This isn't weird.

Someone Else

Millie returned with Ben to his apartment, and it felt terribly strange to see it again. Everything looked, as far as she could tell, exactly the same, but she had an uneasy sense that something was different, intangibly off, as if all the furniture had been moved ever so slightly to the left.

It was a bad feeling. It wasn't so long ago that this place had felt like a second home to her; now she felt like a stranger, an interloper, entirely out of place.

She made him coffee and they sat together at the kitchen table, silent, until his mind began to feel relatively clear again.

"I shouldn't have said those things," Ben said.

"No. You shouldn't have," Millie agreed without inflection.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

There was a tense pause before Millie spoke again. "I'm sorry, too."

Ben swallowed hard, and waited.

"It... wasn't right for me to ghost you the way I did," she continued. "It's... not that different from what Noah did to me, I guess. I was just scared to see you after we... I didn't know what would happen. I wasn't ready. And then I heard that... what's-her-name had been coming over here, and..."

She trailed off.

"Millie, I... I don't know why I... I just didn't want to be alone. I hate myself for it, I was just... so lost, suddenly not having you in my life," Ben tried to explain. "When we agreed not to see each other... I thought it would be a few days, a week maybe, I don't know. You were just gone all the sudden."

"If you were struggling so badly, why didn't you just call me, Ben? I would have answered!"

"I don't know! I don't know, okay? I guess I—I didn't want to push you. Or I was afraid that—you'd realized you were better off without me, and I was too fucking scared to hear it."

"Ben, that isn't—I wouldn't—" Millie took a deep breath and rubbed her temples.

"I know I've been an idiot, Millie. I've just—I've felt like I'm losing my fucking mind these past months. I just—I thought that by now we'd be together—"

"You thought we'd be together? Is that why you kept fucking the waitress?" Millie asked incredulously. "That I'd come running if you could make me jealous with—"

"No! No, Millie—I swear to god, I would never try to play mind games like that with you—"

"Did you think you were getting back at me for making you wait—"

"No!" Ben slammed his fists on the table, startling both of them. "No, no, no, no! I wasn't trying to hurt you or anything like that, I just—I keep fucking up, over and over, every fucking decision I make is worse than the last, but I—" He grabbed Millie's hands and stared into her face with anguished eyes. "I can do better, I swear, Millie—I can be better for you."

Millie stared back at him, her expression inscrutable.

"I don't want that," she said slowly. "I don't want you to be better for me. You should be doing that for you, Ben. I can't be responsible for your ability to take care of yourself, to hold a job, or spend one single day fucking sober—"

"No, Mills—Millie—you're not—I don't mean—"

"This isn't healthy, Ben. I know what it's like to just fucking give up on yourself because you can't be with someone, and—that's not real love, it's just codependence. You can't just use another person as a stand-in for actual self-respect. And you can't ever be fully honest with someone you literally can't live without. You can't be yourself if you can't be by yourself."