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“You’re breaking up with me?” he asks. He sounds like he’s been hit.

I don’t know what I’m saying. I can’t possibly be ending this, can I? We’re engaged. I’ve been with him most of my adult life.

“I don’t know. But I’m definitely not doing this bullshit anymore. I’m not listening to you tell me every night how much fun you’re having over there with Christina while I sit in our home alone.”

I feel my voice growing choked. I’m just astonished by all of it. I really can’t believe she was there all along, that he just told me in passing he’d be staying another three months.

“Five months, Rob. It’ll be five months by the time you get back. And that’s bullshit. You never once asked me if I was okay with it.”

“You never acted like you even cared. I mean seriously, over Christina?” he asks. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No, not over Christina. Over us,” I tell him. “I love you, but I am not happy in this anymore. And I don’t know if it’s going to work when you get home, but I know for a fact that it’s not working now. Every conversation with you is grueling these days, and I’m not listening to a single moment more of this crap. Tell someone else how much fun you’re having. I just can’t believe…” I have to stop or I will burst into tears.

“Erin, come on, honey. Don’t do this right now. You’re upset. It’s not the time to be making big decisions. Look, I’ll call tomorrow. I’ll call before you leave for work, and we can Skype. I need to see your face.”

I’m not doing that. The idea of seeing his face makes me want to weep. It will only make it harder to do what I know for a fact needs to be done.

“No, Rob. We’re doing this now. I ask so little of you that it doesn’t even occur to you to tell me until now that you’re staying until August. All the things that make me want to get up in the morning are things you’ve crapped on. It’s my fault for letting you do it, but it’s also your fault for not caring enough about my happiness to ever try to correct course.”

His voice is rough when he finally speaks. “Jesus, Erin. Where did all this come from? We’ve been together nearly four years, and you’re just telling me this now?”

“I don’t think I even realized it myself until now. Until lately.”

“I don’t want this to end,” he says.

I don’t either, not entirely. I don’t know what I want. Rob is like family. I’ve certainly spent more time with him than my own family, and he’s been better to me than they have, at least until recently.

“We’ll figure it out when you come home,” I tell him.

“So you’re saying what? That we’ll start over then? What happens in the meantime?”

“I’m not going to sit here every night wondering what you’re doing and if Christina is with you. So do whatever you want.”

“What the fuck, Erin? I don’t want to be with someone else. I love you. I love our life. That’s what I want.”

The right words, delivered far too late. “Then,” I tell him as I hang up, “you probably should have acted like it sooner.”

32

Erin

Present

I was so firm on the phone. But after the call ends, I desperately wish I could take every word of it back. This, with Rob, has been my home almost the last three years. He’s been my home.

Telling him we could start over when he returns, that was my safety net. It was based on the assumption that what happens when he gets home will be my choice, but what if it’s not? He will sleep with Christina—I basically told him to, didn’t I? What if he chooses her and doesn’t even want to try when he comes home? I wanted to punish him, but it seems very possible that I’ll come to find I’ve only hurt myself.

I wake the next day feeling blown, as if I haven’t slept. Crying most of the night will do that. Even though I’ve stopped crying by the time I get to work, it doesn’t feel that way. Apparently it doesn’t look that way either.

“What’s up with you?” asks Harper, regarding me with suspicion as she walks into my cubicle. “Let me guess: Tim used the word stakeholders one too many times, and you stabbed him to death?”

“You really think I’d cry if I stabbed Tim to death?” I ask with a shaky laugh. And then I do start to cry.

I tell her about the break-up, split, break—I’m not even sure what to call it. I tell her how Rob extended his trip again without even telling me, that I’ve been realizing of late how much I’ve given up because of him.

And I tell her about Christina. That seals it.

“Good riddance,” she says.