“I mean, to be fair, I did cheat on her. But still. It was a bit dramatic.”
Teddy looked at the spaghetti sauce, now cold and unappetizing on her plate.
Richard shoveled food into his mouth. “I can’t believe how hungry I am now that we got THAT over with. Why is Céline Dion playing?”
Teddy realized, as regret washed over her, that she wouldn’t ever be able to listen to “My Heart Will Go On” again without thinking of the time Richard unceremoniously dumped her over a plate of spaghetti. Not that she’d listened to it much since elementary school, anyway, but it was the principle of the thing.
“I can turn it off,” Teddy mumbled, pulling her phone out of her pocket.
“I’m so glad you already knew I was going to ask you to move out,” Richard said, his mouth full. “But I’m not surprised. You always kinda know what I’m thinking before I do.”
“You want me to . . . move out?” Teddy whispered.
Richard shrugged. “One of us has to leave, and it’s not like you could afford the town house on what you make at the toy store, you know? So it makes sense.”
Teddy nodded. “Right. It makes sense.”
“I knew I couldn’t be the only one who realized something was off,” Richard said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “And think of it this way: maybe this will be the motivation you finally need to figure out what you want to do with your life.”
Teddy recoiled in confusion. “What?”
“Well.” Richard chuckled, and Teddy noticed that he had a piece of oregano stuck in his teeth. “It’s not like it’s some secret that you don’t know what you want, Teddy. That’s kind of the difference between you and me, isn’t it? I’ve always wanted to do something big, be a doctor, help people. And you . . . well, you’ve always had a smaller life. I guess we should’ve known it wouldn’t work forever.”
Teddy willed herself not to cry. Okay, so she hadn’t known what she wanted when she met Richard in college . . . but that was what Richard was for, right? He was the thing she wanted. She didn’t have to worry about figuring out what she should do with her life because she could focus on making Richard’s the best it could be. She’d spent years making things as easy as possible for Richard, she thought as she 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.
As they waited for their drinks, he got a phone call and walked away from the counter, and then out the door. The barista set down an Americano for Richard, and Teddy watched him outside, pacing as he talked on his phone. He was going to forget his drink, or someone else was going to grab it, Teddy realized. For the first time in a while, she felt a sense of purpose. She’d bring him his coffee.
He hung up the phone as soon as she walked up to him, holding out the cup. “Didn’t want you to forget this,” she’d said quietly.