Walking Past Her Smile

The first thing I fell for was her smile. I walked into the warmly lit restaurant in a blush dress carrying a tin of homemade white chocolate-covered strawberries. She’d mentioned they were her favorite. I almost dropped them when our eyes met and she offered me that smile. Oh, that smile. Wide. Toothy. Gums exposed. I didn’t know it then, but that moment changed something in me forever.

Over the next year, I kept falling. In the months that followed, she showed me who she was. I knew that if I called between 11:30 am and 1:00 pm and she didn’t answer, she was napping. Every time. I knew that when something really impressed her she’d call it “fantastic,” dragging the word out like she was savoring it. I came to her with a concern once, one I’d been scared to entrust her with. She held it gently, in a way that settled me. She loved celebrating me too. For my first birthday with her, she drove us to Asheville and surprised me with a tree house stay. She’d arranged a surprise dinner on the tree house balcony, a cake with candles already lit waiting for me. I remember thinking “I’ve waited my entire life for this.” For a love that saw me, planned for me, that didn’t just take from me without giving something in return. The next day was a spa day, and afterward we drove through the blue-hazed mountains, stopping at wineries along the way. Every moment felt noteworthy, almost curated.

Our first fall together, I marked the start of the season by having flowers delivered to her. The card read, “Can’t wait to experience your favorite season with you.” She cried in my arms. She’d light up when I anticipated her needs. Her head would tilt slightly to the left, her hair falling forward, and the movement always triggered her smile. That smile didn’t stay mine. One day it cut straight through my chest.

I lost my breath when the words left her mouth:

“I think… sometimes I might want to be with other people.”

My history, a long ledger of compromise and self-diminishment, washed over me as I tried to pull myself out of the moment. I had lived this before — the familiar sting of someone wanting more than I had, more than I was. There wasn’t much I kept for myself. It felt cruel for her to reach for what little remained. The familiar question deflated me: Will I ever be enough? My world circled as memories came rushing back. Voices of exes I’d taken up less space for rose up in me, each one a reminder of how often I’d learned to shrink to fit someone else’s comfort. A wounded inner child taught to earn love. A sick feeling settled in my stomach as a younger voice, barely recognizable to me — a voice from every time I’d lived this betrayal before — echoed in my head:

“If that’s what will make you happy.”

A familiar instinct rushed to the surface, ready to burn me down just to keep the structure intact.

And beneath it, another voice begged, “Please don’t do this to us.”

But something in me held still this time.

I looked up at the woman sitting on the ottoman across from me. So close, yet in that moment so far. Tears traced the curve of her cheek and gathered at her chin. She wiped them away with the back of her hand before finally turning toward me. A fleeting, panicked look crossed her face before she glanced away again, her body shaking with quiet sobs. Watching her unravel hit something deep in me, and a wave of nausea rolled through my stomach.

Her voice reached for me. “I don’t want to lose you.”

The words landed in my chest like a fist. A dull ache spread through me as I tried to make sense of them.

“What would that even look like?”

She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know,” she whispered, the words barely above a whisper. “I just… don’t know.” She rubbed her palms together, trying to steady their shaking. Her breathing was tight, measured, like she was holding herself together one inhale at a time. “Sometimes I get into these ruts,” she whispered. “And when I’m in them, it feels like I need a little something. I don’t know what. I don’t know why.” Her voice cracked. She still wouldn’t look at me.

A part of me softened. I wanted to smooth the panic out of her voice, steady her breathing, fix the broken places inside her. My hands even twitched with the urge to move. But something else held me in place — something quiet, something new.

I repeated my question, but this time it was more to myself than to her: “What would that even look like?” The room fell quiet as the answers flooded in. The calm must have scared her, because now she was reaching for me. I avoided her touch.

I realized her pain wasn’t mine to solve; it was the consequence of the choice she was asking me to make. If I comforted her now, I would be easing her guilt, making the terrible thing she was asking for easier for her to live with. I would be prioritizing her momentary panic over my permanent devastation.

I could no longer set myself on fire to provide light. I looked at her and finally saw it. Her needs weren’t a request; they were a void. And she wanted me to stand at the edge of it, smiling, while she reached for something I could never give. This is what it would mean to be chosen. Self-destruction. I couldn’t save her from her own darkness without creating my own.

I stood up. The movement was slow and deliberate, scraping the ottoman slightly against the floor. She looked up at me and offered a weak smile, not realizing I’d only stepped toward her so I could walk past her.

I walked away from her smile, but the real goodbye was to the woman who would’ve traded her own peace just to stay chosen.