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She shook her phone, tempted to send it sailing off the roof, but she couldn’t even bring herself to toss it into the daisies.
Her mom might need to reach her.
Allie looked at Winston. “He does this all the time. Texts me. Calls me. Drops by my parents’ house, so I’m over for dinner and, ‘Oh, hey, look, Matt’s here! Good thing you guys are such friends.’ The one time I thought maybe I’d pick up a guy for a one-night stand, Matt was at the bar, fucking cock-blocking me with his pictures of the dogs and throwing his arm over my shoulder and telling the one hot guy in the place, ‘This is Allie, we used to be engaged, isn’t she great? She’s the best.’?”
“You might try telling him to sod off.”
Allie shook her head. “Elvira told me today that if he comes by her office one more time to ask her questions about shit that’s none of his business, she’s going to call the police.”
“I like the sound of this Elvira.”
“She’s awesome. You’d get along. Anyway—” She held up her phone, screen out, as though Winston could see it. “—now he’s stopping by my tenant’s restaurant, probably hassling them, plus I found out he was texting my sister to ask where I’m at. I don’t know what to do about him. I mean sure, tell him to sod off, but…I don’t know. I can’t think about Matt. I try to think, and my mind goes completely blank, like there’s nothing. There’s nothing. I left him, Winston. I dated him for four years even though I didn’t love him, even though I was never even particularly attracted to him, and then I dumped him right before we were supposed to get married, so that means I have to deal with him forever, and give him what he wants so he won’t hate me, but I’ve got too much other shit, I’ve just got—”
Allie ran out of breath. She stopped to inhale. Somewhere in there, Winston had stopped glaring at her with his hands on his hips and come around the bricks and taken her in his arms, which was better, because she couldn’t be in charge of this anymore.
She couldn’t be in charge of one more person.
“Shh.” She was crying, getting tears on his bespoke shirt, which felt really nice against her cheek with his chest underneath it and everything.
“May hates me,” she said, her voice cracked and broken.
“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you.”
“She said I’m the worst and walked out.”
“She’s angry.”
“She’s so mad at me.” Then more tears, and Winston’s soft shushing, and his low voice telling her that Neville hadn’t spoken to him for an exceedingly long time after he tried to blackmail him, but these things had a way of mending themselves, and also she was going to die, but she wasn’t dead yet, which meant she had some time.
“When Matt called? He left a voicemail, and in the background I could hear my dogs barking.”
“What are they called?”
“Roscoe, she’s the sheepdog, and Donnie the Dachshund, he’s just a little wiener dog and he eats carpet if you don’t watch him.”
Winston put his finger under her chin and lifted her face. He wiped her tears away with the side of his hand.
“Roscoe and Donnie.” His accent made the dogs sound dignified, weighty, in a way they only were in her heart.
“I gave them to Matt.”
“Tell me why.”
“I don’t even know now. I was moving out, moving into May’s old place, and Matt was going to stay where we’d lived together, and that’s what the dogs were used to, but it wasn’t even that, just…every time I tried to split something with him, or ask for it for myself, it would be like, ‘I’m not sure how well that will fit in May’s living room,’ or ‘I really like how that looks on the bookshelf, though,’ or ‘I use this spatula for pancakes, maybe you could take the other one?’ And I was afraid of what would happen if I insisted—knowing how bad it was to have broken up with him, how much worse would it be if I made it difficult for him, insisted on taking some of the furniture, or insisted I wanted some stupid spatula. I didn’t want to make it worse, so finally I just gave him everything. Like, actually everything. The house, and our friends, and most of the furniture, and pretty much all the stuff we’d bought together since college, and the dogs.”
Winston kissed her forehead. “I know this happens. It’s happened to others I’ve known, after long relationships or divorce.”
“The first thing Elvira told me when she found out about the wedding was not to give Matt anything that was mine. The first thing. She sees it all the time, she said, and you have to insist on getting what’s yours out of the breakup, because if you don’t…”
“If you don’t, you find yourself in New York City, besieged with text messages and missing your dogs.”
“I guess, you find yourself in exactly the same situation you were afraid you’d end up in—the worst of the worst kind of breakup—except also, you don’t have anything that might help it feel better. Like a sofa.”
“Or a dog.”
“Or friends.”
He rubbed her back. She liked the way his hand felt through her clothes. She liked the way his shirt felt under her cheek, and the smell of him, the solidity of him, in the night, on the rooftop.
