The Cost of Goodbye

I’m thinking of you this morning. It’s not unusual, really. You, who are continuously in my background these days, like reruns of The Office as I work, or the way I gently stroke the cat with my toes when she’s under my feet.

Mindless musings: is your ankle hurting from soccer? Did the bumper get fixed?

Are you okay? (Are you the same?) Are you happy? (Don’t the nights seem long?)

I hope you help your mother with dishes. Or maybe you found an apartment by now. Do you use the towels I left? (I know I let you down, too)

Thoughts with no end: questions unanswered. Maybe it just feels familiar still, to wonder. So many mornings spent considering our future, and there you’d appear around the office door to break my thought: “You feelin’ eggs today hun?”

I wake to an email from Amazon. A groggy flip of the hand, vibrating against the cool pillow:

“Your Subscribe & Save Body Spray,” it informs me, will arrive tomorrow at the apartment we no longer live. 

Hadn’t I canceled that by now? I sigh, remembering when I’d first subscribed; how we’d rolled out of bed to shower, late and disheveled, having just moved into our apartment: Empty boxes strewn through the rooms, kitty leaping in and out throughout the night. Your dog dragging bubble wrap till it popped so loud we peered out windows, certain of gunfire.

We were disorganized, in chaos, and giddy, or so I like to remember. A coffee pot our only upright, unpackaged appliance – the smell of new paint, a half-drank wine bottle on the wood floor and our clothes spilling out of suitcases: 

A towel tucked around your waist, I remember how you closed your eyes and sprayed Axe Apollo in the bathroom. “You put on SO much,” I’d exclaimed, myself showering with travel shampoo from a suitcase. “You’re so weird." In retrospect, it was probably the 90th time I’d made that observation since we’d met in Colombia but it felt original, now, seeing you do it in Canada.

You smiled, glancing through the fogged bathroom window with your signature half grin. In retaliation, you dramatically sprayed even more until the fumes mixed with the shower heat and I coughed, making a gesture: “get out of here, we’re gonna go broke keeping you smelling like sage.”

“What can I say?” you shared proudly. “I’m a vain man,” before sliding the glass open and kissing me on the forehead.

“I’m putting you on Amazon Subscribe & Save,” I grumbled, accepting the kiss. “Our hard-earned money isn’t going to individual cans of butane.”

“Fine,” you smirked. “Just don’t get one of those knock off brands, you cheap ass.”

I’d smiled then, watching you wade off into the bedroom to playfully scold the dog as she ran in circles on our new mattress on the floor:

In that period, I was smug with the illusion of love. That by you merely noting my penchant for saving a buck, our love was secure, even free. Our faults on the table, exposed and comfortable.

It felt like we had everything we needed to make it.

The packages of silverware and decor to come – furniture shipments scheduled for the weeks ahead:

Now, I talk in circles, and I still don’t understand where it went. Or if I ever really felt that way, or just remember it as such now.

I guess it’s not that I don’t understand. It’s that I still don’t accept it. Aren't we really still just one choice away from spending lazy Sundays on that Medellin balcony?

Coincidentally, you email shortly after I cancel the subscription this morning. It’s a confirmation that you’ve sent the money you owe this month. You wish me well in a clipped tone, extending a nod to my storage unit loss.

I wonder who told you about it. Mostly, I wonder if you mean it.

The irony not lost that as I write about your once playful chiding of my financial discipline, here you are simultaneously paying me back for a slew of expenses I documented over our time together.

I’d laugh if I wasn’t so righteous. But I am, and I doubt you’d laugh back: your face so tense when I presented you with the spreadsheet of debts, I thought you’d get up and leave the restaurant immediately there in Montreal. I think you sucked down 4 rum and cokes instead.

For what it’s worth, I still think I’m right. I just don’t know if being right bears you the life you want.

For what it’s really worth, it breaks my heart to receive your money. And I imagine, it always will.

For what it’s truly worth, in my heart, you still pay no rent. And I gather, never will <3