"You never chose me, remember?"
I don't look at him when I say it. I can't bear to watch his face when he confirms it.
The silence is the answer, and we both know it.
I nod once, slowly. Something in my chest closes like a door being pulled shut from the other side.
My voice drops back into the register I use for client calls and difficult conversations.
"Then we should break up. That will solve the problem."
He turns toward me sharply, and it's the first fully unguarded thing he's done all night. The first real thing.
"Tessa—"
My hand finds the door handle before he finishes saying my name. I pause with it cracked open, and the night air comes in cold and immediate against my face, smelling like wet pavement and almost-autumn.
"I'll still come to the wedding."
"You don't have to," he says, and his voice is lower now, rougher, like something in it has been rubbed the wrong way.
"For Eleanor."
I let the door open a little wider, and the cold fills all the space between us that we never quite managed to close. I add the last part softly, because soft is the only way to make it stick.
"Not for you."
