I was in the living room at my parents’ house when the call came, watching television as I picked up the phone.
“Do you have a minute?” Meghan wondered. A harbinger of bad results.
I had just returned from a weekend at the shore, the final working weekend of September. We were free of it, the two of us, with Meghan settling back inside her dorm room and me eating some Cheez-Its on the living-room floor. I had spoken with Meghan face-to-face a few hours prior, had seen her walking with her father on the boards. I had asked if Meghan wanted me to follow her back to Immaculata. No need, Meghan assured me, and she said it in the way that gives old lovers pause.
“I’ve been thinking about the way that things are going,” Meghan told me over the phone. “I’ve been thinking about this whole new world that I’ve just entered, about how I’m doing everything I can to gain control. And I keep on thinking about this horrible guilt that I’ve been feeling, this overwhelming sense I might be stringing you along.”
I attempted to bargain, for a moment, but soon resigned myself to the notion this had all gone on too long. I could hear my own words spinning back to me, and – within a matter of seconds – our two-and-a-half years together had come to a close.
“Are you there?” Meghan asked me.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I quietly replied.
“I think we need to spend some time apart. Are you there?” Meghan asked me.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I quietly replied.
“Please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. Should the two of us even continue to talk?”
“I suppose it’d be best if we didn’t for a while … Please don’t hate me,” Meghan added.
“No, I promise you, I don’t.”
“I love you.”
“Yeah, I love you, too.”
“Please take care.”
Then all was lost.
Day 1,000
(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB.)