Chocolate

  I stayed up late, drinking and pacing around my apartment. At one point, I even walked around the corner to a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. Not because I needed the nicotine – I’d never been a smoker outside of the rebellious drag or two in high school – but because I was in the midst of an existential crisis and lighting up while I wrestled with it just seemed right. With a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I felt very Hunter S. Thompson-esque.

  But no matter how long I paced, I couldn’t seem to come up with a solution for what to do about Luke…and me…us. I’d turned off my phone when I’d gotten home to give myself a little distance. Luke had called and texted me repeatedly while I was driving back here, and I was hoping that not seeing his name every couple of minutes would help me to think more clearly about what in the name of all that was holy I was doing. I was fucking everything up and I knew it. Of course I should have talked to Luke before I accepted that job. I could see that now and I should have seen it two hours ago when I’d gotten the phone call. It was just that the offer had been so out of the blue and so amazing that I couldn’t fathom turning it down. Still, it was understandable that he was pissed I didn’t run it by him first.

  But it wasn’t like he was exactly blameless when it came to making unilateral decisions either. Like, hello? What had been going through his mind for the past month? “Of course Lyssa will pack up and leave with me for six months. It’s not like she has her own life or anything. Nah, I don’t need to ask her.” I mean, come on. J’accuse you of being a dirty hypocrite, Luke.

  Except, had he asked me? We definitely hadn’t sat down and had a conversation about it, and I truly felt that I was entitled to be angry with him for not doing that. Yet, looking back on it now, it was obvious that he’d been expecting me to go on tour with him. Why had I thought he was bringing me to all those planning meetings? For the coffee? No, I should have known that Luke wanted me to go. And on some level, I probably had. I just hadn’t wanted to make a decision about it. I think that was why I’d always brought my laptop with me when they were discussing the logistics. I hadn’t wanted to hear about the tour at all. I hadn’t wanted to hear about me going with him, but I hadn’t wanted to hear about him going without me either. So I’d just chosen not to listen. God, that was immature. The equivalent of me putting my hands over my ears and humming to myself to avoid getting bad news. But I couldn’t do that anymore. This decision that I’d been running away from for weeks had finally caught up to me, and now this job offer provided the added bonus of making it even more difficult. So that was good.

  But it was time to deal with it nevertheless. I took a long pull from my cigarette, coughed until I almost threw up, and then washed it down with a long pull from my half-empty Jameson bottle. Or maybe I should just continue down this charming little path toward self-destruction. That way I’ll be dead before I have to figure this out. I walked over to my dresser and put out the cancer stick in an old scented candle, finally accepting that I wasn’t enough of a badass to pull off the whole smoking thing anyway. Then I dug an old sweatshirt out of my drawer before I carried on aimlessly wandering from room to room and letting out periodic dejected sighs.

  So, okay. On the one hand, I loved Luke. I knew that I did beyond a shadow of a doubt. I wanted to be with him all the time and he was right that the thought of being apart, or only seeing him sporadically, for six months wasn’t a solution that I was okay with. In fact, the very idea of that physically hurt my soul. And if I took the New York job, and he couldn’t come with me, then being apart for six months would turn into being apart indefinitely. That was out of the question. I didn’t want to sit around, living for the next text message or phone call from him. I didn’t want to mark time until the next fleeting weekend rendezvous. So I guess that would suggest that I should do whatever I needed to do to be with him full-time. And that I should start by going on tour. That is, if he still wanted me to go. Eh, he still wanted me to go. I knew Luke had said that if I left his apartment tonight we were done, but I was betting that if I walked back in there tomorrow and told him that I was ready to pack up and leave with him, he would welcome me with open arms.

  But at the same time, I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to do that. First of all, I was not super psyched about the idea of living on a tour bus with my significant other for that long. I mean, Luke and I spent a lot of time together, but that was a level of intimacy that I didn’t feel like I ever needed to achieve. And sharing a bathroom the size of a linen closet with him and the rest of his band? Uh, hard pass.

