He had talked about that watch for nearly two years.
“And I canceled the waterfront reservation.”
“Lauren—”
“You didn’t notice any of it.”
That stopped him.
I finally sat down.
“That’s the part I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I removed three things I’d spent months planning for us, and your life didn’t change enough for you to notice.”
His eyes dropped.
“I didn’t know.”
“Exactly.”
He rubbed his forehead carefully, avoiding the bandage.
“I was an idiot.”
“Yes.”
He looked surprised by the answer.
“I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No.”
“The guys were talking.
Everyone had been drinking.
I was showing off.”
“I know.”
“It didn’t mean anything.”
That was the one sentence I couldn’t accept.
“It meant enough for you to bring it home to me.”
He stared at me.
“You could have left that conversation in the bar.
You could have told them to shut up.
You could have remembered that the woman they were rating like a purchase was your wife.
Instead, you came home and handed their judgment to me like I was supposed to prove them wrong.”
Evan’s eyes filled.
“I messed up.”
“You did.”
“So that’s it? One stupid conversation and you’re done?”
I shook my head.
“No.
That’s what you still don’t understand.
It wasn’t one conversation.
The conversation just showed me what had been happening for a long time.”
I told him about the evenings I’d spent waiting for him to look away from his phone.
The dinners that became background scenery.
The way he announced plans instead of discussing them.
The way he’d mistaken my patience for a lack of ambition, my steadiness for dullness, my love for guaranteed access.
I told him I’d updated my resume.
I told him I’d been looking at apartments.
That frightened him more than the canceled trip.
“Apartments?”
“Yes.”
“You’re actually planning to leave?”
I held his gaze.
“When you told me to understand that you could find something better, you asked me to imagine a life without you.”
My voice stayed quiet.
“So I did.”
He started crying then.
Not loudly.
Not theatrically.
His face simply folded in on itself, and he turned toward the window.
