blinked back tears. She should fully commit and make this breakup as easy as possible, too.
“Great dinner, by the way,” Richard said, getting up from the table without clearing his plate. “Could probably use more garlic next time, though, don’t you think? Oh, and, uh, not to be pushy, but when do you think you’re going to leave?”
“Leave?” Teddy asked. Tonight she couldn’t stop repeating Richard’s words, since she couldn’t seem to find any of her own.
“I just think that the sooner you go, the easier it will be,” Richard said, wincing. “For both of us.”
Teddy stood up and carried their plates to the sink. “Right. I’ll leave tonight and come back for my stuff soon.”
Teddy knew that she should have probably done something to convince Richard that they should stay together. There must have been something she could say to remind him that they’d been together for years, that they loved each other, that she did nothing but take care of him.
But then . . . that was the problem, wasn’t it? Richard didn’t want her the way she was; he wanted someone else, someone more.
He stood in the middle of the living room, arms crossed. He didn’t look devastated or remotely sad. He looked like a man who was about to kick back with a relaxing night of single-camera sitcoms on Netflix.
“Well . . . ,” he said, and Teddy thought, This is it. This is the part where he says it was a mistake, that we should be together, that this doesn’t make sense. That we work so well together, that he appreciates me making his life so easy, that he knows he never would’ve picked out that beautiful area rug he’s standing on without me. That he needs me.
“You need any help?” he asked, the same way he might have asked to help carry some groceries.
This was the end, then. This was the way things were happening, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to change it.
2
In her car, as soon as the reality of what had happened sank in, Teddy burst into tears. She didn’t like to cry in front of Richard, because he was one of those people who got uncomfortable around tears, as if sadness was a contagious disease. But now, in the comfort of the front seat and as the radio played a commercial for a heating-and-cooling company, she let them fall.
She’d texted her best friends, Eleanor and Kirsten, before she got in the car and warned them that she was coming over. Even though she loved them, she didn’t see them all that much, since she was always with Richard. As far as they knew, she and Richard were the perfect couple, so the breakup would no doubt be as surprising for them as it had been for Teddy.
So while Eleanor and Kirsten were two of the kindest people Teddy knew, she didn’t know how they’d respond to her showing up on their doorstep, tearstained and also spaghetti stained. Especially because she had no idea where she’d be staying until she could figure out how to get her own place. Technically, there was her mother, although she would probably give Teddy a laminated to-do list of all the ways she could get her life back on track. She knew Sophia, her sister, would take her in, but she had two children and a husband. And then there was her boss, Josie, who was like a second mother to her . . . but Teddy would feel embarrassed to admit to Josie how low she’d really sunk.
Richard had been her life since the day they’d met at a crowded Starbucks. Teddy had been there because, as a third-year undecided Arts and Sciences major, she was reading Heart of Darkness for the third time. For some reason, every lit professor she’d had loved discussing that book. Teddy may have been undecided, but she knew what she didn’t want: to read Heart of Darkness again. And so she’d decided that a caramel macchiato might make the process, if not pleasurable, at least tolerable.
Richard had been in line in front of her. She listened to him order an Americano as she stared at the back of his head and the perfect swirl of his golden hair. She could tell by the way he stood—tall, confident, shoulders back—that he was someone who knew what he wanted. He probably wasn’t on his third year of being undecided.