text: So there you are when the thought hits you. Your feet propped up on the coffee table - she is laying on the other end of the couch, feet thoughtlessly curled in your lap, innocently watching TV. The thought shutters through you like turbulence and you wonder if she felt the shiver as you silently admit it to yourself for the first time. And suddenly it's the only thought you can have. *She's not the one.* Everything shifts. The mannerisms that you used to lovingly roll your eyes at turn into small daggers of annoyance. The nights you used to yearn of impromptu sleepovers turn into dreaded time spent behind a mask. Looking at the shared calendar you two have spent the last year and a half curating, at first cautiously but with innocent optimism and now almost haphazardly, turns from a fun look at what's to come to a tactical maze to navigate. *Wedding in Colorado next weekend that we already have booked. Friends in town the weekend after. A few weeks of downtime after that, maybe then?* You console yourself with the idea that you're trying to do it nicely and "the right way" but are disgusted at the possibility that maybe you're just doing it at a time most convenient for you. Is she saying she loves you more than usual? Does she see this coming? Is this a trap so she can ask how long I've been lying about that? But it isn't a lie. You do love her. You love her for the spontaneity she added to your life, for her youthfulness as you go through the maturing years of your late 20s. You love that she let you in and told you things and allowed you to help her. But it's waning. Or maybe you are. Like a dream you've just woken up from and are grasping to hold onto, you can't remember or trace the steps back to find exactly what it was or where it was or when that you loved as much as you did. And you can't fall back asleep. That's not how it works. So you figure you actually don't love her. Not anymore. But you did. You pause with the toothbrush humming in your mouth, your shirt halfway buttoned, staring into the drawer you've pulled open with the toes on your outstretched foot as if you don't want to get too close. A t shirt she wears to bed. A night mouthguard you teased her about but always found oddly cute. A hair brush. A bag of toiletries and hair ties. *What do I do with that? Bring it with me some day to her place? Wait for her to ask about coming to get it?* A crude painting she made in college before she met you but that you always said you liked hangs in the kitchen. A water bottle on the night stand. Tampons in the bathroom vanity. All just pieces of a plate on the edge of a counter yet to be shattered being eyed by the dustpan and broom. You want to be the bad guy. You want her to rage at you when you do it, to hit you, to scream, to tell you to leave and never come back. You know she won't though. She'll hurt. She'll feel alone. She'll feel abandoned and scared and vulnerable and broken. She'll feel all the things you'll feel but she'll feel them for the first time. They're realer that way sometimes. Rawer. Selfishly, you want this to be out of your hands but you know she would never end this. And you know it's already over. So you wait. *Wedding in Colorado next weekend that we already have booked. Friends in town the weekend after...* You try to enjoy what you have left. You try not to think about how she'll be after and you hope beyond hope that someday what she feels for you now disappears, a drop in the ocean of love she feels for another. And you hope that you feel the same.