Daniel: The apartment felt different after Maria left that morning. Not empty. Just temporarily missing something important. Her tea mug was still sitting beside the sink when I walked back into the kitchen after getting dressed, lipstick faintly visible on the rim. She always forgot things halfway through doing them when she was distracted. Tea mugs, books, hair clips, entire conversations sometimes. I looked at it for a second, then left it exactly where it was. The last few days had shifted something between us. Not suddenly, not dramatically, just steadily enough that I could feel it every time she looked at me a little too long before looking away again. The dinner with our families. The beach house. The farm. Her confession. Mine, eventually. I was done waiting for the perfect moment. Every time we got close to one, life interrupted it with another article or another photograph or another version of the past trying to drag itself into the present. Tonight was supposed to fix t
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