Roshan clears his throat. “I texted you because after I saw you the other night, I thought we should at least talk if we’re going to be working in the same place. Then again, we could have talked years ago, if you hadn’t just left and ignored me without any explanation.”

“I didn’t owe you an explanation,” Suhani says as she recalls how she ghosted him before she even knew what ghosting meant.

He’s holding a pen labeled atlanta memorial hospital. “It seems like you’re happy now.”

“I am,” Suhani says, relishing that she means it.

“You know, I spoke to people from your class at UCLA. A couple of them mentioned you took some kind of official leave right after we broke up. You just dumped me and then left school for months. Clearly there’s something you didn’t tell me. I spent so long trying to understand why you’d do something like that.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Suhani says.

There’s a tingling sensation in her limbs as she thinks back to how she filled out the paperwork for a medical leave, then spent days curled up in her bed. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever feel happy again.

“It obviously mattered enough. I know it was something important, something I probably had the right to know about,” Roshan says. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have tried so hard to keep it from me.”

“I don’t think there’s any point in getting into any of that.” Suhani throws her hands up in the air and then tells herself to act as detached as possible. A bead of sweat rolls down her back. “I should have had better judgment from the beginning and known that you were never capable of being in a healthy relationship.”

Roshan has the same intense stare he had at the end of their first date, when he told Suhani about how he’d always resented his mother for leaving their family. She should have seen that conversation as a red flag but instead, she told herself to give him credit for being vulnerable with her. They spent an entire Friday night on her creaky futon, sharing a bottle of Cabernet, discussing their family histories, then looking up potential residency programs for him. The night ended with the most exhilarating sex she’d ever had, sex that was both primal and tender, free of inhibitions. She later told herself that that was who they really were, that the moments he let his anger take over didn’t define him, and with time, he’d change. It took her months to realize that she couldn’t stay with someone just because of who they were at their best. Sooner or later, dating a man for his potential only took you so far.