Page 50 of Everything We Give

This is surprising considering the way she left. No warning, no explanation, no let’s try working on us. I’d come home early from an assignment in the Loire Valley. A winery wanted professional photographs of their vineyard for their marketing campaign. I arrived at our flat to find her friend Braden waiting outside in his convertible Fiat. “Sorry, man,” he said when I asked why he was there.

“For what?”

Braden held up his hands. “Go talk to Reese.”

I craned my neck, looking at our windows two floors above. The panes were open to let in the evening breeze. A shadow passed behind the gauze curtain.

Reese.

I took the stairs to our flat two at a time with my heart racing and stopped in the doorway of our shoe box–size bedroom. “What are you doing?”

Her back to me, Reese shrieked, spinning around. The pile of clothes she held flew from her arms. I’d spooked her.

She pressed a hand to her chest and gasped. “Ian, what are you doing here?”

I saw the open suitcases on the bed behind her. She followed my gaze. “I wanted to be gone before you came home.”

My bags dropped on the floor with a loud thump. “Gone? Where?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. I’ll stay with Braden for a while. You can send my stuff there in case I forgot something.”

I moved into the room, thoughts jumbling in my head until they lined up and the picture cleared. She wasn’t leaving for a weekend getaway, or an assignment out of town. She was leaving me.

I gripped the wrought-iron bedpost. We’d found the bed frame in a secondhand store. Reese immediately fell in love with the scrolled design. We purchased it on the spot.

All the hours we spent cleaning the iron of rust and dirt. All the hours we spent entwined on the mattress. Those hours meant nothing without Reese lying beside me. Those hours meant nothing without her here.

“Why?” I rasped.

“I can’t be with you anymore,” she said, her voice shaking.

“I love you.”

“I don’t. Not anymore.”

I reached for her and she dodged my hand, going to the other side of the bed. “You don’t just fall out of love, Reese. What happened? Where did I go wrong?”

“You ...”

“I what?”

She shook her head. “Never mind. I need space. That’s all.”

She needed space. My grip tightened on the footboard, my knuckles white. I swallowed, fighting the painful memories those words induced. “For how long?”

She looked down at the bed. “Permanently.” She zipped her bag.

For the longest time, I hadn’t forgotten that sound, the way the zipper pierced my ears. A sound of finality. Nor did I forget the silence in our flat after she closed the door behind her, or how lonely I’d felt. That feeling of being unloved and unwanted? I’d been around that block before and it didn’t hurt any less.

“Your work is phenomenal.” Reese’s voice breaks through the playback of memories. “I can’t tell you how pleased I was to hear we’d be collaborating. After all these years.”

Something about what she said earlier in the lobby has me frowning. I rest my forearms on the table. “How did you get this assignment?”

Alex brings over our soup. I lean back, out of her way.

“Smells delicious.” Reese grabs her spoon. “The assignment came down to me and another writer, Martin Nieves. He’s a seasoned contributor to the magazine.”

I nod my thanks to Alex and pick up my own spoon. “I’ve heard of him,” I say to Reese. “I only know of one article you published withNational Geographic. Why did they select you?”

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