For several days I kept turning toward an empty part of the room as though expecting Chloe to comment on something. I would find a ridiculous video and almost send it to her, or hear a song on the radio and remember a time she had sung it badly while cooking. Once I reached for my phone to tell her that a restaurant we liked had closed, a piece of news neither of us could do anything about but that would once have prompted a ten-minute exchange. I stopped halfway through typing and put the phone down. The urge to tell her things was not evidence that the relationship should continue; it was evidence that for three years I had practiced telling her things.
I tried not to turn my new apartment into a shrine to my independence. I bought dishes because I needed to eat, not because choosing them without compromise proved a point. I cleaned the bathroom because it was dirty, not because I wanted to congratulate myself for finally living without criticism. I watered a small plant Priya gave me on my first Friday in the studio, and I forgot to water it once the following week. None of these ordinary actions required an audience, which was precisely what made them begin to feel like my own.
Five days after I left, curiosity got the better of me. I had blocked Chloe's number but hadn't yet removed her from every social media account, and an old photograph appeared in a memory notification. I opened her profile without fully deciding to do it, and there was the evidence of a public story she seemed eager to tell. The night of our breakup, she had posted a crowded photograph of cocktails, her red nails wrapped around the stem of a glass, with a caption about living her best life and being free of negativity. Jess and Sarah had filled the comments with enthusiastic encouragement.
I stared at the photograph and tried to work out whether she had taken it before or after I left. There was no way to know, and it dawned on me that knowing would not tell me much about her private feelings anyway. People often publish the version of their lives they hope will become true if enough friends approve of it. I had done smaller versions of the same thing myself, posting cheerful photographs during weeks when work was overwhelming. The difference was that her declaration of freedom appeared on a night when I was sitting alone in a hotel room wondering how to divide a sofa.
Her next posts were less exuberant. One was a quotation about storms clearing the air, followed by a selfie with a smile that seemed too carefully arranged. Another described learning to be her own source of strength, a sentiment I might once have admired without examining when it was being used. I read the comments and felt an old temptation to defend myself against people who did not know what had happened. I closed the app rather than write a reply that would turn our private ending into public entertainment.