The Goodbye

The drive home from the AGO was a journey through a vacuum. There were no words, only the oppressive hum of the car’s engine and the soft hiss of the climate control. James kept his eyes fixed on the road, his hands at a perfect ten-and-two on the steering wheel, his profile a mask of stoic calm. Adamson stared out the passenger window, watching the city blur past, each block a mile of silence stretching between them.

He had tried, once they were in the car, to explain. “James,that call, it was just—” “It’s fine,Adamson.” The use of his full name was a door slamming shut.James didn’t want to hear it. He had offered a truce in the cathedral of art, and Adamson had chosen to take a call from another man in its hallowed halls. There was no explanation that could bridge that chasm.

They rode the elevator up to their apartment in the same suffocating silence. The doors slid open directly into their living space, and it felt less like coming home and more like entering a crime scene. Everything was exactly as they had left it, yet everything was irrevocably different.

James walked in first. He didn’t take off his coat. He didn’t go to the kitchen for a glass of water. He stopped in the center of the room, his back to Adamson, and simply stood there, as if taking a final survey of a project he was about to abandon.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said. His voice was quiet, measured, devoid of the anger from the night before or the hurt from the gallery. This was something else. This was finality.

Adamson’s heart stuttered. “James…”

James turned around. His eyes were dry, but they held a depth of sorrow that was more terrifying than any tears. “I’m not a fool, Adamson. I see the texts. I see the way you look at your phone. I hear the lies in your voice when you say you’re ‘working late.’” He let out a soft, broken sigh. “I stood in that gallery today, looking at a picture of two people holding on so tightly, and I realized… we haven’t been holding on at all. We’ve just been waiting to see who would let go first.”

He walked toward their bedroom, but not before Adamson saw the sheen of unshed tears he was desperately fighting back. Adamson stood rooted to the spot, the words carving him hollow. This was it. The confrontation he had been dreading and, perversely, craving. But it wasn’t a fight. It was a surrender.

He followed James to the doorway of their bedroom. James wasn’t packing a bag in a rage. He was methodically, calmly, opening his bottom dresser drawer—the one where he kept his off-season clothes. He pulled out a set of grey sheets.

“What are you doing?” Adamson asked, his voice a whisper.

“I’m moving into the guest room,” James stated, his tone that of an architect stating a simple, unchangeable fact. “Just for a while. We need… space.”

“Space?” Adamson echoed, the word tasting like ash. “James, we don’t need space. We need to talk! We need to fix this!”

James paused, a pillow clutched to his chest. He looked at Adamson, and for a moment, the mask slipped, and the raw pain was blinding. “How, Adamson?” The question was barely audible. “How do we fix it? Do you even want to?”

The question hung in the air, vast and unanswerable. Did he? The part of him that was addicted to Liam’s easy admiration, that was exhausted by the years of quiet neglect, screamed no. The part of him that remembered their first kiss, their wedding day, the way James used to laugh with his whole body, whispered yes.

He couldn’t form the word. His silence was his answer.

James nodded, as if he’d expected nothing else. “That’s what I thought.”

He walked past Adamson, down the hall to the small, pristine guest room they never used. Adamson listened to the sounds of him moving around in there, the rustle of sheets being laid on the bed, the soft thud of a pillow being placed. Each sound was a nail in the coffin of their life together.

Adamson sank onto the edge of their—his—bed, his head in his hands. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Freedom from the silence. An escape from the coldness. But this didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like a demolition. James wasn’t yelling; he was quietly, systematically, dismantling their marriage piece by piece, and the efficiency of it was devastating.

His phone, still in his pocket, felt like a lead weight. He pulled it out. The screen was dark. No messages from Liam. The man who had been so eager to talk, to connect, to see him, was now silent, leaving Adamson alone in the wreckage he had helped create.

He thought about going to the guest room, about pounding on the door, about begging. But what would he say? I’m sorry I’m cheating on you? I’m sorry I chose his call over you? The words were too little, too late. James had drawn a new boundary, a clear, uncrossable line. The guest room was his territory now. The master bedroom was Adamson’s.

They were, officially, separated under the same roof.

Hours later, the apartment was dark. Adamson lay in the middle of the vast bed, staring at the ceiling. He could hear every tiny sound from down the hall: the creak of the guest bed as James turned over, the faint sound of his breathing. He was awake, too.

Adamson’s phone finally lit up, casting a blue glow on the ceiling.

Liam (Work): Everything ok? You got quiet on me today.

Adamson read the message. The concern felt cheap, performative. It was a question asked from a world away, from a reality that had no bearing on the cold war being waged in this apartment.

He didn’t reply. He simply watched the light of the screen fade until the room was plunged back into darkness, leaving him alone with the blueprint of a goodbye he had designed himself.

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