I was lying. I want to be clear about that. I was not going to get over it. But what I understood, in the hour Kat sat in my kitchen, was that she was not actually asking me to forgive her. She was asking me for something specific and strange — she was asking me to reassure her that she was not going to lose anything. She wanted, more than anything else, for me to tell her our friendship would be okay. She wanted to drive home to Derek and tell him she had handled it. She wanted Sunday brunch

plans next weekend to still be on the calendar. She wanted me to do the thing I had always done, which was absorb whatever emotional work was required, so that Kat could keep living her life at the elevation she was accustomed to. And in that hour, sitting across from her, I made a decision I have not regretted in the fourteen months since. I decided I was going to give her exactly what she asked for — and nothing else. I was going to "get over it." By the cleanest, most precise method I had available to me. I was going to get over her. I was going to remove her from my life so carefully, over such a long period of time, that she would not realize it was happening until she was already gone.