Ate all of it. Sat for a while afterward just sitting, which he was getting better at the sitting without immediately finding something to do. The allowing a moment to be a moment. He thought about the first time he'd come to Rudy's. 26 years old, new to the city, new to the job, renting a studio apartment on the other side of town.
He'd found the place on a Wednesday and come back three times that month because it felt like the kind of place where nobody expected anything from you. You could just sit and eat a burger and be a person. He'd brought Lauren here once early on. She'd found it charming for about 10 minutes and then said the booths were uncomfortable and the lighting was too dim and could they go somewhere with an actual wine list? They'd never come back.
He sat in the corner booth and drank the last of his beer and looked at the unworking jukebox in the corner and thought, "You can't fix everything. Some things just stop working and you leave them where they are because they remind you of something even broken." He paid his check, drove home. At 10:00, his phone buzzed. Not Victoria, a number he recognized.
After a moment, the area code, the last four digits that he'd looked at enough times in the past year to have them registered somewhere in the back of his mind. Lauren. He stared at the screen for a moment, picked up. Lauren. A pause.
Hi, Ryan. Her voice was the same. Exactly the same. There was something disorienting about that. At the way a voice didn't change even when everything around it had.
I'm sorry to call so late. I wasn't sure you'd answer. It's fine. What do you need? Another pause.
Longer. I'm not calling because I need something. She stopped. That came out wrong. I'm calling because because I've been thinking about things and I thought she stopped again.
Marcus left. Ryan was quiet. Marcus was the name he'd never asked Lauren for, but had found out anyway. The way you found out things you didn't want to know. The man she'd left him for.
I'm sorry, Ryan said. He said it because he meant it, not because the situation demanded it. Whatever Lauren had done, he didn't wish her this. He said he confused excitement with something more. Her voice was very controlled in the way that meant she was working to keep it that way.
He said he realized he wasn't in love with me. He was in love with the idea of She stopped. It doesn't matter what he said. Are you okay? I don't know yet.
A pause. I've been thinking about you, about us, about whether if things had been different. Lauren, I know. I know. I'm not asking to.
She stopped. I just wondered if you ever thought about it. What would have happened if I'd stayed? Ryan sat in his kitchen in the quiet house 7 months ago, even 3 months ago, that question would have done something to him. Opened something, let something back in that he'd spent months trying to close.
Now he sat with it and felt with something close to surprise that it didn't. Not because he was angry, not because he'd stopped caring about what they'd had, but because he was sitting in a kitchen that had started to feel like his kitchen again with a business account that had its first real dollar in it with a woman who demanded the real answer when he said he was fine. And the question Lauren was asking, "What would have happened?" Didn't have any weight anymore. What would have happened?
What had happened was enough. Lauren, he said, "Can I say something honest?" Yes, what we had was real. The 11 years, most of them were real. I loved you and I believe you loved me in the way we knew how to, which wasn't always enough, but it was real.
He paused. And what you did, leaving the way you did without telling me the truth until it was too late to do anything about it, that hurt me more than I had words for. For a long time, she was very quiet. I'm not saying this to punish you, he said. I'm saying it because you asked an honest question and it deserves an honest answer.
He paused. When I think about what would have happened if you'd stayed, I think we would have kept being functional. We would have kept the house looking the way it was supposed to look and having the conversations that needed to be had and going to the places you go when you're a married couple who has things handled. He paused. And I think we would have kept not saying the things that actually mattered until one of us, maybe me, not you, until one of us finally ran out of reasons to stay quiet.
Silence. I don't want you back, he said. Not because I hate you. Because I'm not who I was when we were together. And that person, the version of me who kept everything running and never said what he was afraid of, I don't want to go back to being him.
A long pause. Are you happy? Lauren asked simply like she actually wanted to know. Ryan thought about it. I'm getting there, he said.
Something real is happening. That's enough for now. Another pause. I'm glad, she said. And she sounded like she meant it.
Take care of yourself, Lauren. You, too, Ryan. He hung up. Sat in the kitchen. The quiet was different than it had been in the months right after she left.
Not empty, not waiting, just quiet. The ordinary quiet of a house at night. He picked up his phone. Texted Victoria Lauren called tonight. Wanted to tell you.
Her reply came in under a minute. How did that go? He looked at the question. Thought about it honestly. Better than I expected.
He typed back. It's over. Not in an angry way. Just done. Like putting something in a box and actually closing the lid.