He'd left in a rush.
"Madison needs me. I have to go take care of her. You can get yourself home, right?"
That night, walking home alone, I realized someone was following me.
I was shaking so hard I could barely keep moving.
I made it as far as a convenience store and ducked inside, and the clerk took pity on me, called the police, and saw me home afterward.
By the time I got there my clothes were soaked through.
The rain left me with acute pneumonia.
While I was in the hospital, he stayed at Madison's side the whole time. Not even a text.
The day I was discharged, I called him.
I'd meant to tell him we should break up. In the end I said nothing at all.
A year ago, on a business trip, I got caught in a robbery at the airport.
Hands trembling, I called him.
"Can you come pick me up?"
He was in the kitchen at the time, making soup for Madison, and all he said was,
"Just grab a cab home. Madison wants chicken soup, I can't get away."
What he didn't know was that not far from me, a man with a knife was attacking people.
One dead, one wounded.
The injured man was less than two hundred yards from where I stood.
I walked out of that terror by myself, and he never even asked whether I'd made it home safe.
It's not that it didn't hurt.
But I loved him.
And because I loved him, I always found more room to forgive.
He'll get better with time, I told myself.
Then I lost the baby, and I finally couldn't keep lying to myself.
I answered my friend calmly.
"You're right. He's the one who doesn't deserve me."
All along, my love had been pure and fierce.
He was the one who could never hold it. He took everything I gave, every sacrifice, as his due, and left every hurt and every grievance of mine to rot.
So I'm done with him.
My life went on the way it always had, steady, unremarkable.
The only difference was that I stopped resisting matchmaking dates.
I started letting myself meet different men, get to know all kinds of people.
Back when I was with Adam, I didn't have a single male friend.
I never wore the floral dresses and short shorts I liked, only because he didn't like them.
Now I lived entirely on my own terms.
A month slipped by just like that. I thought it would stay this way for good.
Then one day I was having dinner at a restaurant with a man I'd recently met.
I looked up and saw Adam, not far off.
The man across from me was gently settling on a time and place for our next meeting.
Adam came over with a thunderous face and stopped right in front of us.
"So you couldn't wait to line up your next guy."
Seeing him again, hearing something that ugly, my face went cold.
"It's none of your business."
He let out a scornful laugh.
"Deborah, are you done throwing this fit?"
He held out a box.
"I brought this back from Iceland for you. See if you like it."
The mention of a gift struck me as bitterly funny.
"Is it another thing Madison didn't want?"
He blinked, thrown.
He probably hadn't expected this blunt, sharp side of me.
He reined himself in and spoke.
"Deborah, I know I've neglected you lately. I'll do my best to—"
I cut him off, impatient.
"Adam, we've already broken up. You don't need to say any of this to me."
His patience ran out completely.
"How long are you going to keep this up?"
"You know perfectly well Madison's young and doesn't think things through, and you still have to hold it against her."
"Calling off the wedding, getting rid of the baby, you don't think you're being unreasonable? You want me to just abandon Madison, leave her to fend for herself? You know that's impossible."
