Maybe Ellie needs a friend or company, or someone to fill her time with, but I’m not bothered by it—I owe her nothing. I’m under no impression that drawing a simple boundary is some big groveling gesture. But I can do better than conflating need and dependence with love. I want to honor that Robyn never needed me; she simply loved me.
And despite everything, she’s the only one holding space in my chest and mind as I pedal down the trail.
The next evening,I can’t help but fuss about how the place looks. I don’t even think Robyn would notice I deep cleaned the stove, but well… I have this restless energy that won’t settle. Even after I went on the rowing machine for thirty minutes, I’m still bouncing on the balls of my feet.
Last Wednesday, she didn’t join me, and maybe she won’t today. I distract myself, unfolding and squaring the throw blanket on the couch, then start over because the corner isn’t right. When I can’t stand it anymore, I draw the curtains. I feel stupid that all I have left of us is this useless hope.
UnderneathThe Tell-Tale Brainon the end table, sits my notebook of half-formed thoughts. The dots I obsessed over until they finally drew the line of why things collapsed. The leather groans under me when I sit in the oversized armchair, then I lift my eyes to Robyn’s blinds.
Her silhouette blocks the light behind the blinds—her hips framed in the glow. I used to kiss and trace her curveswith both whim and need. My heart stumbles and shrinks the way it does when you realize you’ve lost something that mattered.
I force myself to look down at the pages instead. Arrows. Crossed-out lines. Thoughts that cut off mid-sentence. My handwriting slants and presses hard when some truths hit low; the ink smudges and bleeds, mimicking this river of regret inside me.
Two lines repeat, each one darker than the last:
I don’t feel loved if I’m put second.
I like feeling needed.
I crossed lines with Tessa because her need for me made me feel important.
And then, boxed in by a square I traced so many times it seems it was done with a marker:I cheated on Robyn.
I hid the kiss and everything else, because underneath all those “harmless” choices, I was entertaining what it wouldfeellike to not compete with Robyn’s career. To be so important to someone I always came first.
Now I know betterbecause“When you mistake need for love, you don’t choose a partner—you choose a wound that knows your name.”
The quote sits inside a squiggled text box I circled more than once. Tessausedmy wound—I can’t unsee it now. Right when we were growing apart, sheusedmy pain to feign helplessness. And still… my mistakes aren’t hers. They’re my own.
I trace the indentation the pen left, thinking about how I at least got this right. Waiting to come after Robyn until I got my head straight. Because if you don’t understand your wounds, you repeat them.
My father proved that.
He told me once, right before he left us for good, that if I wanted someone to never walk out on me, all I had to do wasmake myself indispensable. “Make sure you always come in first place, and you will if they need you enough,”he’d said.
And my childish brain thoughtI can do that. I can make myself needed so it never hurts again.
I didn’t realize how flawed the advice was—or how flawed the man giving it was. I spent years trying not to become him, only to find myself sitting across from him nine months ago, in a poorly burnished coffee house. His cognac eyes looked at me as I would a mirror.
The café smelled of burned espresso and overstated pumpkin spice, but Martin,Dad, sat there with a victory smirk. He looked older, sure, but not sorry.
“You called,” he said, leaning back, hands folded behind his head.
“I wasn’t ever planning on it.”I kept my voice neutral, steadying the cup between my palms, then putting one flat against the grainy wood.“But there’re some things I need to understand.”
Martin smirked.“Oh, Natey.”
“Don’t call me that.”I clenched my left hand into a fist on top of the table.“I haven’t been Natey since you left us.”
He shrugged a shoulder.“So what’s this about? Didn’t take my advice and now you’re in need of some fatherly wisdom?”
I frowned.“You mean that bullshit about coming in first place, like love’s a competition?”
He gave me that disappointing look he used to point at me when I forgot to thank him for signing my report card or showing up at a softball game he made me play in the first place. And it pinned me to the spot, bringing me back to being nine and an absolute failure to one of the two people who made up my world.
He hitched a shoulder, his eyes fixed on the waitress cleaning the table on our right. “Yourmother… well”—he waved a dismissive hand—“people don’t come in first for her. It was always her stupid school.”
I shook my head.“Maybe you didn’t, but I always did.”
