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"I saw Maya tonight," I say. "At the restaurant."

A beat.

"She came in with someone. A man. New, I think…Lars said a few weeks. And she was with Sander and Lotte, Joris and Femke." I pause. "People I used to have dinner with. People who chose her side, which I understand. They still… they nodded at me, Jan. That's all. The nod you give someone you used to know well and now keep at a distance and I…”

I stop.

"I didn't expect that to hurt," I say. "I thought I'd processed it. And then there they were across the restaurant and it was just a nod and I felt it anyway."

"Patrick," Jan says quietly.

"And Maya." I take a breath. "She smiled at me. Genuinely. Not… not painful, not awkward. Just warm, from across the room, the real Maya smile. And I raised my hand and she turned away and that was it. Thirty seconds. And I've been sitting with it since."

A pause. "How?" Jan asks. Not pushing. Just… asking. Wanting to know.

"I don’t… I can't name it exactly," I say. "It's not jealousy. I know it's not that. I love you. That's not the question. But it was… she looked happy. He had his hand on her back the way you put your hand on mine and she was laughing with Lotte the way she used to laugh and I thought: good. And I meant it. And then I thought: that was my life, that whole table was my life, and now I walk past it on the way to mine."

I stop again.

"I don't know what to call that," I say. "I just didn't want to not tell you."

Silence on the line. The good kind of silence… Jan thinking, Jan with me even from Madrid.

"Patrick," he says finally.

"You can feel something," he says. Clearly. The Jan version of certainty. "You spent years with her. You can see her moving on and feel something about it and still love me. Those aren't in conflict."

"I know," I say. "Thank you for saying that."

A longer silence.

"Thank you," he says. Quietly. "For calling. For not keeping it to yourself."

"I nearly texted good evening and left it there," I say.

"I know," he says. "I could tell from the good evening." A pause… the Jan pause, measured, deliberate. "Patrick."

"Yeah."

"For whatever it's worth." He stops. Starts again, with the care he takes with things that cost him something to say. "You're not just my boyfriend. You're my best friend. I want you to be able to tell me things. All of them. The ones that don't have names yet."

I sit with that for a moment.

Something settles in my chest, warm and certain and entirely his, this Jan who spent thirty years not saying things and is learning, one careful sentence at a time, how to say them.

"Okay," I say. My voice is not entirely level.

"Okay," he says.

"The friends," I say. "That one I didn't expect to hurt as much."

"I know," he says again. "That's a different thing. That’s…” He pauses, choosing. "What happened with Maya…the life you left, the life you chose, cost you something. Some people didn't know how to remain connected to both of you. It doesn't make you the villain. It doesn't make them villains. But it still hurts."

I sit with that.

"Yeah," I say.

Bring Jan next time, Lars said. I think about that. The thing I want to build.