They had been together for four years, and for at least two of those years, Priya had known. Not in a dramatic way — there was no single moment, no confrontation, no revelation. Just a slow accumulation of small recognitions: that she checked her phone at dinner without knowing why; that she slept better alone on business trips; that she had stopped telling him things that mattered. She didn't want to hurt him. She didn't want to be the person who left. But she understood, finally, that staying out of guilt was its own kind of damage. She moved on at the beginning of autumn, having made the decision quietly, alone, over several long weeks.

David had made a list. He had written down, in careful columns, the reasons to go and the reasons to stay. The reasons to go were real — the distance, the arguments about small things that were never really about small things, the way they sometimes stood in the same room like strangers. But the reasons to stay were also real: the way she laughed at things he said before he finished saying them; the decade of history between them; the specific knowledge of another person that takes years to build and a decision to destroy. He chose to stay put. Not because the list told him to. Because when he imagined leaving, the version of himself on the other side looked less complete than the one who stayed.