One Day, I Like to Think You’ll Thank Me for Leaving

The sun sets over the lake as we pull into the public parking lot, and as you put your arm behind my seat to reverse into a spot, I ask about the fee. 

“I got it don’t worry,” you say, pushing the stick into park and stepping out of our white Subaru we’ve agreed to sell back to the dealership tomorrow. 

Before heading to the kiosk, you walk to my side while I apply lipstick with the mirror and open my door. “Here you go.”

A small, familiar gesture really, not unexpected, but given our circumstances, I find the courtesy still touching.

It’s three nights before I’ll leave Montreal. Three nights before our apartment belongs to someone else. And three nights before our life together is over. 

Earlier, we’d stood hunched over in the living room, digging nails out from the walls, taking art pieces down in measured breaths. “Jesus,” you sighed. “Really drove that one in didn’t you?”

“You did actually,” I’d shot back, squinting at the small nail head in the wall. “I told you we had to use the base but you ignored me. Brute-forced it anyway.”

In the recent past this would’ve caused an argument, and the energy between us briefly intensifies as I prepare for the tone I assume you’ll take. 

This time however, you let it go, finishing the removal of the nail in silence instead.

Thank you, I want to say but don’t. For holding back in a way I can’t seem to master these days.

“Want to grab dinner?” you asked, a few minutes later. “Maybe near the lake? I know you haven’t eaten much today; don’t lie to me.”

Food and my eating habits a perpetual tension, I immediately protested, telling you that I have in fact eaten enough today. But, you cut me off mid-sentence. 

“Linds,” you said, in the authoritative voice I still appreciate when not directed at me. “Eat dinner with me okay?”

And when I nodded, you pulled for the car keys in your pocket and tossed the nail on the kitchen counter; the sound of it hitting granite echoes in the emptying apartment. The way you blinked signaled we both heard the harshness of that sound. 

— 

On the 20-minute drive to the lake, we crack the windows and listen to your usual playlist filled with Colombian reggaeton and Quebec French rap. Throughout our relationship, I found it selfish how often you’d command the music, assuming the Bluetooth the moment the engine started. But overtime, as my fondness for Reggaeton and Bad Bunny begrudgingly grew, I often wondered if perhaps I had experienced some sort of music Stockholm Syndrome. 

Tonight though, I don’t mind so much — whether your music is selfish or not.

It all seems very trivial in retrospect.

Instead, let me watch you as you are: without show, without nerves.

The way you drive with one tattooed hand draped over the wheel, the black rose and cross reflecting in the dash window. How your long frame leans casually in the seat as you sing along to whichever Trueno or Bizzarap song currently tops your list. 

In case I didn’t say it enough — and it’s likely I never did:

You remain effortlessly cool.

And at the end of my life, as the credits play, I imagine an image will appear of you in the brown leather driver seat of our white Subaru, your black jeans hugging just below your waist and NY hat turned back. The way you drive so confident, I never once looked ahead.

After paying, you head back from the kiosk as I wander toward you across the gravel lot.

Staring down at your phone, I hear a Colombian soccer announcer’s excitable Spanish drift in the breeze as you smile down at whatever play just occurred. And as I try to decipher in my inept Spanish, to the left of us a car pulls in with screeching speed, clipping gravel toward us beneath its tire. As I put my hands up, you glance quickly and drop your phone, pulling me behind you before stepping to the car:

“Ay tu puta madre,” you curse as the car slows sheepishly beside us. I stay behind you as you cycle through your native tongues. “Slow the fuck down, you’re in a parking lot bro.”

You mumble a couple additional phrases in French, then turn to pick up your phone: “Jesus you okay?” And I nod as you dust the screen off on your jeans. “Thank you, yeah. I’m fine, just startled me.”

As we spill into the sidewalk, I think of the many times you have stepped in front of me without hesitancy: the numerous occasions you have shielded me with your height. The festival lines when they grew rowdy, the intersections we precariously crossed in Medellin when you’d drape your shoulder over mine and move me to the opposing side of traffic, the nights I’d bounce tipsily down a dark alley, unaware and naive as I’ve always been: “stay by me,” you’d say —

In these final hours, how do I begin to thank you for all the ways I never had to fear?

As if reading my thoughts, you quietly come up behind me and wrap your arms around my chest, hugging me gently as I wrap my fingers around your forearm. We walk in tandem like this down the street til we reach the restaurant.

A simple act of love, I think.

As familiar as it is jarring.

And I miss you even though I’m with you.  

At dinner, the hostess seats us outside and as we scan the drink menu, you share how when you lived near here you used to come to this restaurant frequently. 

“Why?” I ask, but I sense that I already know. 

“Some girl,” you grin. 

“Of course.”

“I was like 23,” you say. “She was a bit older too, actually.”

“Seems you’ve always liked older women,” I say pointedly. 

“I guess so,” you nod. “Except, I mean, my ex before you was my age though. I’ve really only had two girlfriends. One just lasted 7 years and well,” you look at me. “I guess the other only like 7 months.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Shush. We lasted longer than that.”

