The Last Shared Expense

The email came through at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday, which was typical of Eric—not because he was burning the midnight oil in some admirably productive way, but because he'd probably been watching YouTube videos about urban planning (his latest fixation, replacing the brief cryptocurrency phase and the even briefer artisanal pickle-making period) and remembered, mid-video about Amsterdam's cycling infrastructure, that he'd never responded to the accountant about dissolving their LLC.

The subject line read: "Re: Final Distribution of Assets and Wind-Down Protocol."

Wind-Down Protocol. Jesus Christ. Lindsey stared at it through the blue-light glasses she'd bought on Amazon. They'd been married for seven years. Together for eleven. And now their shared business—their very practical and mature decision to convert their graphic design freelancing into a proper partnership with quarterly tax payments and an EIN and a Business Activity Code—was being terminated via something called a Wind-Down Protocol.

The marriage itself hadn't even gotten a protocol. Just a Thursday morning conversation over coffee where they'd both cried and agreed they loved each other but couldn't keep doing this—whatever this was. The failing to align on life's basic questions. The growing feeling that they'd become roommates who occasionally had adequate sex and mostly harbored a low-grade frustration that manifested in fights about dish-loading techniques and whether it was "worth it" to pay for premium streaming services. (It was worth it. Obviously. What were they supposed to do, watch ads like animals?)

She'd kept the apartment. He'd moved in with his brother in Silver Lake. They'd divided the furniture with surprising efficiency—the kind of competent dismantling that made her wonder if they'd have been better suited as IKEA assembly partners than life partners. And then there was the business to dissolve, which required an actual mediator, Gerald, and multiple meetings in a converted craftsman bungalow in Echo Park that served as Gerald's "conflict resolution practice”.

Today was the final meeting. 3 PM. Gerald's office smelled like lavender essential oil and something that might have been anxiety, molecularly speaking—a combination of stale coffee, dry-cleaned polyester, and the particular chemical signature of people trying very hard to be civil.

Eric arrived exactly on time, which was its own kind of aggression. Lindsey had arrived seven minutes early, which she immediately regretted because it made her look eager, or possibly desperate, when really she'd just misjudged parking. He looked good. Annoyingly good. Like he'd been sleeping properly and perhaps eating vegetables that hadn't been microwaved from frozen. His hair was different—shorter? Or styled? He was wearing a flannel shirt she didn't recognize, which created a small, stupid pain in her chest, the realization that there were now pieces of his life she knew nothing about. New shirts. New routines. New inside jokes with his brother and his brother's boyfriend about shows she'd never seen.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

Gerald materialized with a manila folder and that aggressively soothing tone he'd cultivated, the one that made everything sound like guided meditation crossed with customer service training. "Good afternoon, Lindsey, Eric. Thank you both for your punctuality and your continued commitment to this process. Shall we?"

The meeting lasted forty-three minutes. They signed things. They agreed to things. They transferred their remaining shared assets (one iMac, technically Lindsey's but purchased through the business; one Wacom Cintiq, technically Eric's but ditto; $12,847 in the business account after Gerald's fees) with the kind of efficient detachment you'd bring to selling a used couch on Facebook Marketplace. The business that was supposed to represent their partnership—their creative collaboration, their shared vision, their "we're doing this together" validation of the relationship itself—reduced to line items and electronic signatures on a fucking iPad.

Gerald walked them out, still wearing his professional serenity like a hairshirt, thanking them for their "grace and maturity throughout this transition," as if they'd completed a particularly civil customer satisfaction survey rather than dismantled the infrastructure of a shared life.

The parking lot was that specific kind of Los Angeles purgatory—all hot asphalt and bougainvillea and cars that cost too much parked at careless angles. Lindsey's Prius was parked on the north side. Eric's Subaru was on the south side, facing the opposite direction because of course it was.

They stood there for a moment in the particular silence that exists between people who used to know each other's breathing patterns and now don't quite know how to say goodbye.

"So," Eric said.

"So."

"The iMac thing—you sure you don't need it? I can just take the Cintiq, it's—"

"Eric. We signed the papers. It's done."

He nodded. Looked at his shoes (Vans Old Skools in black, the same ones he'd been wearing since 2019, which she used to find charmingly consistent and now just found sad, or maybe she was projecting sadness onto sneakers, which seemed like its own problem). "Right. Okay."

"Are you—" she started, then stopped, because what was the question? Are you okay? Obviously not. Are you happy? Irrelevant. Are you dating anyone? None of her business and also potentially devastating to learn either way.

"Am I what?"

"Nothing. Nevermind."

He did that thing with his mouth—the small downward quirk that meant he was biting back something, swallowing words—and she felt the recognition of it like muscle memory, the way your body remembers how to swim or ride a bike. All those tiny physical translations she'd learned over eleven years, now obsolete. A defunct language.

"I should—" she gestured toward her car.

"Yeah. Me too."

Neither of them moved.

"Lindsey—"

"Don't," she said, not unkindly. "Whatever you're about to say, just—don't. We did the thing. We signed the papers. We were very mature about the shared assets." She could hear her voice doing something wobbly, the emotional equivalent of a tire losing pressure. "Let's just... let that be enough."

He nodded. Swallowed. "Okay."

"Okay."

She turned toward her car. He turned toward his. They walked in opposite directions across the parking lot, and she thought about how this was probably some kind of metaphor—how they'd arrived together (well, separately but to the same place) and were now leaving apart, literally facing different directions, and how Gerald would probably say something insufferable about that if he were narrating this moment, something about "diverging paths" and "individual journeys."

But really it just felt like walking to your car after a dentist appointment or a DMV visit or any other bureaucratic necessity—mundane and final and weirdly anticlimactic for something that represented the complete dissolution of a shared future.

She unlocked her Prius. The door made its small, efficient click. She got in. The seat was hot from the sun. She adjusted her blue-light glasses and looked at herself in the rearview mirror, which seemed overly dramatic and also somehow necessary, like she needed to confirm she was still recognizably herself after signing away the last official connection to a person she'd once believed she'd be connected to forever.

In her peripheral vision, she could see Eric getting into his Subaru. Could see him sitting there for a moment, not starting the engine, just sitting.

She wanted to get out. To walk back over. To say—what? I'm sorry? I miss you? Was it always going to end like this? All true and all useless.

Instead, she started her car (the hybrid engine made its weirdly quiet humming sound, which she'd always kind of hated but which Eric had insisted was "the responsible choice"), and pulled out of her parking spot, and drove north toward the 101, toward her apartment, toward her separate life.

In the rearview mirror, she watched Eric's Subaru pull out and head south.

Opposite directions.

Like that meant something.

Or like it meant exactly what it looked like: two people going different places because they couldn't figure out how to go to the same one anymore.