I set down the carving knife on the table. I’d been whittling a piece of wood all week. It still looked indistinct to the casual observer, but I knew it was being shaped into a small, bushy owl. It just took time to get there.
“You’re finished packing?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She tipped her suitcase up onto its wheels and rolled it into the living room. “Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh?”
“You have everything in that one suitcase?”
This from the same girl who couldn’t go to visit her parents without a giant suitcase filled with shoes.
She shrugged. “I figure I’ll mostly be wearing work clothes. And the director said that we’ll do laundry while we’re there, so we don’t need as much as if we were on vacation.”
“I still can’t believe you’re leaving for twelve weeks.” I stood and stretched out my shoulders. “I feel like you auditioned for this so long ago that it just might never happen.”
She laughed softly, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. She’d been…weird all week. Distant. As if preparing herself to leave for Europe for twelve long weeks.
“Yeah. I can’t believe it’s here either,” she said.
“I wish I could go with you,” I told her. Even though it wasn’t true.
I wanted to go to Europe again. I’d backpacked with my brother the summer after college for a month, sleeping in hostels and living off of scraps. That had been a different time. Now, I couldn’t even think of Jake.
The truth was, I didn’t want to leave my job. I’d liked what I’d been doing back in North Carolina, and then the firm here had been…fine. But campaign work. It was a whole other beast. And I wasn’t prepared to give it up to follow Claire around with her ensemble. I’d already moved to New York for her. And now, she was leaving again.
“Me too,” she said a minute later.
“It’s going to be so strange, being here without you.”
She nodded and then looked away from me. “I kind of, um…wanted to talk to you about that.”
“About what?” I asked warily.
This wasn’t normal Claire behavior. She didn’t try to hide herself from me. She had no amount of subterfuge in her body. It was part of what had drawn me to her. She wasn’t like girls I’d dated before her. It was simple and uncomplicated. Something casual that had turned into more without interference or objection. It was what I’d wanted after Melissa.
But now…she didn’t seem like the Claire I knew at all.
“Well, I’m going to be gone for three months. I’ve never been to Europe before. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here. And I, uh…just think that maybe we should, um, take-some-time-apart,” she said in a rush.
I froze at her nearly indistinguishable words. She’d slurred them together so fast that I almost convinced myself that I hadn’t heard her right. “Wait…what?”
“I’m just going to be so busy, Sam,” Claire all but whispered. “I’ll…I’ll hold you back. I won’t be there for you. Not like you deserve.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” I asked more harshly than I’d intended.
“No!” she gushed. Then she bit her baby-pink-lip-gloss-coated lip. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” I repeated.
“I just think we need a break.”
“I know what a break means, Claire,” I growled at her. “It means, this is over.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said in earnest.
I almost believed her.
“I just…I just want to give you the space you need. I’m going to be gone. We can decide what we’re doing when I get back.”
“So…a breakup,” I said, taking a step away from her in shock and horror. “So that you can go date other people.”
“It’s not like that,” she said. Tears came to her eyes. “That’s not what this is at all. I just think we need space to figure out what’s best for each other. And we’re already going to be apart. This is the time we should take.”
“You need the time,” I spat at her. “You never even asked me what I wanted. You already made up your mind.”
“Maybe I did,” she said through her sniffles. “We’ve been together for over two years, Sam. Where are we going? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? Do you want to marry me?”
I hesitated. Did people know these things? Was I supposed to?
Claire sighed, swiping at her eyes. “That’s what I thought. That’s the whole point. You don’t know. I don’t know. And I think we should at this point.”
“So, this is it? You’re breaking up with me because I won’t…marry you?” I asked in confusion.
She covered her eyes and shook her head. “That’s not it at all. I don’t even know if this is a breakup. I just think…we should figure out while I’m gone if this is what we really want. It’s just…space.”
“Fine,” I spat. I brushed past her and headed into the bedroom. I grabbed a backpack out of the closet, stuffed work clothes in it, and then slung it over my back.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“You think I’m going to stay here another minute?”
“Sam!”
I just kept walking. She was the one who wanted this. She had to know there were consequences to her actions. It wasn’t all just fine because she wanted it to be.
“Please,” she said, tugging on my arm. “It’s my last night. You’re just going to leave?”
“Yes.”
“But…please, please stay. I have to go to the airport in the morning.”
I pulled my arm free and met her gaze. “This is what you want, Claire. I’m just respecting your wishes. Here’s your break.”
Tears fell freely from her eyes again. She choked on them and buried her face in her hands. And I sympathized with her. I didn’t like to see her cry. But she’d chosen this. I wasn’t going to stick around and wait for her to walk out of my life.
“Have fun in Europe,” I muttered as I yanked the door open and strode out of the apartment.
I had nowhere to go. I could probably get a hotel somewhere nearby, but I was too on edge to do that. Plus, I didn’t really want to waste the money. Who even knew what the living situation would be like after this? Would Claire pay for her half of the rent? Was I on the hook for the whole thing?
“Fuck,” I spat into the black night sky.
I pulled out my phone. My first thought was to text Lark. It’d be so easy to rush over there and tell her Claire had left. To stay with her. To rebound so hard that we’d both miss work the next morning.
I blinked away that daydream. Because Lark didn’t deserve that. I didn’t know what I wanted. But casually fucking my boss probably wasn’t the answer.
I ran a hand across my face and then sent a text to Court.
Remember how my girlfriend was leaving for Europe in the morning? Well, she just dumped me. Any chance you have a free guest room?
It felt too soon to ask Court for something like that. Plus, he was dealing with so much shit himself. But he was the only friend I had in the city.