THE PACKING

ANNA

Anna stood in the center of her living room with the box from the office still in her arms and realized she had nowhere to put it down because every surface was already covered with the debris of five years she was supposed to be dismantling. She set it on the floor instead. The cactus went on the windowsill where it belonged, rescued from Mia's territorial rearrangement, and she stood there for a moment with her hand on the pot and thought about how strange it was that a plant had been the thing that finally made her angry.

Not the affair. Not the lies. A cactus. Moved to a windowsill like it was nothing.

She shook her head, and then sat down on the floor because standing suddenly felt like too much, and she let herself have exactly five minutes of doing nothing.

When the five minutes were up, she stood, changed into clothes that could get dirty, and started.

The kitchen first, because it was the easiest. Dishes she didn't care about went into the leaving pile. The good ones, the ones she'd bought herself before Jack, went into the keep pile. She worked in an orderly manner, one cupboard at a time, and tried not to think about how many of these things she'd acquired while telling herself stories about a future that wasn't coming.

The bedroom was harder.

She opened the wardrobe and looked at the clothes arranged by color the way she liked them, and she realized she was going to have to touch everything. His things were still there. Not many, he'd always kept most of his clothes at his own place, a fact she now understood differently. A jacket he'd left last month. A pair of shoes. A watch on the nightstand that he'd forgotten three weeks ago and never mentioned.

She gathered them all into a bag without looking at them too long. Then she stood at the wardrobe with the bag at her feet and looked at the empty space where his things had been, and she felt nothing.

That was a surprise. She kept waiting for the wave of grief and anger to hit her, but it didn't. There was only the distant hum of exhaustion and a small, stubborn voice that kept saying: You knew. Some part of you always knew.

She didn't argue. She just went back to work.

By the time the knock came, she had been home for three hours and the apartment looked like a warehouse for someone else's indecision. Boxes everywhere, stacks of keep and store and leave, the furniture pushed against the walls, and her sitting on the kitchen floor with a mug of tea and no memory of making it.

The knock was soft. She opened the door to see Maya standing in the hallway in her work clothes with her bag still on her shoulder and her eyes holding tears back. She looked at Anna, and Anna looked at her, and for a long moment neither of them spoke.

"You didn't call me," Maya said.

It wasn't an accusation. It was the voice of someone who was hurt.

"I know."

"I had to hear it from Janet. Janet, Anna.” Maya stepped forward, into the apartment, and stopped when she saw the boxes. Her face went through a series of expressions that Anna couldn't quite track.

"You're leaving."

"London. Tomorrow. Enoch offered me a job."

Maya's eyebrows went up in question.

"Yes. The cousin with the voice.” She had once mentioned Enoch to her in one of the late-night gists. He's also the cousin with a brand division that needs a head and an employment letter drafted at four in the morning."

"Efficient."

"Very." Anna smiled.

Maya set down her bag and walked further into the apartment. She touched the edge of a box labeled KITCHEN - KEEP, looked at the stack of leaving pile items by the door, picked up a candle that Anna had forgotten she owned and put it in the keep pile without asking. Then she turned and sat down on the floor exactly where Anna had been sitting, took the mug from Anna's hands, drank from it, and handed it back.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thank you."

Maya nodded slowly. "Janet said you walked in like you owned the building. Green dress, heels, the whole thing. She said had Jack followed you out to the lobby, and you looked at him like he was a stranger and walked away without saying a word."

"Close enough."

"And Mia?"

Anna thought about Mia in her chair, about the word slut landing exactly where she'd aimed it. She thought about Mia's face when Jack called her a mistake.

"She got what she wanted," Anna said. "Him. All of him. The full experience. I hope it's everything she imagined."

Maya watched her for a long moment. "You really are okay."

"I'm really not." Anna set the mug down. "I'm going to fall apart eventually. Probably on the plane, because that's when things usually hit me. But right now I'm just," she gestured at the boxes, the apartment, the general chaos, "doing the next thing. And the next thing after that. And if I keep doing the next thing long enough, eventually I'll be in London, and it'll be someone else's problem."

"That's not how feelings work."

"It seems to be working so well, so far."

Maya reached out and pulled her into a hug. It was tight and warm and Anna pressed her face into Maya's shoulder and did not cry, which felt like a minor miracle given how close she was.

