Excerpt

...We moved to the inevitable banalities of small talk; the birthday plans we'd miss, the future we’d share as the friends we never were; and of course, the nascent hurt and missteps bygone and beyond unknotting. Our textbook and singular love, not quite past, but bleeding slow and moribund through paper-thin skin, dying just outside of the arms of the other.

The energy would exhaust, the sadness ensue, the truths of the impossible next coffee and irrepressible oncoming bitterness were almost concealed. I stood and waited for her pets to kiss me and wish me better luck than she had. There was no last seduction, despite the temptation, and I left quietly knowing that I was doing just that: leaving quietly. I said goodbye to her doorman whose schadenfreude could not be stronger as he pulled the door open for me, which he did without bending....