The condo smells stale. It has that particular emptiness of a space that’s been closed up and waiting. I open the windows, and the noise of the city pours in. It feels surprisingly foreign. A few months ago, this was the soundtrack to my life. The sirens, the traffic, the constant low-grade hum of millions of people existing in proximity. Now it sounds like static. Background noise with no signal.
I spend Monday with Martin. He takes the news well. Better than I expected. Shakes my hand, tells me the door is always open, asks if it’s about a girl. I tell him it’s about a lot of things,and he nods like he understands, and maybe he does. Martin is a good man. He just lives in a world where the corner office is the finish line, and I’ve realized I was running a race I never belonged in.
Tuesday and Wednesday, I pack. The condo is mostly furniture I bought because a real-estate agent told me it would “stage well.” I feel nothing about leaving any of it. It’s nothing like the cottage with its warm, cozy furniture Neve so carefully and deliberately picked out for me, knowing how I wanted the place to feel: like home.
I keep the books. My mother’s recipe box. The framed photo of me, Leo, and my parents at the lake house when we were seventeen. Everything else can go with the sale.
On Thursday, I break.
I’m in my half-empty living room, surrounded by boxes and the particular loneliness of a life being disassembled, so I pick up my phone and type.
I miss you.
I stare at it for thirty seconds. She asked me not to call. She didn’t specifically say no texts, which is a technicality any self-respecting adult would recognize as bullshit. But I send it anyway, because I’m weak and the silence between us is louder than Toronto.
She doesn’t respond.
Not that night.
Not Friday morning.
Not while I’m signing the paperwork to list the condo, or while I’m having dinner with my parents and Mom is asking about Beth every twelve minutes.
Not while I’m lying in a bed that doesn’t smell like her, staring at a ceiling that has no wooden beams or character, in a building where no one knows my name.
She doesn’t respond, and I tell myself that’s okay. She asked for space. I’m giving her space. This is healthy and mature and respectful, and I am absolutely going to lose my mind.
On Saturday morning, I’m taping a box shut when my phone buzzes. It’s Leo.
Heads up. She asked me for your address.
My heart stops. Then restarts at approximately twice its normal speed.
Me:
When?
Leo:
About 20 minutes ago. I gave it to her. Hope that’s ok.
Me:
Did she say why?
Leo:
No. She just said “I need his address, Leopold” in that voice she uses when she’s already decided something and God himself couldn’t talk her out of it.
I set the phone down. Pick it up. Set it down again.
She asked for my address.
She asked for my address.
I look around the condo—boxes everywhere, furniture tagged for donation, walls bare, where frames of meaningless artwork used to hang. I look at the half-packed kitchen, the emptybookshelves, the suitcase by the door that’s been ready to go since Wednesday.
And as I continue packing, with a giant smile on my face, I wait.