“We didn’t even make it through a one year lease Linds.”

“Yeah, but we were together before Montreal. All that time in Medellin.”

“Except you couldn’t decide if you really wanted to be with me.”

I sigh as the waitress reappears to hand us our drinks. “I’m so tired of talking about that I could scream honestly. My doubts then were because of exactly what happened, exactly what we’re living out now.”

You roll your eyes and look to the waitress. “We’re ready whenever.” 

Once our order is placed, a silence falls as we momentarily consider how to navigate the current conversation. 

Ever defensive, like a feral cat trapped in the corner, I prepare for you to bite back on what I’ve said – and my mind kicks into overdrive as I ponder which angles to fight. 

But instead, I’m surprised when you grin slightly, moving my water glass aside and taking my free hand on the table.

“I know you’re ready to fight,” you say, cupping it with your own. “But Linds I’m not fighting anymore. I just can’t. It’s okay. You couldn’t wait for me. I get it.”

“You don’t,” I say, but I squeeze your hand gently anyway. “Maybe one day you will.”

“Maybe.”

“And one day, you’ll thank me.”

“Is that so?”

I nod. “For giving you back your freedom, your youth. Your time. I think so.”

“I never asked for it back,” you quip, and I see you about to say more but stop.

“But I guess we’ll see.”

“I guess we will.”

—

By the end of our meal, we’ve returned to more light hearted banter, and as we dissect the latest Love is Blind episode I find it delicate and I find it beautifully complex —

How two individuals can exist in the same conversation, perfectly in step one moment, and worlds apart in the next.

As we drift topics to our parents and their summer plans, I allow the ache in my heart to sit with us at the table, knowing how these seemingly ordinary and forgetable exchanges will one day soon be the ones I miss most.

“They’re traveling,” I say. “In Europe for a month, Utah the next. I never really know where they are on any given day.”

“And they wonder how they raised a butterfly daughter like you,” you joke. “So I assume your dad’s gonna retire soon? He mentioned it at Christmas I remember.”

“You know how he is,” I roll my eyes. “The man should’ve quit a decade ago, but I think he’s scared to not work.”

You nod. “My dad the same.”

“Your dad’s younger though,” I point out. “My parents are retirement age. Yours are still a decade from it, I’d think. Probably when you’re around my age they will.”

“Who knows,” you ponder. “They may move to Spain, or back to Colombia. I don’t know. They love Canada but I wouldn’t be surprised if they leave.”

“And you?” I ask, looking at you over my glass of wine. “Would you?”

“Move back to Colombia?” You shake your head. “That was never my dream Linds. I only wanted to if you did.”

“You lived there before me,” I say. “Who’s to say you wouldn’t again?”

“And do what?” Yours tone shifts slightly. “I was barely 25. Life was different. I worked remote, had an easy job — I just wanted to be single and do my thing,” you pause.

“And then I met some batshit older gringita,” you smirk. “And she stole my youth. Now I can never go back.”

“You’re still young,” I roll my eyes. “And you still work remote. You are free to do it all over again if you choose.”

You look away. “I don’t want to though. I need stability. I want a home. I’m not like you, I can’t jump around. The way you live — it’s not what I want.”

“You don’t say,” I quip.

And to that, you smile — but it doesn’t quite reach your eyes:

A quiet resignation instead, to what we've both known for most of our time —long before we were ready to admit it.

—

After dinner, we wander tipsy towards our car in the overhead of the street lights, listening to the quiet waves of the lake lap onto shore. It’s deserted now, the early Sunday diners back in their homes for the week. Our hands brush against one another but don’t fasten.

“Ice cream?” You ask. “For old times sake?”

“I don’t know, I ate a lot already.”

“Live a little,” you groan. “Besides, I only have three more days of making sure you eat enough.”

I smile in the dark and lean into you, close enough that your arm can drape over my shoulder. And you take the hint.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “I’ll take a cone. With Pistachio.”

“You’re welcome, Linds.”

Shortly after:

“Pistachio’s so gross though. What are you - fucking 90?”

And I laugh.

—

As we drive back to our apartment, I lick the ice cream as it slowly melts over the cone. With the windows rolled down, Bad Bunny’s latest single streams into the ears of each neighboring car as you slow at the stoplights.

In this past, this would embarrass me: the perception of what people must think when they look over to a small, mid-30s American white girl in a Subaru amidst a slew of harshly worded Spanish verses and sexy beats.

How ridiculous I always felt I looked against your effortless suave. How mismatched I worried we always were —

When I begin to sing along disjointedly, the few phrases I’ve deciphered in my intermediate Spanish tongue, you smile as we stare out the window in front of us.

“You’re gettin’ better Linds, keep up the lessons when you’re gone.”

As the song ends, and we turn down the Boulevard to our fading home, you lean over the console and grab my hand from my lap — your fingers interlacing with mine in the familiar way they always have.

And I know, right then and there:

I’ll miss you far longer than I had the chance to love you.