You always think it’d be a wonderful thing to be told that you’re loved- even better, that you’ll always be loved. You think that, but then when it happens, it’s never as straightforward as the idea would make it seem.

Mere days ago, Kit emailed to say he’s moving away- leaving this city, the state, this time zone – and would I join him for dinner at Charlie Trotter’s as we always said we would before leaving the city together. That had been the plan all those years ago, but things are different now. As it turns out, one of us is moving away while the other stays, though we’ve each already moved on in our own ways.

“I know in my heart there is no one more appropriate to go with, and frankly no one I’d rather sit across from at that dinner than you,” he wrote. “You have been too significant in my life to just let you fade away with no contact and with a bad taste in my mouth about our last interactions.”

A bad taste indeed. Our ending was surreptitious and unplanned but long overdue, and ultimately did little justice to what we shared. It’s been nearly two years since I made that relationship-ending phone call and I’ve been busy building back what he tore down and accruing emotional distance between us.

After all that, here then came an opportunity to replace that lingering bad taste for each of us with something else- a farewell dinner. Like our break-up, closure it seemed would also be a spontaneous but belated occasion. I accepted the invitation.

Of course, I had misgivings aplenty. After giving the cab driver the proper direction more out of habit than conscious thought- Halsted and Armitage please- I’d asked myself what the hell I thought I was doing. Was this really me going to meet the man I’d been avoiding all this time, the man I’d been hoping in fact would do just this- move away and leave me be? Watching the familiar buildings and streets slip by, I could hardly believe I’d agreed, donned a dress and heels for one last dinner with him.

As the cab drew closer, I’d begun to worry about what I’d say to him. Would I chastise him for the wrongs he dealt me? Would I tell him how much he hurt me? Would I put on a happy face and claim it’s all “water under the bridge”? And what might he say to me? What if he should apologize? What if it matters? What if he wants more? Dares to ask me to jump ship, come with? What if it’s all a lie- he’s not really moving? What if he says, “I love you, still”?

Walking in the door to meet him, he had stood to greet me, champagne glass at the ready and the room had shifted to witness our meeting. He, the older man in the suit, and I, the noticeably younger woman who once picked it out for him. I long ago had become aware of and learned to disregard the discernment of their watchful eyes. All those scenarios being assigned us, except the one that’s true- that we loved each other once.

But that was then. Now we were together to remember, catch up, say good bye. Course for course, glass by glass, hour after hour, the conversation had flowed as easily as it ever had- our problems were always of a different nature- and then the dinner and the evening itself had come to a close.

“Seeing you again tonight…I want you to know I will always love you,” he had hastily confessed as he tightly hugged me on the sidewalk, pressing the words into every fiber of my clothing, into my pores. “You will always be in my heart.”

And that was it. Without a word more between us, I’d stepped into the waiting cab past the door he’d held aloft, and had choked out my address. As the taxi carried me away, I’d looked back only to see him helplessly watch the distance between us grow once again…a lasting imprint upon my mind.

He’d said it, said the thing I was most fearful but certain he’d say. And I did the thing I knew I would if he should. I went home, called my boyfriend and told him all about it, then climbed into bed with a handkerchief and proceeded to cry my eye make-up off into the quiet darkness where no one could see or hear or comfort.