At lunch, Daniel called because he'd seen the brief message I'd sent him earlier that morning. I told him I'd left, and he was quiet for a moment before asking whether I had somewhere safe to sleep and enough money for the next few weeks. I almost started explaining why I had been right to leave, but he interrupted gently to say I didn't need to justify it to him. He wasn't asking whether Chloe was the villain or whether I could prove my case. He wanted to know whether I had remembered to eat breakfast.
I hadn't, so I bought a sandwich and sat on a bench outside the office while he stayed on the line. I told him what she had said, then what I had said, then the part about the note on the pillow. He listened without cheering or congratulating me, which made the conversation feel safer than the dramatic reactions I had feared. "You're going to miss her," he said after a while. "And missing her won't mean the decision was wrong." That sentence gave me something to hold on to when the afternoon began to feel much longer than it should have.
That evening I drove to a supermarket and bought basic groceries for the hotel refrigerator: yogurt, fruit, crackers, and bottled water. I felt faintly ridiculous doing it, like a man pretending to be on a business trip while the real reason for his absence waited in an apartment across town. I passed a display of flowers and remembered that Chloe liked white tulips even though they never lasted long in our warm kitchen. For a moment I stood looking at them, my hands full of things I didn't want to buy. I walked away without putting a bunch in the basket.
The hotel bill began to concern me by the second night, and I searched listings in neighborhoods I hadn't considered while we were together. There was a small furnished studio above a row of shops, a newer apartment near the station that cost more than I wanted to spend, and a basement unit whose photographs carefully avoided the lack of windows. I made a spreadsheet with rent, parking, utilities, and commuting time, because numbers were something I could organize when the rest of my life felt unruly. By midnight I had three possibilities and a temporary place to sleep. It wasn't a future yet, but it was enough of a beginning to let me close my laptop.
I dreamed about the anniversary trip during my second night. In the dream we were back in the boutique, laughing under the bright lights, and I was trying to tell Chloe not to buy the dress because one day it would become the last thing I saw before leaving. She couldn't hear me over the rain on the roof. I woke with an ache behind my eyes and lay still until I could separate the dream from the room around me. Then I got up, made hotel coffee that tasted like warm cardboard, and opened the apartment listings again.