This one line, though:“Some people build love out of usefulness because it feels actionable. Do this. Fix that. Get that for me. In the end, though, it has nothing to do with who you are: it’s about the tasks you do.”
I follow the ink one letter at a time and write it in the center of my notebook. I draw a square around it, then underline the bottom part twice and make an arrow, hard enough to leave a dent.
Gave Robyn coffee. Made dinner. Picked her up sometimes. Scheduled oil changes—scratch that, she did that herself. Brought groceries to her apartment. Fixed her clogged sink—cross that one too, she already bought a snake and did it herself with a tutorial. Kept her favorite snacks at home. Called her landlord to fix her broken heater—nope, she’d already scheduled an appointment with the maintenance company.
Arrows keep branching from the quote, acts of service left and right. The page fills to the margins, ink bleeding slightly on the cheap paper. I did things for her, sure. Nice things. Still, looking at them piled up around the idea of usefulness, they read like I mistook running errands for showing loyalty. And more like when it wasn’t me taking charge, I felt slighted.
The tea’s gone lukewarm. I drink the liquid anyway, it’s got three spoonfuls of sugar, like fucking Mary Poppins made it, and it still tastes bitter.
Before the thought can form into anything more on paper, my phone lights up on the counter—Mom. I ignore the three calls and seven texts from Andrzej and hit the green button.
“Nate? Are you okay?” Mom hasn’t been happy with me, the way her rural lilt clips at the end can’t even hide it.
“Kinda,” I say, sitting up. “Mom, how did you feel when Dad was around?”
I hear the blinkers coming down the other end of the line,then my mom exhales, long and deep. “I figured we were heading here.” The clicking sound shifts to the emergency siren. “What do you want to know, son?”
My chest tightens as I sit up, elbows on my knees, and my fingertips go cold where they rest around the cellphone.
“How was it? I don’t remember much, but I remember him yelling at you. That all you cared about was your job. That you didn’t need him for sh—for anything. So he might as well go with someone who did.” I dig my fingertips into my knee, trying to keep my leg from bouncing.
“Do you want me to be frank, or do you want me to coddle you?” she asks through a contained exhale.
On her end, windshield wipers sweep, and they go three or four cycles before I realize she’s actually waiting for me to answer. By the time my mouth opens, I’m too late. She’s filling the silence.
“Because yes, you’re asking about Martin, but you’re really thinking about you and Robyn.”
I nod even though she can’t see me.
“Your father needed to feel seen in everything he did.” Mom’s voice goes a little soft at the edges, as if she’s stepping back into memories she hasn’t visited in a while. “And for a long time, I made space for that. When I took that promotion… I realized I was really good at it, Nate. And I wanted to be even better. So I worked my butt off. And after a while, I had no energy left to hold his feelings together or desire to pretend I wasn’t doing well so he’d feelseen. Little by little, I stopped counting on him, and he got used to… going off with other women, so he’d stay at the center of someone’s day.”
I wince. No one wants to hear the unvarnished version of their parents’ mess, but this—this is the blueprint I grew up on.
“So, you didn’t need him, so he left.” It feels like I’mnaming something I’ve carried in my ribs for years. My fear. My pattern.
I wanted to feel purposeful, so I did things for Robyn, but in truth, I did them for me—for the panic that hummed under my skin every time something felt shaky.
I held the warm cup in my hand when I was nine; it was hot chocolate.
My dad’s giant hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing as he leaned down to my height.“You hear how she talks to me, kid?”Mirror images of my copper eyes bore into me.“It’s because of that big-ass job she got. Thinks she’s so much better now. Thinks she doesn’t need me for shit.”He stood up.“If you’re ever thinking about getting married, kid, make sure you’re more important than their fucking career.”
The words had lodged somewhere deep, turning into a rule I’ve never been able to shake. When I blink, the cup holds tea again, but the belief I carved from my father’s words—that relationships disintegrate when you’re not indispensable—hammers in my temples, tightening the hollow in my chest. It erased the foundation of my relationship until I couldn’t see it for what it truly was. I didn’t nurture cracks, I detonated the soil we built on.
“That’s a way of looking at it.” My mom’s voice slices through my thoughts. “I was distraught when he left, but I never felt likeIwas at fault for him leaving. I chose to improve and challenge myself. He chose not to rise to the occasion. That’s not on me.”
“I don’t think I rose to the occasion with Robyn, Mom.”
And now all Robyn sees is this version of me who thinks a fucking eight-dollar latte can patch the cracks between us. My gaze flicks over to the line I underlined twice onThe Shape of Need:“It’s easier to chase the feeling of being essential than to sit with the truth that you’re not indispensable.”
“You need to understand, Nate, I neverneededyour father to stay. I chose him.”
“I was worried, Mom. I-I thought that Robyn’s choice would always be her career.”
She pauses, her sigh crackling against the speaker. “People don’t leave because you don’t need them. They leave because they don’t know what to do with the person their partner becomes.”
There’s a bitter taste in my throat. I wasn’t indispensable to Robyn, but I was something better—I waschosen. And every meal I cooked expecting a pat on the back, I shook our foundation until not only we weren’t on solid ground, but we collapsed under the weight of my needs.
“Do you think that’s why—do you think that’s why I kissed Tessa back? Because I didn’t know what to do with the person Robyn’s become?”
