In my desperation to gain control over something in my life, I decide I need to break up with G now, before I get any more confused. I cannot make a decision about the pregnancy while I’m still enmeshed with him. The conversation we had the night before I left for Ushuaia has filled me with dread, and breaking it off for good seems the only way to kill it. His responses to my text messages since then have been frosty. My body without his goes into a kind of withdrawal, and the thought of never being with him again makes me panic, which is why I know it needs to end. I’m not in love, I’m chasing the dragon. Leaving him feels healthy and sensible, and I didn’t know I had any self-protective instincts left. Though maybe it isn’t myself I’m protecting.

I ask him to meet me at a café near his studio, a low-lit, quiet place that feels like it belongs anywhere but downtown. I wait for him for forty minutes in a small booth. He texts me that he’s caught up in the studio but will be there soon. The more time passes, the more my resolve deepens. G is not any healthier than I am—between the secret family and the horrible history and god only knows what really happened in Saint-Tropez. What a pair we are!—and what we have is toxic. And I can feel him pulling away. Already it’s reminiscent of Luke’s breakup by attrition. Rather than leave me when he wanted to, he simply started calling less and less from the road, was suddenly never able to find a good enough Internet connection to Skype. When I called him on it, he claimed to be giving me some space to deal with everything. But space wasn’t what I needed, it was what he needed. My grief repelled him. I was a drowning woman and he was not offering me rescue, he was swimming in the other direction.

When I told Luke it wasn’t working, all I wanted was for him to fight for me, to tell me he loved me and needed me and would rise to the occasion of this disaster. But he said none of this, instead simply replying, “Yeah, I guess it’s not.” Was that all he had to say after all these years? After a lifetime of being a breath away from one another? “I’m sorry,” he offered. “I’m sorry I’m not who you need right now. I’ll move out. I’ll keep paying rent until you can find a roommate or whatever.” He said this like he was doing something gallant. There was a brotherly hug and a promise of friendship that I didn’t ask for and wasn’t given.