Rebecca puts down her cup of tea and leans back on the couch. “The past couple of years, you made me feel more rejected than wanted.” She looks at me from under her lashes, as though waiting for me to change my tune and blame it all on her again. She was the one who cheated after all. The obvious guilty party.

“I see that now.”

“We had some serious lesbian bed death going on, and every time I tried to talk to you about it, you blew me off.”

Yesterday, when I was talking to Camille about this on the phone, I had just woken up and I was still groggy with sleep. But I knew, as soon as I opened my eyes, that I wanted to be honest with her about how things ended with Rebecca. Really honest. Not the sort of honesty I’d been practicing with myself and everyone else, casting all the blame on Rebecca because it was so much easier than owning up to my own shortcomings.

“It was hard. Too hard for me, I guess,” I say.

“I think, in the end, it was a clear sign we’d grown apart.”

“There’s a cliché phrase if ever there was one.” I manage a smile.

“I don’t mean it like that.” Nothing about Rebecca is menacing today. She has had a lot of time to think this over as well. Actually, she’s had more. Because she came to the conclusion that we were over before I did. And it hurt that she made the decision without me, but in this either, I’m not blameless.

“We both made mistakes.” I clear my throat. “But truth be told, when you told me that you’d be searching elsewhere for affection if I didn’t give you any some time soon, I really didn’t think you meant it.” I can smile at it now—a little. It wasn’t even a blazing row we had when she said that. We were never the screaming-arguments-at-each-other type. We always kept it civil. Maybe too civil. Maybe we should have said what we meant more often.

“I didn’t mean it. Of course, I didn’t.”

“Looks to me like you did.” This is far more difficult than yesterday, when the words came easier, and Camille put them into immediate perspective for me. But I need to do this. Rebecca and I need to have this conversation. It’s far too late for anything but closure, yet it seems to be what I need. It feels as though I must finish one chapter—the Rebecca one—before I can start on the next one with Camille.

Rebecca tilts her head. “It was a little more complicated than that and I think you know that.”

“I do.”