“Nothing was wrong, which is how it lasted a year. Nothing was right either.”

There was no incident. Nobody behaved badly. That turns out to be the hardest version, because the case has to be built entirely out of things that did not happen.

I kept waiting for a reason that would be legible to other people. What I had instead was a year of pleasant evenings and a feeling I could not get into a sentence. Eventually the absence of anything wrong stopped being reassuring and became the point. You are allowed to end something that is fine. Fine is a description, not a verdict.