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up with me. But I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t get up and walk away. I couldn’t say
Fuck you
and see if that brought him to a different viewpoint. I had to cling on. I had to beg. I had to make a fool of myself.
    “You don’t have to promise me anything,” I said.
    Michael let me plead my case for the best part of three hours, but though he claimed to agree with much of what I said about the good times we’d had together, he would offer me no hope whatsoever. He was adamant that his future had no room for me. Except as a friend. We could always be friends, he assured me.
    “But, Michael!” I sobbed. “I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to split up with you! I—I—I—love you!” I added, as I quickly reached hysteria. The tears ran freely down my face.
    I had always been so careful not to use tears as a weapon in relationships. I thought it was a manipulative thing to do, and I really didn’t believe that tears worked, in any case. But I was to be surprised that evening. To my mind, I had lost it absolutely. I could feel my carefully applied makeup melting into a Halloween mask. Each breath I took seemed to come out as a honk. At one point I’m embarrassed to say I even blew a bubble of snot from my nose. Pathetic. I could not have been apretty sight. But after two bottles of wine and with the time drawing close to midnight my crying seemed to have an effect on Michael. And not the one I had expected.
    “Hey, hey,” he crooned. “It’s not that bad.” He leaped up to get me some paper towels, and when he sat back down, he reached across the table for my hand. As I began to calm down, he let his fingers wander up my bare arm to the crook of my elbow. He traced little circles on the thin skin there, which made me feel ticklish, but I didn’t dare ask him to stop. I just wanted him to keep on touching me. It was evidence that he cared and perhaps, perhaps that part of him still wanted me in his life.
    I leaned forward over the table, hoping he might progress from stroking my arm to stroking my face, like he used to. The action of leaning forward slightly opened the neckline of my dress. Michael looked deep into my cleavage. It wasn’t quite as romantic as having him look deep into my eyes, but it was something, I supposed. I shifted surreptitiously so that the lace of my bra showed quite clearly and Michael was transfixed like a chicken locking eyes with a hawk.
    “It’s late,” he said then. It was past midnight. He let go of my hand and stood up. I waited for him to suggest a taxi, but instead he said, “Let’s go to bed.”
    I followed him mutely into the bedroom I had come to know so well. Without speaking, Michael helped me take off my dress. He undressed himself and together we slipped between the clean white sheets. There was no question as to what would come next.
    That night we made love more passionately than we had in months. Lately our sexual routine, while athletic, had become just that—routine—starting and ending in the same way with the same repertoire of positions in between. That night I felt that we were properly connected again, like we had been when we first got together. When we were face-to-face, he lookedinto my eyes. When he came, I thought he called my name. Ashleigh! Though in retrospect, he may have said, “Ah, shit.”
    Anyway, as Michael fell asleep, his breath falling into the familiar pattern that told me he was about to start snoring, I felt, at last and for the first time since I saw that awful update on Facebook, some proper relief. I was still in Michael’s bed, so I was still his girlfriend, right? Sure, he hadn’t whipped out a diamond engagement ring, as Becky’s Henry had done, but we were sleeping together. His head was next to mine on the pillow. His arm lay across my stomach. It all seemed so perfectly natural. It had to mean I was still in the game.
    When Michael let out his first snore, I gently wriggled my way out from beneath his