When the boyfriend who could barely find twenty minutes a week to talk to me suddenly said he needed “space,” I knew the three thousand miles between us weren’t the distance he was talking about. What frightened me was the timing. That same night, his house in California was throwing a party, and for the first time in two years, Daniel seemed strangely eager for me not to be his girlfriend.
Chapter 2
Daniel arrived Friday morning looking exhausted.
The moment I saw him outside my apartment building, I knew something was wrong. He hugged me tightly, but his body felt tense, and when I kissed him he turned his face slightly so my lips landed near the corner of his mouth.
We went upstairs.
For nearly an hour, he avoided sitting still. He drank water, checked his phone, looked through my kitchen cabinets, and asked meaningless questions about classes we had already discussed.
Finally, I said, “Who is she?”
His back was toward me.
He froze.
Every part of me suddenly became cold.
“There is someone.”
Daniel turned around slowly.
“Yes.”
The word was barely audible.
I sat down because my knees felt weak.
“Tell me everything.”
He covered his face with both hands.
“Kate—”
“Everything.”
According to Daniel, the trouble had started after our argument over the movie. He had gone downstairs angry and ended up drinking with several roommates. One of them was a woman named Melissa.
I knew who she was.
She had appeared in photographs from the house. Daniel had even joked about how ridiculous it was that I ever worried about him living with women.
“They’re like sisters to me,” he once said. “Trust me, there’s absolutely nothing there.”
Now he told me that after our fight, he and Melissa had flirted.
“How?”
“Nothing serious.”
“What does that mean?”
“We were drinking. Sitting close. Messing around.”
“Messing around how?”
He looked away.
“I put my arm around her. We were joking. Kind of wrestling.”
My stomach turned.
“And then?”
“Nothing happened that night.”
“What happened after you asked me for the break?”
His eyes filled with tears.
The next evening, he said, he and Melissa drank again.
Then they slept together.
For a moment, I heard absolutely nothing.
Cars moved outside. A neighbor shut a door. Somewhere upstairs, a child was laughing.
But inside my apartment, the world became silent.
“You slept with your roommate.”
Daniel nodded.
“The day after asking me for a break.”
“Yes.”
“After telling me there was no other woman.”
“I swear the break wasn’t because of her.”
I looked at him.
Even in that moment, he seemed to hear how absurd it sounded.
“Well,” he whispered, “not completely.”
I stood.
“Get out.”
He started crying.
Not a few tears. He broke down so hard that his shoulders shook.
“Katie, please.”
“Go stay with Eric.”
“Please let me explain.”
“You did explain.”
“It was the worst mistake of my life.”
“You asked for permission without telling me what you wanted permission for.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t plan it.”
“You were already flirting with her.”
“I was lonely.”
“So was I.”
That silenced him.
I had been lonely too.
I had gone to bed without him. I had eaten dinners alone. I had watched other couples hold hands on campus and missed him so much that sometimes I slept in one of his old shirts because it still smelled faintly like his detergent.
Yet somehow Daniel’s loneliness had become evidence that he deserved an exception.
Mine had simply been part of the arrangement.
I called my mother after he left. She did what good mothers sometimes do best—she listened without turning my pain into a lecture.
“Do you want my opinion?” she eventually asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to decide tonight.”
“I feel like I should.”
“You’re hurt. Decisions made while someone is crying in front of you often become decisions about stopping their crying.”
That stayed with me.
Daniel came back the next morning, and we spent most of the weekend talking.
He apologized repeatedly. He told me the sex meant nothing. He said he had regretted it immediately, talked to Melissa, and made clear it would never happen again.
Then he told me something I had not expected.
“I’ve been saving for a ring.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“A wedding ring.”
“We’re twenty-one.”
“I know. Not now. Someday.”
He opened an app on his phone and showed me a small savings account.
There was money in it.
“I always thought you were the person I’d marry.”
I started crying.
Not because it was romantic.
Because it made everything worse.
“How can you believe I’m the woman you’ll marry and still sleep with someone else?”
“I don’t know.”
There it was again.
I don’t know.
Those three words had become the shelter he ran into whenever responsibility got too close.
He took my hands.
“I screwed up. I was depressed and lonely and confused.”
“So you slept with her.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re going back to California and living in the same house with her until August.”
His face fell.
“I can move eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“I can avoid her.”
“You share a kitchen.”
“I won’t drink with her.”
“You already promised I had nothing to worry about.”
“I know.”
“You promised the break wasn’t about another girl.”
“I know.”
“You promised you would tell me if there was.”
“I know.”
Every promise ended with the same answer.
I know.
By Sunday evening, I was exhausted.
Part of me wanted to forgive him because I loved him. Another part kept picturing his bedroom in California, Melissa down the hall, and me sitting in New York wondering whether a delayed text meant he was busy or betraying me again.
“I can’t do long-distance with you anymore,” I finally said.
Daniel cried again.
“Then I’ll come back.”
“You accepted a yearlong job.”
“I can quit.”
“No.”
“I’ll do it.”
“No, Daniel.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
That question irritated me more than anything else.
“I want you to understand that sometimes there isn’t something you can do.”
He stared at me.
We agreed that when he returned to California, I would take real space. Maybe someday, when he came back east, we could talk again. Maybe we were too young, too inexperienced, too dependent on a relationship that had begun before either of us really knew ourselves.
By the time he left Monday morning, I had weakened.
Three days of seeing him cry, apologizing, making coffee in my kitchen, sleeping beside me, and looking like the boy I had loved since freshman year had blurred the edges of what he had done.
Before leaving, he asked, “Is there any chance?”
I hated myself for answering truthfully.
“Maybe.”
His face filled with hope.
“If I prove it?”
“Maybe.”
He kissed my forehead.
“I’ll prove it.”
After he left, my apartment became very quiet.
Too quiet.
I sat on my couch replaying everything he had said.
Something bothered me.
He claimed the affair had happened suddenly. He claimed he had regretted it the next morning. He claimed Melissa did not care about him and that neither of them had any real interest in the other.
But why had his communication started fading weeks earlier?
Why had the break come exactly when it did?
Why had a man supposedly overwhelmed with guilt waited until he flew across the country to tell me?
And why, after two years of being my best friend, did so many pieces of his story require me not to ask another question?
By midnight, I knew what I had to do.
I opened my laptop.
Then I searched for Melissa.
