When it appears at the far end of the parking lot, she stands up and pulls a bus pass from a pocket in her shorts I hadn’t even felt.

“I’m sorry,” I say as the bus winds through the parking lot towards us. “I fucked up, and I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. So, if this is the last time you talk to me, I just want you to know that I’m sorry. Really fucking sorry.”

Jourdan doesn’t say anything, but her eyelashes flutter, and her throat is working. I swear she’s about to say something, and maybe if I’d said something sooner, she might have had the chance. But then her bus pulls along the curb and opens its door.

Jourdan jogs up the steps. She doesn’t look back.

I watch her walk to the back of the bus before it pulls away.

“Fuck!” I shout when she’s gone. Thankfully, there’s no one here to see me lose my shit, not that I would have cared. “Fuck.”

square one

Jourdan unmatches us before I ever even make it home.

I’ve never been dumped before. I was nerdy and timid and never went on a single date in high school. I met Nadia freshman year in college and nurtured the most pathetic puppy-dog crush on her for a year. She was oblivious to how I felt about her, but we were friends, and being in her presence was enough. But when we arrived back on campus for the start of sophomore year, she looked at me differently, and I made sure not to miss my chance. We’ve been together ever since.

Getting dumped for the first time in your thirties is a lot to handle; it bruises my apparently very fragile ego. I’m a wreck for days. I certainly take it harder than Nadia. Maybe because I’m the one who met Jourdan in person, or because it’s my fault she stops talking to us. Maybe all of the above.

Either way, for two weeks, I feel like I’m in a fog. Nadia listens when I explain what happened, but she doesn’t judge; she doesn’t tell me what I did wrong or ask me to rehash the story again and again. She consoles me, orders pizza from my favorite spot — which makes the boys’ week — and every morning, as soon as we’re both awake, she crawls on top of me and rides me slowly, telling me how much she loves me and how happy she is to be spending her life with me.