That hurts. God, does it. I’ve seen that life. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. In his mind, I’m just some possibility that could have been, but in my mind, he’s the only possibility.

I step close to him, close enough to see the stubble on his cheeks. I reach up to touch it, and it scrapes against the tender side of my hand. Kit closes his eyes. “There’s a house uptown on Washington; we live there together in that life,” I say softly. “Everything is green, green, green in our backyard. We have two children, a boy and a girl. She looks like you,” I say. “But she acts like me.” I caress his cheek because I know it’s the last time I’m going to get to do it. Kit’s eyes are open and storming. I run my teeth across my bottom lip before I continue. “In the summer, we make love outside, against the big wooden table that still holds our dinner dishes. And we talk about all the places we want to make love.” I lick the tears from my lip where they are pooling. Running in a straight line down my cheeks, a leaky faucet. “And we’re so happy, Kit. It’s like a dream every day.” I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss him softly on the lips, letting him taste my tears. He’s staring at me so hard I want to crack. “But, it’s just a dream, isn’t it?”

Before I move away, I touch the crease between his eyes. He hasn’t said a word, but his mouth is puckered into this angry frown. He has less right to say things now. I understand.

“Here,” I say. I hold out my fist, and he lifts his hand. I drop the wine cork into his palm. “Will you do me a favor?”

He’s looking at the cork; I can see the confusion on his face. There are a hundred things going on behind his eyes. I point to the water.

“Throw it in,” I say.

“Is this the … why?”

“Just do it,” I plead, closing my eyes. “Please.”

He’s struggling. He wants to say more, but he turns to the water and lifts his arm above his head. I can only see it for a second before it disappears into the dark.

There. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Goodbye, Kit,” I say.

There are days—many of them. I can’t tell you what happened on those days: who I met, who I spoke to, what I ate. I definitely can’t recall the details of my thoughts, only that my dread jangled around the quiet corners of my mind until I couldn’t keep it sectioned off from anything. It soaked into work, and into home. Into my dealings with customers, and my phone calls with my parents. I was dreading life without him, and that was a sad, sad thing.

Numbness. That came next. After weeks of feeling pain so potently, it was a welcome relief. It is what it is, I tell myself. And I feel so proud that I made it to the point of nothingness.

But, then it comes back. Fucker. I don’t expect that. I wake up one morning with the sun streaming through my window. The sun, for God’s sake. Isn’t this the land of no sun? I roll over onto my stomach and pull a pillow over my head. And that’s when it happens. Everything comes rushing back—the intensity of what I feel for him, the dream right down to the ridiculous Pottery Barn couch, and the way he left with a big fat sorry. I can see the sinews in his neck pulled taut when I close my eyes. The full lower lip that falls into a pout when he’s thinking about something. I know his smell—not of his cologne—but his actual skin. I think of the day in his closet when he caught me smelling his shirt. God, that seems like forever ago. I am so devastated. So utterly devastated.

I tell Phyllis. It’s an accident, really. I’m browsing through knitted hats that look like doilies when she suddenly smiles at me from behind the register. I start to cry right away. It’s not even normal crying—it’s an ugly cry.

“Hurt of this magnitude is like menopause,” Phyllis tells me. I’ve just wiped my nose with one of the hats. She takes it from me and hands me a tissue. “Comes in hot flashes. Just when you feel like you can’t take it anymore, it passes for a bit. But it comes back, boy does it.”

I nod, but Phyllis is wrong. It never passes, and it never pauses. It’s like a fist clutched around my heart, squeezing all day long. The only thing that eases the pressure is when I’m working. You can distract a mind for a little bit, but when the heart and mind work together, they’re cruel. Phyllis sends me off with the hat I used to wipe my nose—as a gift. It takes me a few days to notice the glances. People in town seem to know. I’m in the Conservatory picking up something to send to my mom for her birthday when the owner touches my hand. I look up, startled. I’m hardly ever touched nowadays. I almost cry because everything makes me cry.

“Just so you know,” she says, “we were all rooting for you.”

I blink away the tears. I can’t speak. I don’t know whether or not to thank her, so I grab my purchase and nod at her before walking quickly from the store. When I mention it to Greer later that evening, she frowns at me.

“Did you really think that no one knew? This is a small town, Helena. When a golden boy like Kit follows a girl around town with a bottle of wine in his hand, people get excited.”

“He wasn’t … he didn’t…”

Greer rolls her eyes. “He’s clearly in love with you. Too bad he knocked that girl up.”

Her words take my breath away. Kit … in love with me? No. That is laughable. I do laugh a little bit. I haven’t heard from Kit or Della in weeks. As far as I know, they are painting their nursery some puke shade of gender neutral. I’ll just be over here in magic town licking my wounds. Drinking my wine. Slowly dying inside. Being melodramatic. Clinging to a dream I had once that changed everything I thought I wanted. I miss him so bad. I am too afraid to look at pictures. Too afraid to remember the way he sucked on my lips like they were candy. It is all a slippery slope. Me sitting in the dark with wine dribbling down my chin. Hating Della for touching him. Hating him for letting her. Where does it end? It doesn’t. That’s why you have to put it away.