  Yet, my aversion to the tour didn’t really have anything to do with confined spaces. What it really came down to was what I would have to give up in order to go. My job. Ugh, saying it like that made it sound too trivial. Because it wasn’t just my job, it was what my job represented. It was my career, my ambitions, my independence. My identity. Right now, I was “Lyssa Lyons, Music Journalist.” Plus, if I took this new job, I’d be “Lyssa Lyons, Music Journalist for Vulture.” That was a big deal. It was a level of success that I’d been working toward for a long time and an opportunity that I wasn’t going to get again. But if I left, I’d be “Lyssa Lyons, Luke Davies’ girlfriend.” And I didn’t want that. I wanted to be defined by what I did, by what I contributed, not by whose bed I was sleeping in.

  Plus, even if I did choose the latter, even if I did choose to leave my job and go on tour, I could only be “Luke Davies’ girlfriend” for as long as I was actually Luke Davies’ girlfriend. I mean, what if six weeks into the tour, we realized that we’d made a huge mistake and we broke up? I’d be stranded somewhere in New Mexico with no money and nowhere to go. I’d be “Lyssa Lyons, derelict vagrant,” and I couldn’t do that to myself. I knew that Luke and I had promised each other we weren’t going to break up, but was that really a guarantee? Relationships ended all the time. I knew that from experience. Hell, even marriages ended all the time, and there were, like, legitimate vows involved in those. I loved Luke and I desperately wanted to be with him, but did I want it enough to give up literally every other part of me that wasn’t him?

  “Ugggggg!” I let out a frustrated cry and flopped down on my bed, spilling whiskey on my comforter when I landed. Perfect, I thought as I watched the brown liquid soak into the intricately stitched fabric.

  I didn’t know. I had no fucking clue which was the right choice. The only thing I was sure of was that this whole situation had me feeling suffocated and boxed in, borderline claustrophobic. I needed to get out, and maybe I was drastically overcorrecting for my fear about letting myself get that close to Luke, but right now putting eight hundred miles between me and here, between me and him, seemed like the best option. The safest option. After all, it guaranteed me a future doing what I loved…just not who I loved.

  Oh my god, that was bad, I shook my head. I hoped that they appreciated my sick sense of humor on the East Coast because when the first light of dawn peeked over the horizon, I emailed my landlord to tell him that I was terminating my lease. But not for the reason that Luke had asked me to break it so many weeks before. No, this was for me. I was moving to New York.

  Later that day, freshly showered and reasonably sober, I walked into Arthur’s office to give him my two weeks’ notice. From my seat across from him at his desk, I listened to him tell me that he was sad to see me go, but that he was happy I was moving on to bigger and better things. Then I listened to myself tell him that I’d miss him because, to be honest, I would. He’d given me my first job in the industry. He was the reason I loved what I did and it was because of him that I was now able to make this career leap. For that, I would always be grateful.

  Telling Arthur about my decision to leave hadn’t been easy, but I knew it would be nothing, nothing, compared to telling the next person on my list.

  I pulled up in front of Luke’s apartment a little while later. I still hadn’t turned on my phone, so I had no idea how late into the night the phone calls and tex
ts from him had continued. But something told me that Luke had probably gotten about as much sleep as I had last night.

  I killed the engine, sighed, and opened my sun visor to check myself out in the mirror. I looked terrible. All pale and sallow with dark circles under my eyes. My hair that I hadn’t had the energy to wash this morning was pulled back, but I could still smell the stale cigarette smoke on it. This was not a banner day for me in terms of taking pride in my appearance. But whatever, I didn’t feel good about what I was here to do, so I guess it was only right for me to not look good while I was doing it. I forced myself to step out of my car and I immediately felt the heaviness that had settled in my chest grow even more dense. I was not looking forward to this. I was not looking forward to seeing the look on Luke’s face when I told him that I was leaving. This was going to be awful.

