Chapter Nineteen
Nobody realizes things overnight. Nobody wakes up one day, out of the blue, and decides that actually, everything about their
life is wrong.
You realize things slowly. You think, and maybe you waffle, and then eventually, you figure something out.
At least, that’s what I thought I believed. But when I opened my eyes, on that morning in mid-April, I felt like someone had
flipped a switch. Here I was, waking up next to Jackson like I had been for the past six years, except this time, one clear
thought cut through the swirl of fog that had been collecting in my head for months.
I don’t want this.
I lay in bed, staring at the boob light in our apartment ceiling for ten minutes, waiting to see if the thought would go away.
And when it didn’t, I lay there for ten more minutes, trying to tell myself it wasn’t real. Just a leftover feeling from a
bad dream I couldn’t remember.
But I couldn’t shake it. It stayed in my head as I took a shower. It bubbled as I made coffee. And as Jackson and I moved
around each other in the kitchen—him preparing to head out to the observatory, me getting ready for a day of working at home—it
only grew louder.
I don’t want this.
I didn’t want the realization that I hadn’t asked him about his work all week, because I couldn’t stand the thought of hearing
about it. I didn’t want the swirl of emotions I knew I’d feel, listening to him—the vague hint of jealousy about the article
he was working on; the exhaustion when he moved on, forgetting, again, to ask how my work was going. I didn’t want the kiss
that we’d inevitably give each other when he left—the one that felt like nothing except an obligation.
I didn’t want to plan another week of meals with him. I didn’t want to do our laundry—a task that always seemed to fall to
me because I was home during the weekdays and that was the only time you could snag a machine in our building without stiff
competition. I didn’t want to listen to him tease me when I took a while choosing what to order, the next time we went out
to dinner, because I could never make up my mind.
I suddenly couldn’t see any kind of future in front of me—in front of us. The fog that had been collecting in my head was
just one giant white space when I tried to picture next month or next year or five years from now.
When Jackson left for the observatory, I didn’t kiss him. I said I hadn’t brushed my teeth.
And then I sat in the middle of the living room, staring at the couch, and felt empty.
Maybe it wasn’t really that someone had flipped a switch and suddenly everything was different. Maybe it was that it had all
unraveled so slowly that I hadn’t noticed until now. We’d been fighting more, I realized, but it had happened gradually.
He got really upset when I told him I was going to stop searching for an academic job.
We were supposed to do this together, he told me. I was giving up too easily.
And after that . . . it was smaller stuff.
He worked late without telling me, and I got mad because I’d cooked dinner and it had gotten cold and he hadn’t answered my text.
I accidentally put one of his ties through the wash and ruined it and he called me careless.
Every small thing became something bigger, and every passing comment cut deeper.
Eventually, I got up off the floor and went to work at the little desk I had set up in a corner of the living room. But in
between all my work tasks, I kept trying to think of things I loved about Jackson. I kept trying to remember why I said yes
when he asked if I wanted to move in. Why I said yes when he asked me out. Why the past six years in this apartment, the past
seven years together, had even happened.
And I couldn’t remember.
I couldn’t come up with reasons I loved him.
I just felt empty.
I picked up my phone to text Rika, because she was who I talked to when I couldn’t talk to Jackson. Except I realized I couldn’t
talk to her about this. I couldn’t ask her to help me figure out why I apparently no longer loved her other best friend.
I couldn’t ask her to help me figure out if I ever had.
So I set my phone down, and I tried to go back to work. And I spent that whole week hoping, vaguely, that this was just some
kind of mid-relationship crisis and I’d wake up one morning and it would have passed.
But it didn’t.
I spent two more weeks noticing how far Jackson and I sat apart from each other on the couch. That we didn’t kiss each other
good night, and I couldn’t remember when we’d stopped. That he smiled more when Rika and Yasmin came over for dinner than
he did when it was just the two of us.
And then, finally, one night in the kitchen, when both of us were making a cup of tea before bed, I said, “I’m not sure this
is working.”
“What’s not working?” he asked. “The kettle?”
“No. Us.”
He was quiet, looking at his mug on the counter. Which was when I realized that the two of us had been playing a game of chicken
for a while—waiting to see who would break first and call this what it was: an end.
He didn’t seem that surprised. He just turned his mug in a slow circle. “No,” he said, “it’s not.”
I swallowed. “I think we should break up.”
Another slow mug turn, the ceramic grating softly against the counter. “Fine,” he said, and picked up his tea, walking past
me to the bedroom.
I stood there, heart hammering, wondering what I had just done. Wondering if I was supposed to feel better about it, or if
I was supposed to cry.
But all I felt, still, was empty.
So I picked up my own mug of tea and followed Jackson to the bedroom. We climbed into bed next to each other, because I didn’t
know what else to do, and apparently neither did he.
And the next day, when I woke up, I started googling for somewhere else to live.