As soon as we get back from New York I call Renata, who’s now in her first year of residency at Georgetown and just coming off an overnight rotation. I catch her while she’s driving home. I tell her about his kiss with Claire, the talk of pregnancy, saying “I love you.” He sounds like such a cliché, she says, he obviously just wants to mess around.

“I feel like I need him,” I tell her. “I can’t stand being away from him for even an hour.”

“You don’t need him,” Renata says. She then yells “asshole,” presumably at another driver who’s cut her off. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

As a first-year dermatology resident and newly engaged—Thomas flew them both to his family’s villa in Italy and proposed—Renata has notably less time and patience for anything that isn’t work- or wedding-related. “Clearly you don’t trust him,” she tells me. Her response isn’t harsh so much as efficient; our conversations are usually curtailed by her sleep deprivation and need to maximize time between shifts for rest. I’ve memorized the exact amount of time it takes her to drive home from the hospital, and I know that we now have only two minutes before she turns onto her street. “What you need is to break up.”

I’m immediately annoyed—as if it were that easy. She of all people should know! “Okay,” I say, to allow a tidy ending to the call.

Twenty-five seconds until she pulls into her driveway. “By the way,” she says, and I brace myself, knowing she’s about to segue into wedding logistics. We are operating in accordance with a universal law dictating that whoever marries first can permissibly subject the other to indentured servitude vis-à-vis maid of honor duties, and expect enthusiastic, unfaltering compliance in return. “Do you think you could take a look at the bridesmaid dress options I sent?”

“Of course,” I say. I hear her car door open then shut. “Sleep well.”

I rush to get dressed for Matías’s reading. I arrive to find people clumped around the room, holding plastic cups of pale white wine. I feel a sudden social anxiety set in, not wanting to be seen as I scan the room for him. He spots me before I do, touching his hand to my arm and startling me. “Hey,” he says, “is something wrong?” When I am upset it shows all over my face. I look at my watch; his reading starts in five minutes. I don’t want to get into things until after, but he keeps insisting.

“Are you playing me?” I ask. “I mean, we both know you’re leaving soon,” I tell him. “Is this just une affaire de cul?” A French expression he taught me.