Her face hardened.
"You're enjoying this."
"No."
"Yes, you are. You wanted to prove I couldn't survive without you."
I shook my head.
"I wanted you to stop treating my support like evidence that I was beneath you."
"So you punished me."
"I left."
"Same thing."
"No, Sarah. It only feels like punishment because my staying was carrying more weight than you admitted."
That sentence stopped her. A rideshare vehicle pulled toward the curb for me. Sarah saw it. Her eyes narrowed.
"Where are you going?"
"Dinner."
"With who?"
The old possessiveness appeared instantly. I almost laughed.
"That's not your business anymore."
"Is it another woman?"
"Good night, Sarah."
She moved in front of me.
"Mark."
I waited. Tears gathered again.
"I was going to come back."
That sentence hurt more than anything else she had said.
"From Jared's?"
"I mean after Miami. I was going to come back and we were going to talk."
"You believed you could leave me hanging while you tested another life and return if it didn't work."
"That's not what I meant."
"It's exactly what you just said."
She looked down. I thought about Dave's branch metaphor. For the first time, I stopped thinking it was crude.
"Sarah, you told me you could have ten men in that apartment by nightfall."
Her eyes closed.