Page 67 of How To Not Need You

I turn to look at Liv as she fiddles with the wine glass. She looks tense and I can tell that she wants to talk. I think I have learned by now not to push her. So, I wait until she decides to tell me what’s on her mind.

“Natalie broke today.” The words come out quiet and a bit sad.

I set my glass down on the coffee table and remember that she had plans with the group today. “When you were painting?”

She nods. Doesn’t look up from the wine. “Matthew called and accused her of bullying Rebecca.” Her mouth tightens. “Said she’s been trying to sabotage their relationship because she’s jealous.”

The anger in her voice is quiet but absolute. And I agree with it. Natalie’s an honest-to-God sweetheart. I haven’t known her long, but it’s hard to imagine her deliberately hurting anyone.

“She didn’t even argue with him. Just stood there, stunned. And just minutes before that she was talking about him.” Liv’s thumb stops moving on the rim of the glass. “Not about anything he had done. About him. Sunday mornings they spent together. The things they used to do together.” Her voice catches and she clears her throat like she’s annoyed at herself for letting it slip. “She didn’t realise she was doing it. Talking about him in present tense. Like he was still part of her life.”

I don’t say anything. There’s nothing useful to add. Sometimes listening is the only thing you can offer someone, and Liv doesn’t need me to fix this. She just needs me to listen.

So I do. I watch the way her jaw works, the small muscle twitching beneath her skin. I think about what she said though and how Liv seems to be hurting before I realise what she is getting at.

“She still loves him.”

Liv nods quickly. Almost as though she doesn’t want to admit that she agrees. Damn. I thought that her feelings would have faded with his treatment of her. I feel for her. Loving someone who’s been part of your life that long and knowing they don’t feel the same way has to hurt.

Then Liv pivots on the couch cushion until she’s facing me and pulls her knees up under the blanket, keeping her wineglass cradled between both hands like it’s something fragile. Her eyes find mine and I can see the determination in them.

“Did you still love Megan when you got divorced?”

The question takes me by surprise. I search her eyes and see the flicker of vulnerability, of insecurity that she is trying to hide.

I don’t have to think about it. Years of counselling, of late-night conversations with Megan on opposite ends of the same couch, of watching our marriage unravel thread by thread until we could both see the pattern clearly enough to name it.

“Yes.” The word comes out simply. I don’t try to hide it or change my answer.

Liv’s brow pulls together. She was expecting something else. Something that fit the narrative she’s built about how relationships end, with betrayal, lies, or any of the wreckage she’s spent her adult life learning to navigate.

I take a breath. “There was no affair. No villain. No single moment where everything broke.”

I pick my wine glass back up and swirl it gently, watching the liquid climb the sides and fall back. “We went to counselling. Both of us. For almost a year. We tried to fix what was fraying. We respected each other through all of it. Listened. Showed up. Did the work.”

Liv is perfectly still. Watching me like I’m speaking a foreign language.

“Then one day we looked at each other and realised we’d become better co-parents than partners.” I meet her eyes. “That’s all. We were just two people who realised we worked better as parents than we did as a couple. And we ended it before we started resenting each other.”

Liv’s fingers tighten around her glass. “Nobody cheated?”

“No.”

“Nobody lied?”

“No.”

I see her turn this over. She looks so utterly lost and confused. Like I’ve just handed her a map to a country she didn’t know existed.

“Then why leave?” The question comes out softer than she meant it to. Almost lost.

I hold her gaze so she can see that I mean what I am saying. “Because staying would’ve turned us into people we didn’t want Tilly to grow up watching. We would have become resentful, or even jaded. Tils didn’t deserve that.”

Liv looks at me like she’s searching for the catch, the hidden motive, the thing I’m not saying or the lie and I watch her search and come up empty.

I know that I have surprised her. That Liv holds the expectation of betrayal close to her as though it's the only certainty in life. Honesty is the stranger here.

“Sometimes people don’t stop loving each other,” I say calmly. “They just stop being the right people for each other.”