It felt like I should have a say in how we ended. It was weird that I didn’t. He was standing in front of me and his hair was still damp from the shower he took after rugby practice. His button-down was wrinkled and that made me sad, because wrinkled shirts seem so pitiful. Also, Mr. Wrinkled seemed to think he was better than me, suddenly. That he was better alone.

We had always been a team. Me and him. It was supposed to be equal. I thought we were good at communicating. But in all of our many conversations, he’d never said anything about feeling like this.

He said he felt like he was suffocating. He needed space. That was funny, because in this moment, in this instance, I felt more choked than I ever had. I couldn’t breathe and he was standing only a few feet away from me but it might as well have been a few hundred miles- I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t here with me anymore, anyway.

He glanced down at his watch, and an hour ago I would have jokingly said “I’m sorry, am I boring you?” But I didn’t say that because he was no longer entitled to say no. That was something only a boyfriend had an obligation to say.

He wouldn’t look at my face. I kept looking around, looking at the chipped blue paint on the side of my house like my life depended on it. Don’t cry, I kept telling myself. Don’t break.

It was too late. I was already broken. He cleared his throat then, like he wanted to say something else. I looked over at him, with naïve hope, like he’d suddenly say “never mind, stupid idea.” Why couldn’t he just say that, for my sake? Did he have any idea how amazingly beautiful those words would be to hear? But he just motioned with his keys towards his car.

“I should get going.” He muttered. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to fix this. Why didn’t my opinion on this matter? We’d been together for so long that I’d forgotten we were our own, separate people. I’d forgotten he was still entitled to a forever kind of goodbye. I’d long ago stopped worrying that he’d want it.

When we first started dating, I had been cautious. I had kept a lot of balance in my life. I’d spent just as much time with my friends as I did with him, and I’d kept my mind preoccupied with sports and school and family. Recently, though, he’d engulfed my thoughts entirely. I became careless, and I’d stopped being cautious. I couldn’t remember the last time I thought about school. Or sports. Or friends. I know that was wrong. But what do you do when you only feel half of a person when you’re with everyone else except him? I couldn’t remember what it was like to be just me. And now he was walking away, opening his car door, and nodding to me one last time. All I could think was what a strange feeling it was, to say goodbye to yourself. To watch yourself pull out of your driveway without looking back. There I go. In 30 seconds I’m not even within vision anymore.