Thriving Without Him

When are you going to come apologize?

That was the first thing Gavin said to me in forty-two days.

I'd forgotten we broke up.

(In a few months he would fly across the country to stand in front of me, eyes red, and say sorry for the first time in ten years.

My first reaction would be to laugh.)

Gavin broke up with me again.

This time I was going to do what I did at eighteen, the first time he dumped me. Walk down to the river. Cool off.

The wind coming off the water went straight through my coat. I went home instead.

On the way back I passed the wing place on the corner. I figured I'd be like I was at twenty. Too wrecked to eat.

Turns out the guy has gotten really good with a fryer.

I got home and sat down to do what I did at twenty-two, at twenty-three, at twenty-four, every time Gavin ran his routine breakup on me.

Write him the essay.

Turns out my boss needed me on a plane.

I was busy for almost a month. In another city, my career started having a second wind.

Getting dumped is harder when you're a little older.

So I asked him, careful about it:

"Sorry, sorry. Work's been insane. I forgot to write the essay."

"Should we just . . . call it, then?"

Chapter 1

"Propose? Please. Rowan's not marrying anybody else."

Our friends had just brought it up. Gavin didn't even put his drink down.

"And Vivi's doing bridesmaid. Vivi's been asking me about it for months."

The whole table laughed.

One sentence. He'd said my name once. Rowan. He'd said hers twice. Vivi. Vivi.

Ten years, and he had never once called me Ro.

Somewhere in that sentence I lost track of which mattered more to him. Marrying me, or getting the girl he grew up with into a bridesmaid dress.

I took a sip of water.

"I already have bridesmaids. My college roommates. We made a deal freshman year. Whoever gets married, the rest of us stand up with her."

Gavin didn't look at me. "So add one more."

"Can't. There are exactly four of them. We promised each other. That was ten years ago."

His jaw tightened. "Then find somebody to even it out."

"It's a bridesmaid slot, Rowan. Are you really doing this?"

"Vivi's never been one. Would it kill you to give her that?"

The table had gone quiet. Nobody was surprised anymore. Gavin and I fought like this the way other couples decided where to eat.

They never took sides, because I always apologized. He'd freeze me out for two days and let me talk him back.

Nobody wants a front-row seat to that circus.

This time I didn't move.

"No. It's my wedding. I'll decide."

"Your ten years and my ten years don't look the same."

Gavin came around the table and stopped in front of me.

"And if I insist?"

I didn't answer. I didn't have to.

His face went red. "Then we're done. Rowan. Lose my number."

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the glasses.

Nobody moved. Someone reached over and refilled my water without looking at me.

I said something polite so they could pretend it was fine, and then the advice started.

"Ro's got this. She can handle Gavin. Men, right? Go smooth him over."

"Ro, don't let a man get comfortable. He gets worse. Honestly, you spoil him."

"Oh, and that date you two picked? Mercury's in retrograde that whole week. Let me have my sister's wedding planner move it. She's never had a couple end up divorced yet."

I smiled and said nothing.

I walked for a long time, stopping and starting, going nowhere.

Ten years of us, running behind my eyes.

We met in high school. We made it official in college. We survived two years of long distance and the ugly stretch after we moved in together.

Every stage of it fell apart at least once. Every time, I was the one who put it back.

I've lost count of how many times he broke up with me over Vivienne.

I bought her gifts.

Once. Then again.

Just so she'd stop kicking me while I was down.

I kept my rival happy so my boyfriend wouldn't leave.

I used to ask myself why. Does loving someone have to look like this?

Isn't love supposed to go both ways?

And every time I got close to walking, another voice showed up.

If you quit now, doesn't that make all those years a joke?

So I gritted my teeth and kept going, kept hoping I'd move him, kept hoping we'd get somewhere.

Somewhere along the way I stopped and took out my phone.

The Notes app opened right where I'd left it.

For Gavin.

Ten years. Every single breakup, I wrote the first line here.

The cursor blinked.

This time I didn't type a word.

Chapter 2

I ended up walking past the river.

I used to call it the Crying River. It runs close to my old campus, and starting with the first time Gavin dumped me, it has watched me cry through this entire relationship.

