The bag she packed for the fourth time

Eleven at night. Nobody had turned on another light, and the two glasses of water poured hours ago were still full on the low table. She stood at the door with her hand already through the strap. One turn of the handle and it would be done.

She had stood in this exact spot three times before.

The strap is worn thin right where her hand always grips it, and there are three old creases running down the side of the bag. She remembers all three times: a few days at her mother's to cool off, coming back once the heat had gone, and nobody bringing it up again afterward. Three years in, she thought they'd had four fights. Standing at that door, she understood they'd only ever had one — abandoned halfway, four times.

He said he'd already apologized. And he had — for forgetting her best friend's birthday, the date she'd reminded him about three separate times. But sitting with it, she realized that all three times, the only thing she ever mentioned was the date. She handed him exactly one thing to remember, he remembered exactly that thing, and the part that actually hurt stayed where it was, untouched. He hadn't been careless. She had never said it out loud.

Two in the morning. The six o'clock alarm was still set on the screen; they both had work in a few hours, and neither of them stood up. Nothing was resolved — genuinely, nothing. But the bag was still standing where it had been all night, and at this hour on every other occasion, she'd already been in a car.

Nobody won this one. Nobody walked out either.

The morning wouldn't necessarily arrive with the anger gone. Some things take a fifth and a sixth conversation. It's only that this time, they were both still sitting there to have it — when was the last time you stayed in the room?