Page 156 of Neap & Spring

I sit with his name on my screen for a long time. The floor plan still open. The good vibes corner. This is where I’ll sit when I come to visit.

My thumb hovers over his contact.

All I have to do is press it and call him. He’ll answer on the second ring, and I’ll tell him what happened and let him be there for me the way he’s always been there.

But if I do that, I lose him. Not the way I’m going to lose him now — where at least he gets to hate me. He can be angry and move on and build his restaurant and have the life he deserves. If I call him now, I lose him in a different way. The way where he destroys everything he’s worked for trying to save me. Where his name gets tangled up with mine in the worst story either of us will ever be part of.

I can’t do that to him.

I scroll back through the messages one more time. Years of conversations. Years of him being the first person I tell everything to. Years of good morning texts and late night voice notes and pictures of dishes we’re working on and complaints about terrible line cooks and dreams about the future.

Years of us.

My finger hovers over his contact information.

Then I press block.

The phone asks if I’m sure.

No, I want to scream. I’m not sure. This is the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I know it even as I’m doing it.

But I press yes anyway before I can change my mind. Block him on Instagram and on every platform where he could reach me. Block his email. Delete every avenue he has to find me.

Then I go back to our message thread — the only thing left now — and I look at the floor plan one more time.

this is where you’ll sit when you come to visit.

Then I close the thread.

I don’t delete it. I can’t. It’s all I have left of him, and I’m not strong enough to let it go completely.

But I don’t respond.

I lie back on my bed in my chef’s whites, and I look at the ceiling. The city goes on outside my window. It doesn’t know my heart is smashed to pieces. It doesn’t care. It’s just the city, doing what it does, enormous and ongoing, not noticing that something in this apartment just ended.

I close my eyes and I can see Callum waking up tomorrow morning. Reaching for his phone the way he always does. Sending me a good morning text the way he has every single day for years.

Waiting for the response that won’t come.

Trying to call. Getting the blocked message.

Trying Instagram. Finding nothing.

The confusion first. Then the worry. Then the hurt.

And I won’t be there to explain. I won’t be there to tell him it’s not his fault. I won’t be there to tell him I love him and that’s exactly why I’m doing this.

He’ll think I just left. That I got too good for him, too successful, too caught up in my New York life to care about the small-town guy I used to know in Paris.

He’ll think I didn’t care enough to say goodbye.

And that’s what I need him to think. Because if he knew the truth, he’d come for me. And I can’t let him do that.

I lie there in the dark and I breathe.

Okay, I think. Okay.

I guess this is what protecting someone looks like sometimes.