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I should have noticed.

I sit with my back against the wall and wait. Twenty minutes pass. Maybe thirty. I have stopped tracking time with any precision. Then the door opens and I get up from the floor.

Jan comes out. He is dressed — properly, work clothes, the configuration of Jan when he has decided something. He doesn't look at me. He goes to the wardrobe and takes out his jacket.

I watch him.

"Jan," I say.

"I need to go to the office," he says. Not looking at me.

I look at him. "It's Thursday morning. You work from home on Thursdays."

"I have things to do." He puts on the jacket. Still not looking at me. "I'll be back later."

Something cold moves through me. Not anger — something more like fear, arriving faster than I expected. "Jan."

He picks up his bag.

"Look at me," I say.

He stops. He looks at me. His face is, composed. Entirely, completely composed, in the way of someone who has been composing it deliberately for some time and is holding it with both hands.

"What did I do," I say.

"Nothing," he says. "Patrick, you didn't do anything."

"Then what—"

"I just need to go to the office." He says it quietly. Firmly. The Jan version of a door closing. "I'll be back later."

He goes.

I hear the hallway. The door. The stairs.

I stand in the hallway in the silence of Jan's apartment and I feel… I feel something that has been fine and is no longer fine and I don't know why and I don't know how to fix it because I don't know what it is.

I try to think.

I make tea I don't drink and sit at the kitchen table and try to think.

What did I do.

The collab… no. He wasn't upset about the collab. I saw his face when I told him, something had already been there before the call, the call was just the thing that tipped it. So before the call. Before I came home. The three days in New York… I texted, he responded, everything seemed… was it the texts? Did I say something wrong? Was I too…

I think about the Instagram. The comments. Someone finding his name, his LinkedIn, writing things about him. I have been watching the comments settle since Sunday, mostly positive now, a few holdouts, nothing I can't manage… but Jan doesn't read the comments. He decided not to. Unless he—

I think about Finn.

No. Jan was clear about Finn. Jan handled Finn better than I did.

I think about the documentary offer. No, the collab offer. The it would be nice to have both couples on camera. His face when I said that. The quality of Jan receiving something he didn't ask for.

I am going around in circles.

My phone is on the table. I pick it up and put it down and pick it up again.

I don't text him. I am going to give him space and I am going to sit in this apartment and not spiral and wait for him to come back.