After My Boyfriend Said His Ex’s Name in His Sleep

The thermometer read 103.2.

I pulled it from Rhys's mouth and set it on the nightstand next to the bottle of Tylenol, the glass of water I'd refilled three times, and the bowl of lukewarm broth he hadn't touched. The digital clock beside the lamp said 2:47 a.m. I'd been sitting on the edge of his bed for five hours.

His face was flushed. Sweat darkened the collar of his t-shirt and made his hair stick to his forehead. I wrung out the cloth in the bowl of cool water, folded it into a neat rectangle, and pressed it against his skin. He flinched but didn't wake. His breathing was shallow and fast, like a dog panting in summer heat.

I watched him the way I always watched him. Carefully. Like if I looked hard enough, I could find the version of him that loved me back.

Rhys Andrews. CEO of Andrews Capital. Top of his class at the University of Washington. The kind of man who walked into a room and rearranged it around himself without trying. Sharp jaw, dark hair, the sort of face that made people want to agree with him. I fell in love with him when I was twenty years old and too stupid to know that falling was the easy part. Staying was the thing that killed you.

I dipped the cloth again. Pressed it to his neck. His pulse beat fast under my fingers.

We'd been together for almost six years. I cooked his meals. I left notes in his jacket pockets reminding him about meetings. I checked every restaurant menu for mangoes because he was severely allergic and never remembered to ask. I kept a pothos vine on the kitchen windowsill and a pot of roses on the balcony and I tended both the way I tended him — with more attention than either one required, and less reward than either one deserved.

He shifted on the pillow. His lips moved.

I leaned closer. Sometimes when he was sick he talked in his sleep. Fragments of work calls, numbers, names of clients. I used to find it endearing. I used to smooth his hair and whisper that everything was fine, that I was here, that he could rest.

His mouth opened. A sound came out, low and rough, shaped by fever into something almost tender.

"Ana... stasia."

I didn't move.

"Anastasia..."

The cloth dripped onto the sheet. I watched the dark spot spread on the white cotton. I counted the drops. One. Two. Three.

Anastasia Gray. His ex-girlfriend. The one who left him when his grandmother was dying because she couldn't put her life on hold for someone else's tragedy. The one who came back years later when he was successful and worth returning to. The one who sat next to him in first class on business trips and touched his arm at client dinners and existed in his mind as the sophisticated, self-possessed woman who got away.

I was the one