she knew the role mattered to me, but she couldn't take the leap, and she needed me to choose whether we had a future in the city where we'd built one. I remember sitting on the sofa while she cried into my shirt, feeling as though any decision I made would cause somebody pain. In the end, I told Martin that I couldn't accept the third opportunity.
That was the third refusal, and it was the one that began to feel like a loss rather than a sacrifice. I kept telling myself I had chosen love, that a good relationship required patience, and that my career would be fine because I'd always been able to work hard. Yet something in me felt smaller every time I said those words. I could no longer picture the future we were supposedly protecting without wondering who, exactly, had been asked to protect it.
Martin didn't scold me this time. He thanked me for considering the role and said that if circumstances ever changed, I should contact him rather than assuming the door was closed forever. I watched him leave my desk and felt the unmistakable embarrassment of a person who had repeatedly turned away from what he wanted. The same evening, Emily told me Jake had complimented her campaign work and encouraged her to take more risks.
"He says I spend too much time worrying about what other people expect," she said. I smiled without knowing what expression would have been more honest. Jake could urge her toward freedom without being expected to pay any price for it, while I was told that even considering a move meant I was selfish. I began to realize that what Emily called stability might simply be a life in which I absorbed the inconvenience before it reached her.
That summer, Emily and I grew skilled at living around one another. We still ate dinner together most nights, still remembered birthdays, still asked whether the other had remembered an umbrella. Yet there were evenings when we occupied the same room for three hours without sharing anything that felt personal. I told myself this was what happened when the early excitement of a relationship became the steadier business of everyday life.
Our apartment reflected the arrangement. My books filled one wall, her framed prints filled another, and the refrigerator held a calendar that I'd updated religiously because otherwise neither of us seemed to know when things needed paying. There were photographs of us on holidays, smiling at restaurants, leaning against a railing overlooking the sea. Sometimes I'd study them while waiting for the kettle to boil and wonder why two people who looked so happy together had begun measuring their words so carefully.