When I pulled away from him he held my arms out so he could look at me fully, sliding his eyes up and down to size up my body. In that moment, he became just a drunk, successful man again, rather than a person leveled by grief. He nodded and smiled at me, shook his head in appreciation. I was wanted. I had passed some kind of test.

On the drive home, I thought about Bobby trying to meet women in bars. How he’d do it, if he’d succeed or not—what strategies and tactics he’d employ. I wanted him to win—to regain his masculinity and to feel wanted by someone again. It was strange for me not to feel any hostility toward him. I had spent much of our relationship cataloguing grievances and resentments, employing them as needed during arguments like dozens of small poison darts. I liked to catch him off guard, especially when things were going well. A nice dinner, a nice walk. I was expert at wrecking them. We had been trapped, one of those couples who sat in uncomfortable silence across wooden tables at low-lit restaurants. The kind that we shared horrified glances about when we first got together, silently assuring one another that we’d never end up like that. The progression was gradual, though.

When we were married I used to stay up late worried that Bobby would meet someone else. I did not become a person who checked his phone or his computer until a few years in. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Nothing I wasn’t doing myself.

BOBBY TEXTED ME to invite me over to his apartment—our old apartment—to catch up one evening. I knew it was an innocuous invitation. We had remained something like friends, texting each other every so often, him mostly, to give updates. Trips, friends we had heard from and those we had not.

I drove past our old apartment frequently. It did not hurt. Once, I had begged a friend to drive me past an ex-lover’s house, and we sat there for fifteen minutes while I searched for how to feel, looking for a weight that was not there. Why had I always been trying to inflict meaning on people, places, and things? They didn’t need to hurt. But maybe I couldn’t allow myself to feel anything besides pain. Everything else—happiness, contentment—felt unsafe.

When I got to Bobby’s, I walked up assuredly, like I still lived there. I saw old neighbors who had watched me walk out with my boxes. We smiled at each other like nothing had happened. Like I was coming home from work again. Like I hadn’t been missing for weeks.