  At his front door, I let myself hesitate for only a second before I put my key in the lock and let it swing open. Silence. He wasn’t here. I didn’t even need to check the bedrooms to know for sure. It was weird, but over the past few months, I’d come to develop, like, ESP when it came to Luke Davies. I could actually feel when he was nearby, and right now my spidey-sense was definitely not tingling. He must have had meetings or something today.

  I felt a sick sense of relief that he wasn’t around. It was going to be hard enough to pack everything up, knowing that it was for good, without Luke hovering over me while I did it. Actually, that wasn’t fair. Luke wouldn’t hover. But he would put up a fight before he let me walk away. He would demand an explanation as to what in the hell was going through my head to make me deliberately sabotage such a great thing, and he was absolutely entitled to one. But what was I going to tell him? “I’m not willing to sacrifice my own ambitions for yours? I’m not sure that we’re going to want to be in this relationship forever and I need a backup plan?” He already knew that. He’d said so last night when he called me out for still hanging onto my apartment. But even so, he deserved to hear it from me.

  Too bad that wasn’t going to happen.

  I set about gathering up my things as quickly as possible. Every time I heard even the slightest noise – a car door slamming or someone talking on the street outside – my heart started to pound, thinking that it was Luke coming home. It wasn’t though. And in less than an hour, I had piled all of my stuff in the entryway and I was ready to bring it down to my car.

  I blew out a breath and looked around the apartment. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Luke would think when he got back here and found all traces of me gone. What a colossal “fuck you” I was throwing right in his face by just packing up and leaving like this. I’d done some things that I wasn’t proud of in my life, but this was by far the shittiest. It was cowardly and cruel and I’d never hated myself more than I did in that moment. But I was doing it anyway. Maybe karma would take over and I’d get hit by a bus on my way home. I wouldn’t be surprised. I fucking deserved it.

  Right before I left, I decided that I at least needed to leave a note. I needed to leave some kind of message besides the implied middle finger that would be glaring back at him from my now empty side of his closet. It still felt like a cop-out, but it was better than nothing. I pulled my notepad and pen out of my bag, walked over to the kitchen counter, and started to write. “Luke,” I began. I tapped my pen against the paper for a minute, trying to figure out what to say. Then I wrote, “I’ve decided to take the job in New York. It’s too good of an opportunity to pass up and I have my own career to think about. I’m sorry that things between us had to end like this. I’m sorry that I wasn’t all in. I never meant to hurt you and when I said I loved you, I meant it. I’m just not the person you need me to be.” I read the words over again before I signed my name underneath them in my elegant scrawl.

  There. Short and sweet. Or, at least it was short. I thought about ending it with something like, “I’m sure your tour will be amazing,” but then I thought better of it. It seemed condescending, like a college rejection letter offering “the best of luck in your future endeavors.” Luke didn’t need any phony words of encouragement from me and I had no desire to patronize him.

  I tore out the note and left it on the counter where I was sure he would see it. Then I dug my keys out of my bag, removed the one that Luke had given me from the chain, and placed it next to the slip of paper.

  I guess that’s it, I thought anticlimactically before I looked around one last time. Then I loaded up my arms with my belongings and walked out the door.

  The next couple of weeks were a blur of tying things up at work, packing what I needed, and putting everything else into storage. I’d decided to bring only a couple of suitcases with me at first because my new job was putting me up at some furnished apartment in Manhattan for the first few weeks. I’d come back for the rest of my stuff once I found a more permanent place to live.

  Somewhat eerily, I didn’t receive a single call or text from Luke after leaving the note at his apartment. I knew that the unceremonious way I’d departed would infuriate him, and I was fully expecting an “are you fucking kidding me?” reaction to it. But none came. I perhaps naively hoped that it was because he’d decided to just eliminate me from his mind and focus on the future. But I was actually pretty sure that it was because he’d decided to sit and seethe in silence rather than let me know how much I’d hurt him. That was what I would have done if our roles were reversed, and since Luke and I basically shared a brain, I was fairly confident that I was right. His plan wasn’t working though. I could literally feel his anger blowing up at me from the West Loop like a strong, southerly wind.