Tonight it was just cold. Before I could even work up to feeling tragic, goose bumps came up on my arms. I pulled my coat tight. Forget it. I'd be sad at home.

I turned around and there was the wing place.

Funny thing, I go there a lot. One night after a fight with Gavin I sat down and ordered fifty wings out of pure spite and couldn't force down a single one.

The guy has gotten seriously good. I'd just come from dinner and the smell still got me. I didn't push it this time, in case history repeated. Twenty wings in, I realized I could go again.

Every time before, I came alone.

Gavin hated the smell of the fryer. He'd never once sat down with me.

I'd order a mountain of food and sit there and not eat any of it.

Tonight I finished everything on the tray.

Something to chew on. Something in my stomach. The hollow place in my chest got a little smaller.

Standing at my own front door, I hesitated. We'd lived here a long time. The apartment was covered in us.

Then I opened the door and saw the trash bag, full, still sitting there. The empty bottles he never threw out. His shoes wherever he'd kicked them off.

The anger came up faster than the heartbreak.

I hauled the trash out. On my way back in I pushed open the bathroom door.

His shampoo was on the counter. A hundred and fifty dollars a bottle, down to the last inch.

Mine was next to it. Drugstore, two for one. It had lasted me two years.

A three-hundred-dollar electric toothbrush. A forty-dollar bottle of cold-pressed juice. A hundred-and-fifty-dollar shampoo.

Ten years, I lived at his standard of living and paid for it out of my own check.

Nothing expensive in this apartment was ever something I wanted.

I did not touch his shampoo.

The fire in my chest burned my tears off before they got anywhere.

I cleaned the whole place.

Then I opened my phone to hide some old posts, so they wouldn't ambush me later. My boss had tagged me in Slack. Notes on my deck.

By the time I closed the file, the sky had gone gray at the edges.

The first day after the breakup had gone by. Just like that.

So that morning, brand-new, running on nothing, I blocked him everywhere.

Gavin didn't come home.

I knew he was waiting for me to cave.

Ten years, and the one who caved was always me.

At eighteen I sat on that riverbank until sunrise.

At twenty-two I stayed up all night writing.

I assumed I'd cave again. I was good at it. Somewhere along the way, folding for love had stopped feeling like something to be ashamed of.

But every time I picked up my phone, something got in the way. A deck due. A client calling.

One thing after another, and it had been eight or nine days since I'd talked to him.

I'd done the thing I was certain I could never do, and I'd done it without noticing, and it hadn't gutted me the way I'd always assumed it would.

At standup that morning, my manager said the client mattered. We needed someone on-site until the project wrapped. Eighteen months, minimum.

My hand was up before he finished.

He looked at me. "No one waiting at home, right?"

"Nope," I said. "Single."

The whole room cracked up. Fair enough. Everyone had heard the legend of me and Gavin.

I raised my hand a little higher.

Nobody in that room knew that the city they were sending me to was the one I'd wanted for years and had never once been allowed to see.

Day nine. I signed myself up for eighteen months.

Chapter 3

My manager asked around for a long time. Nobody else wanted it. Eighteen months away from HQ is a bad career move and everybody in that room knew it.

I wanted it. Some distance from Gavin, a clear head. And the client was in San Diego, which was the city I'd wanted for as long as I could remember.

Gavin would never leave Chicago. Nowhere was more comfortable to him than exactly where he was, so he never went anywhere.

He wouldn't even let me go to San Diego on vacation. Our friends used to say he was scared I'd go and not come back. I'd just smile.

One year for my birthday I sent him a screenshot. Two tickets. Both of us.

It took him a long time to answer. "What's out there? What's wrong with here?"

I told him I wanted to see the ocean.

"You can look at the ocean online."

That night he took me to his usual place and ordered a table full of things I don't eat and told me the chef trained in Europe.

I canceled the tickets from the restroom. The fee wasn't small.

He never knew I'd saved six months of PTO for that trip.

He never asked.

In the end my manager gave it to me. You can't force it on someone.

Before I flew out, he said it three separate times. "Do not bail on me. Whatever happens with that boyfriend of yours, you're giving me eighteen months."

"Consider it done."

The first stretch in San Diego buried me.

Two weeks straight without a day off. I didn't even have time to look for an apartment. I stayed in the hotel the client booked.

