He went into the bathroom to take a piss, then turned the faucet on, splashing his face with cold water. He looked at his reflection, the mirror of his extravagant bathroom. The offending shower, the scene of the crime, stood behind his reflection, still dewy from recent use.

This is my fault.

He had seen the warning signs and ignored them. She had insisted she was fine, and he accepted it, knowing it was not true. He accepted it, because seeing things for what they really were was inconvenient. Uncomfortable. Same as it had been with Sirvan.

Is this just a function of human nature? he wondered. Is this just something we do, over and over—we identify patterns, we identify problems, and we tell ourselves that we’ve figured it out. We tell ourselves that next time it will be different, next time we will know better, next time we won’t make the same mistake. But then we do.

And then something stirred in him, something else he had likewise denied, or at least ignored—feelings. The type of feelings that one is referring to when one says, I am developing feelings for you. And what to do about that? How to separate his own desires from what was best for her? Stay with me, but let’s stop fucking? What message would that send her other than I no longer find you attractive now that I’ve seen how crazy you can get? No matter how much he insisted otherwise, the only lesson she would take from it would be: I have messed up, and now I am being punished. He is withholding affection, because I have messed up. Strangely, perversely, it just wasn’t true. He knew that many of these feelings were born out of a desire to “save” her, but that didn’t mean his feelings weren’t real.

He buried his head in his hands, running his wet fingers through his curls and shaking his head. The absolute worst thing he could do to her right now would be to abandon her, emotionally, physically, or materially. He tore himself away from his reflection and went back into the bedroom, only to see that she was gone, and the balcony door was open. He dashed across the room and through the open balcony door, and found her outside, not one story down on the ground as he’d feared but huddled in the corner of the balcony, her back up against the wrought iron rails.

“Kaveh, I’m so sorry.”

“I . . .” He didn’t know what to say to that. It’s okay certainly wasn’t it.

Her nostrils flared, the skin around them grew red, and her eyes developed a glossy sheen. “I won’t do it again, I swear.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Her sadness swelled into the beginnings of panic. “I swear, I won’t do it again.”