  What was the fucking matter with me anyway? Luke deserved better than this. He deserved an apology and a real explanation for why I’d decided to walk away from us. But the only one I had to give him was that I couldn’t put our relationship before my own needs, before my own future. I was sorry that I was hurting him, I really was, but I wasn’t sorry that I was leaving. After all, this job was the opportunity of a lifetime. I’d be insane to turn it down. I mean, right? Right. Yes. Of course. Totally. I was going to New York. End of story.

  Near the end of May, I came home from dropping a bunch of my old clothes off at Goodwill. I’d decided to use my impending move as an opportunity to purge all of the things that I’d been needlessly hanging onto for the past few years, which included a solid portion of my wardrobe. Anything that I hadn’t worn in the last year got axed. I preferred to think of it not as losing apparel options, but rather of gaining closet space – something that I was sure would be at a premium in New York.

  After maneuvering into a tight parking space like the bona fide city girl that I was, I locked my car and headed toward the steps to my apartment. From the sidewalk, I could see that something was stuck to the front door. As I got closer, I realized that what I’d assumed was a FedEx notice for one of my neighbors was actually an envelope. An envelope with my name on it. I pulled it down and opened it right there on the stoop. Inside was a copy of Luke’s tour schedule with a sticky note attached to it that read in barely legible script, “I’ll save you a seat on the bus.”

  My breath caught in my throat and my eyes shut tightly. Involuntarily, I clutched the scrap of paper to my chest like I was in a Jane Austen novel. Tomorrow. Luke was leaving tomorrow and I wouldn’t be with him. Even though it had been my choice, the realization still made me incredibly sad. For the past few weeks, I’d been trying to concentrate only on what was in front of me. I’d been constantly reassuring myself that the best part of my life was ahead, not behind. But this tiny note in Luke’s terrible handwriting made me recognize just how much I was going to miss such an important part of my past.

  I sat down on the stoop and read the note a few more times. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t like I was expecting it to suddenly say something different. It was just that it brought back such strong feelings of what it’d felt like to be with Luke that I needed a moment to collect myself. “I’ll save you a seat on the bus.”
Huh. Even after the unforgivable way I’d ended things, Luke was letting me know that he hadn’t completely closed the door on me. On us.

  Wow, I must be great in bed, I thought. Then I rolled my eyes at myself. I knew that wasn’t it. Or at least not all of it. Instead, it was the same reason that I’d been willing to give us another try the first time. Luke and I were right for each other. Plain and simple. But sometimes it took more than compatible personalities to make a relationship work. And in this case, it was the rest of life that was getting in the way.

  So right there, on the dirty front step of my apartment building, I decided that I would keep this little gesture as a fond reminder of a love that once was, but that I would refuse to let myself dwell on it. With a resolute nod of my head, I stood up, dusted myself off, and walked upstairs.

  Finally, and yet at the same time all too quickly, the night before my departure arrived. Seth and Alex had put together a big farewell dinner thing at one of my favorite restaurants in the Gold Coast with all of our friends. There was toasting, and laughter, and even a tear or two. And champagne. Lots of champagne. Some might have even said too much champagne, but I didn’t actually believe that there was such a thing, so I just said that there was enough champagne to ensure that we all had a good time.

  At last, our crew walked out into the warm, early summer evening to share final hugs and promises to visit each other as often as possible. It was a wonderful way to spend my last night in this city that had been my home for so many years, and I felt a slight sense of loss that I would only be able to experience it as a visitor from now on. Oh well. My future was in a bigger, better place with bigger, better opportunities. There was no sense in getting upset over this particular dot on a map and all the things that had made up my life here.