It took until the third weekend before I got out and walked around.

Third weekend. Day thirty-one.

It looked more or less like the blogs and the magazines. But standing in it was a different thing entirely.

I stood at the edge of the water for a long time. Nobody was waiting for me to come home.

I was surprised when my mother called.

We hadn't spoken since the last time we blew up at each other, and that was over a year ago.

She'd started in on me about getting married when I was twenty-five and hadn't let up since. When three years of it got her nowhere, she went into my phone, found Gavin's number, and called him herself.

I can imagine exactly what she said to him.

It cost me a month of Gavin not speaking to me.

For a month, everything I sent him went nowhere.

I hadn't done anything.

And I was still the one who caved first.

My mother has a lovely voice. I've never understood how so many awful things come out of it.

"You're really going to turn thirty with nobody? Nobody in this family has ever turned out like you. Not one person."

"Then consider it an education."

"I don't have time for this. Your sister saw your Instagram. Said you broke up with that Gavin. Is that real? Usually you two are back together in a few days. But I've been watching. It's been a while now. Is it actually over?"

"Just say what you want," I said. "I'm working."

"That mouth. Exactly like your father. No wonder the two of you can't be in a room together."

"I'm hanging up."

Her voice came through fast. "Don't, don't. Listen. If you're free this weekend, your aunt found someone for you. Will you go meet him? He works in your city."

"Oh. Probably not my city anymore. I forgot to tell you."

"I moved."

Chapter 4

My mother's voice jumped an octave. "You changed jobs again? Just like that? This is what you've been like since you were a child. Everything has to be your own way."

I wasn't doing this with her. "Is he my aunt's client, or her boss? Or connected to one of them somehow. Otherwise she wouldn't be this invested."

The volume dropped out of her all at once. "He's the son of your cousin's boss. But he's a good catch. Your aunt isn't trying to hurt you."

I don't know how she got that sentence out without stopping.

If she'd been standing in front of me I would have checked her face for it.

"Are you sure about that?"

"Do you have to be so passive-aggressive? So your aunt set you up with someone last year and he took a few liberties. She cried. She apologized to you. She didn't know what he was like. She'd never have introduced you if she'd known."

There was no point saying it. If she didn't know what he was like, why was she introducing him at all.

My aunt. My mother's own sister. She set me up with a man carrying an armed-robbery conviction, and when I turned him down three times, she gave him my address.

If Gavin hadn't come home when he did, I don't know what would have happened in that unlit stairwell.

I found out afterward that he was the nephew of one of her biggest clients. She never checked anything. She asked my mother for a photo, sent it over, and when the client said he liked what he saw she handed over my address before anyone could stop her.

Nobody involved me in a single step of it.

When I said I wanted to file a police report, my aunt told me straight out that she would never testify. She couldn't afford to lose that client.

So nothing happened. Not to my aunt. Not to her client. Not to him.

And now here she was again.

"Tell my aunt to stop trading me for favors. Otherwise don't act surprised when I lose it at Thanksgiving."

"You ungrateful child."

The second the call ended, the whole world went quiet.

I'd never known a silent room could feel that good.

I cleaned up a deck in one pass and dropped it in the channel, and the client team came back with a wall of GIFs, and I let it go to my head a little.

I posted on Instagram.

[Thriving.]

People have always liked me fine. I wasn't expecting the response I got.

The comments started stacking up.

[Ro's in her career era. I've been trying to get you out for a week and you were home working?]

[Working. Sure. Somebody's storming the castle while you sit at your desk. You know that, right?]

[Why is your breakup post still up? Don't tell me you haven't made up yet. Grand gesture not grand enough this time? Your peanut gallery is right here and you don't call.]

I answered them one by one.

[Traveling for work. Drinks when I'm back.]

[The gates are wide open. Nobody's home.]

[Nope.]

The second it posted, a new like popped up at the bottom.

Vivienne.

She liked the one that said Nope.

I'd barely finished replying when my phone rang.

It was the girlfriend of one of Gavin's closer friends. We used to end up at the same dinners.

Just dinners.

Ten years, and she and I had never once called each other.

Not once.

Day thirty-seven, and her name was lit up on my screen.

I looked at it and started to laugh.

Gavin. You finally cracked.

Chapter 5