He was thinking practically, even if I wasn’t.
I opened the airline app, my thumb hovering for a second before I forced myself to start searching. There were three options for Sunday, one of them obscenely early, one late afternoon, and one early in the evening.
Maybe the early one. Get it over with. A clean break.
No moment to think about it too much. No drawn-out goodbyes.
My chest tightened slightly. That was the part I didn’t want to think about.
Karl’s voice cut in, quieter now. “You’ll tell him.”
Again, not a question.
I didn’t look up. “Yes.” I didn’t select a flight or close the app, but sat there, staring at the screen as if it required more from me than it actually did.
“How many flights are there?”
“Three.” It came out as a croak. “I was thinking,” I said after clearing my throat, my voice more controlled than I felt, “that if I take the early flight?—”
“No,” he interjected.
I blinked, looking up at him. “No?”
“No,” he repeated, his voice calm but firm. “You don’t get to disappear like that.”
“That’s not—” I stopped and took a moment. “I’m just being practical.”
Karl’s expression didn’t change. “No, you’re not. You’re avoiding the part that matters.”
I let out a breath, sharper this time. “And what part is that?”
He looked me in the eye. “The part where you acknowledge this isn’t merely a convenient trip you’re ending.”
Oh fuck.
He was right, of course, no matter how badly I wanted him not to be.
I didn’t want to examine my situation too closely, because once I did, I wouldn’t be able to pretend it was simple anymore.
“You have less than a week.” Karl stared at me. “Don’t turn it into something you run from.”
I swallowed. All of a sudden, that feltexactlylike what I’d been about to do—make it manageable, as if it hadn’t mattered. As if he hadn’t?—
I stopped that thought before it finished forming, but it was there now, unavoidable.
I stared at the screen, at the neat little rows of departure times that made this feel like something logistical, something easier than it actually was.
Instead, I locked the phone, letting it fall into my lap. “I’ll tell him tonight.”
Karl nodded once, a simple acknowledgment. And somehow, that made it real.
There was no putting it off, no reframing it, or pretending it was just another detail to manage.
This was the moment everything shifted, when I had to say the words out loud to Stefan.
And face whatever comes after.
Dinner was finished, the plates were loaded into the dishwasher, and there was nothing to do but tell him the truth.