"I'm sorry I didn't call," Anna said into the blazer. "I kept thinking I would, and then every time I thought about it, I knew you'd come, and I'd have to actually feel it, and I wasn't ready to feel it yet. I'm still not ready. But I should have told you, anyway."

Maya held on for another moment. Then she pulled back and looked at Anna with soft eyes, and a slight frown.

"I need to tell you something," she said.

Anna's stomach tightened. "What."

"I went to see Jack," she paused. "Before I came here. I went to his office," Maya said calmly, as if she were discussing the weather or a client meeting. "I found him in the car park."

"Maya."

"He was walking to his car. Alone. Which was convenient." She smoothed her blazer. "I waited for him by the driver's side door."

"You waited for him."

"Uh, uh, I wanted him to see me coming." A small pause. "He did. He stopped about ten feet away and did that thing he does where he tries to figure out which version of charm will work best. I didn't let him get there."

Anna stared at her.

"I hit him with my bag first. The structured one, so it had some weight, then I kicked him in the stomach."

"Maya." Anna couldn't hold back her surprise.

"Yes?" Maya looked pleased with herself in a way Anna had never seen before. "He went down on one knee and looked up at me like he couldn't quite believe it was happening, and I told him that if he ever came near you again I would have evidence of things he didn't want evidence of. I made that part up, obviously, but he looked worried, which suggests there's actually something to find."

Anna opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"He could press charges," she finally managed.

"He could," Maya nodded. "He won't. He’s too much of a coward and his ego won't let him.”

Anna looked at her best friend sitting on her kitchen floor in work clothes that had definitely been worn during the commission of at least two forms of assault, looking completely at peace with her decisions.

"Thank you," Anna said.

"I didn't do it for thanks."

"I know." Anna reached for her hand. "That's exactly why I'm thanking you." She said, smiling.

Maya squeezed her fingers once, then let go and stood up. "Right. Show me what needs packing. I'm staying tonight."

They worked until past midnight.

Maya was ruthless in ways Anna hadn't expected. "Leave it," she said about the duvet.

"It's a good duvet."

"It's a duvet you shared with Jack? Leave it."

She put it in the leaving pile.

"What about this?" Anna held up a photo of them at the beach two years ago. Jack's arm around her, both of them smiling, the sun setting behind them. She remembered that day. She'd been happy.

Maya took the photo from her hands, looked at it for approximately two seconds, and tore it in half.

"That bad?"

"You don't need evidence of good days with someone who turned out to be someone else. You'll remember the good days anyway. The photos just make it harder to hold both things at once."

Anna looked at the torn halves in Maya's hands. Jack's face, separated from hers. It felt symbolic in a way she hadn't expected to need.

"Fair enough."

They kept packing and somewhere after ten they ran out of boxes and sat on the kitchen floor because the chairs were already stacked by the door. Anna made tea, and they sat with their mugs and the half-empty apartment looking strange around them.

"Tell me about your London cousin," Maya said.

Anna became very interested in her mug.

"Ann."

"He offered me a job. I have the qualifications, he has the division, it's a sound business decision."

"At three in the morning."

"He's an early riser."

"Anna."

"He's efficient." She turned the mug in her hands. She heard her own voice softening at the edges, gaining a quality she couldn't quite name. "He's just very capable. It's impressive. Professionally."

Maya nodded slowly. "He's beautiful," she said.

Anna added quickly. "Objectively beautiful. A little harmless appreciation never hurt anyone."

"Of course not." Maya sipped her tea.

"He's my cousin, Maya," Anna says, as if trying to convince herself, and Maya wasn't helping matters.

"Distant." Maya replied.

"Still."

"Mm." Maya looked at her mug. Set it down and looked back up. "For what it's worth, you haven't said his name the way you used to say Jack's name in about three years."

Anna opened her mouth, her eyes widened at being called out.

"I'm just sitting here," Maya said. "Drink your tea."

Anna chuckled and did as her lordship commanded. She refilled her tea and changed the subject, and they talked until almost two in the morning about everything except Enoch. Her best friend refused to go home and simply grabbed a blanket and declared the couch her residence till morning.

Anna was as happy as she could be, she was going home.

She had a job and a flight and a best friend who had kicked her ex-boyfriend in the stomach on her behalf, and none of it fixed what had happened, but all of it made it survivable.