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Was he daydreaming?
“You mind if I crash here with you tonight?” I mentally calculate the time it’ll take for me to get back from here to Kennebunkport. I took a nap earlier today, knowing it was going to be a late night, but I also figured I could crash here.
“Actually, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he finally speaks.
“What?” I laugh, certain he’s being sarcastic. But he isn’t smirking or winking. In fact, he isn’t registering an ounce of any kind of emotion that I can tell.
He gathers a breath and turns to me, his dark eyes hollow almost. “Jovie … I did some thinking this week.”
My stomach drops yet my mind is empty, like it’s suspended in a place of disbelief despite every fiber in my body knowing something’s not right.
“We’ve had a good run … but I think we can both agree things have gotten stale lately.” His words are mechanical, rehearsed. “The spark we had … it’s gone. There’s no fire in your eyes when you look at me anymore, and I think we’re both just waiting for someone better to come along.”
My jaw hangs for a second, but I straighten my shoulders. “You’re entitled to your opinions, but you don’t get to tell me how I feel.”
He lifts his hands. “Fair enough. But it doesn’t change the fact that our best years are behind us.”
His gaze drops to his hands, which are resting calmly in his lap. They’re not trembling, they’re not fidgeting. He’s not picking at his hangnails or a loose thread in his shorts. Nothing about this moment feels difficult for him, and yet my heart is shattering into a million pieces—and I feel the sting of every shard.
“We were literally window shopping for engagement rings, what, a month ago?” I rake my hand through my hair and gather a fistful. “You leave for one week to spend time with your friends and now it’s suddenly over? We don’t even get to talk it out? It’s just … over? Like that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Wow. Nice,” I say. “And you had the audacity to let me drive you from the airport to your apartment—two fucking hours—and then you dump me?”
He’s silent.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yell.
I’ve never raised my voice at him. Ever. Not once in over three years.
“Where did this come from?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”
Jude rakes his hand along his stubbled jaw. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it.”
Every part of me is paralyzed with his words, from my head to my lungs to my heart to my quivering fingertips.
“Jovie,” he turns back to face me. “I met someone in Tulum.”
My stomach drops.
I’m going to be sick.
“You’re ending our three-year relationship because you met some random woman on vacation?” I ask, half laughing but with tears in my eyes. Never in a million years did I think we’d go out like this. Then again, I never thought we’d ‘go out’ at all.
I was happy. I thought he was too.
I think about that day in the mall, strolling hand in hand, sipping matcha lattes and gazing at sparkling diamond rings like we had the rest of our lives ahead of us.
“I’m sorry,” he says in one big, long exhaled breath. I can only interpret this as relief—like he’d been stressing about this conversation for days and now he feels lighter having gotten it off his chest.
Lighter … because he no longer carries the burden of his stale relationship.
“That’s all you have to say? You’re sorry?” I swipe thick tears from my cheeks. “You get to go into your apartment, back to your same old routine, with your best friend, and you get to fall in love all over again with someone new, and me? I get …”
I swallow the words that are too painful to continue while I drown in a sea of confusing emotions I wasn’t expecting to feel tonight. A half hour ago all I could think about was crawling into Jude’s cozy bed, snuggling into his arm, and sleeping hard until the sun came up … like it was any other morning.
Now I’m grappling with the fact that every happy memory from the last three-plus years of my college career will now be tainted with him. Every image, every photograph, every song, every movie from these years … will forever be bittersweet and stained.
“Get out,” I speak through a clenched jaw.
He doesn’t hesitate. Within seconds he’s already wrangling his bag from my back seat and striding toward the walkway to his apartment entrance.
I drive away, hardly able to see through the tears that refuse to stop falling, but before I exit the parking lot, I glance into my rearview mirror to see if he has stopped to look back. Only he’s already to his door, disappearing inside, dragging his suitcase behind him.
