“So that’s it?”

But he wouldn’t answer, and Garret couldn’t bring himself to ask the usual follow-ups. Can’t we talk about this? Can’t I have a chance to be better? Can’t you just say it—say it out loud—say that you don’t love me anymore?

Under normal circumstances, he would ask. He would push. Under normal circumstances, the guilt trips and veiled accusations would well up and spill out of his body, a wild flood of hurt needing to hurt back. Under normal circumstances, it felt natural—good, even—to be unfair, to be venomous, to be wounded animal. Coiled self-preservation was so much easier than opening.

But these were not normal circumstances. This was Tom, and his car was running in the driveway, open trunk waiting to be fed the last bag of loose things. And it was Tom’s face that stopped up the torrent inside him, something in it, something Garret had never seen before. There was no righteous fury, no ember of searing indignation. There was only sadness.

This was new, and it froze the fire that had always fomented Garret’s choicest words. It stopped up his throat like a dry pill and tied down his tongue. It sucked the burgeoning tears back down and drew him into silent passivity. This was not a fight. This was a funeral.

Almost ceremoniously, Tom rested the remaining artifacts of his presence there in a Safeway bag: nail clippers, a phone charger, a couple of thumb drives, the magnet he had brought home from a business trip to Sydney.

Garret remembered the day that Tom had come back with that magnet. It had actually been a private joke. (“Bring me back something nice,” Garret had said. “Really nice this time; if I get another t-shirt I’m donating it.”) Tom had brandished the 50¢ token like it was the cure for infectious disease and slapped the thing on the fridge. They laughed, made love. Cooked something inedible. Ordered takeout. That day had unfurled slowly, so slowly as if to pretend it were eternity. The red fingers of afternoon light murmured through the slit blinds, inched across their bodies as if they had forever. Garret had been so full that day, so submerged in sun and sweetness that he thought his body might give up on him then and there. And it would have been okay.

Now, that day hung in his chest like an anchor. Garret ran his fingers tenderly along it as he watched Tom grab the Safeway bag, look around the room one more time, and go.

He didn’t say anything—there was nothing to say. Under normal circumstances, he might have tried to stop him. Under normal circumstances, he might have begged. But these were not normal circumstances. This was the only person he had ever loved. And so, he watched. He watched Tom close the door softly behind him like a coffin. Listened to the sound of the trunk door croaking shut outside. And he let Tom go.