She left. She didn’t let me fix this. I heard her out, and she didn't?—
“What happened?” someone asks. “Gray?”
I just stand there, staring at the door like she might come back if I hurt badly enough. But I'm hurting worse than I ever have, so why isn’t that enough?Why can’t I be enough?
I don’t understand. I don’t, I don’t know how to, I don’t know if I want to, I just want her, and her, and her, and her, and her?—
“Hey, hey, man, sit down.”
Something touches my knees, and my body falls into a chair, but I barely feel it.
“Why would she leave?”
“Fuck.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
Chapter 41
Carly
I didn’t think walking away wouldfeel like this.I thought maybe there would be relief in it. Some clean, sharp snap of dignity, or some righteous little flare in my chest that said,good, you chose yourself.But I feel like I left my ribs on the floor of Zoe’s coffee shop and walked home with nothing protecting my heart but skin.
Zoe and I talked until I could breathe again, until I was able to down water, until I fell asleep slouched on the couch. I haven't really moved since, still in the same leggings I fell asleep in, staring at the television while it plays something I'm not watching. The volume is low. The apartment smells like coffee and the vanilla candle Zoe lit last night.
I haven’t cried yet this morning.That feels like progress, but then I realize I also haven’t felt much of anything.
Zoe is in the little kitchen, moving around quietly. She asked everything last night. What happened, what he said, what I said, whether I was sure, whether I wanted her to call him, whether I wanted wine, tea, a murder weapon, or all three.
I talked until my throat hurt.
She’s not pushing me this morning. She just keeps existing near me in that careful way people do when they love you and don’t know where to put their hands.
“I have a job interview in Colorado Springs,” I say quietly. I saw the email when I woke up, stared at it for ten minutes straight.
The clink of Zoe’s spoon against her mug stops.For a few seconds, that is the only response. But she turns around slowly, holding her coffee with both hands. “What?”
I keep looking at the TV. A woman on-screen is laughing too hard at something a man said. It seems fake. Everything seems fake.“A design job,” I say. “I applied yesterday. They emailed me back a few hours ago.”
Zoe doesn’t move. “Carly.”
“I’m going tomorrow.”
Her feet pad softly across the floor, and a second later, the cushion beside me dips under her weight. She doesn’t touch me. I appreciate that more than I can say.
“Are you sure?” she asks carefully.
I let out a tiny laugh, but it has no humor in it. “No.”
Her mouth tightens.
“But I’m going anyway.”
She looks down into her mug, like maybe my future is floating somewhere between the coffee and the oat milk. “Colorado Springs isn’t another apartment across town,” she says. “That’s… far, Carly.”
“I know.”
“Not impossibly far. I know it’s only, like, an hour and a half,” she adds quickly, because Zoe is Zoe and she can’t stand the idea of making something worse once she’s said it. “But far enough that it changes things.”
