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"You don't have to say anything."
"I know but what if I want to? What if not saying anything is what messed us up to begin with? I understand why you didn't want anyone with you when your dad was at the hospital, I get it, okay, and I'm sorry I told people, but I just - I'm trying to get better at telling people things and it's hard to know where to start or stop with that shit, and everyone was asking where you were, so -" Carmy signed sorry like that could fix everything or even anything, like it wasn't far too late for that gesture to mean nearly as much as a verbal "I'm sorry" that Syd knew Carm would likely never give her, not in a way where he would mean it enough to not screw up specifically in communicating with her again.
"You don't have to say anything. You're leaving me alone again." And instead he's just - what, abandoning ship? Abandoning The Bear to his sister who was literally nicknamed by her cooking fuckup and Sydney Adamu, the woman who failed at every endeavor she tried? Where was Carmy going? What was he going to do?
"You don't have to say anything." Carmy didn't. Carmy didn't say a word, he just cooked Mom lunch like they were a normal mother and son, like Mom didn't know she had on some level killed Mikey, like Carmy didn't know he too had been responsible for his older brother's death if for nothing else than the fact he hadn't been there.
He hadn't been there and he was so terrified of being anywhere else again that he micromanaged The Bear into a shit review. The Bear was never going to be what Carmy had originally wanted it to be because he had wanted it to be Mikey's, which was never happening, but the next best thing it could be was something beautiful, which would only happen if Carmy erased himself from the equation. Carmy was the opposite of beautiful, of wonderful, of handsome, of good; he was tainted the way being around Mom always tainted him and he couldn't say a goddamn word again. His mouth was left opening and closing like a dying fish. "I saw my mom earlier. I cooked her lunch." Carm said this to Sydney like it would matter at all, like she wasn't his opposite. Dead mom, dad who was her whole world, whereas Carm had a missing dad he barely knew and a mom whom his childhood had been killed by.
"Okay? I don't see what this has to do with you changing the ownership agreement to make yourself not - not fucking there anymore. Are you - Carmy, I know things have been hard recently, but you cannot do what your brother did, do you -"
"Syd, what the fuck, no! No, I'm leaving so I don't end up doing that!"
"What do you mean, you're leavng?"
"I mean I first left Chicago because this entire place felt like a small fucking town with how many people here knew and loved my family. You were at the wedding, you had to have seen how the people there looked at my mom like a train about to crash, and that wasn't even a Berzatto wedding! Tiff invited damn near everyone because Berzatto's attract strays, people whose real families don't want them, that's why Richie and Claire and fucking - that's just about the only reason anyone willingly attaches themselves to the Berzatto's, either they see dysfunctional as better than nothing or they're amused by it, but they never saw the whole picture. Nat escaped by marrying damn near the opposite of Mom and pitting herself against her only support system who had been around so that Pete would never need to learn just how bad shit got. I had left the country, left the family restaurant for restaurants as far and different as I could, and I only returned because Mikey died, but I can't stay here or else I feel like I might."
"What - what do you mean, Natalie pit herself against her only support system?"
"Francine Fak had been Sugar's best friend, just like, believe it or not, Neil fucking Fak had been mine before Neil met Mikey and suddenly I was worthless in comparison, which was damn near how everyone felt."
"Carmy, what does any of this have to do with The Bear?"
"I don't- I don't think what I was trying to build here was healthy. I think i was drowning my grief and trauma in cooking, in running the restaurant, in Claire and failing at being a boyfriend and partner and I don't know, I need to stop failing everyone and the easiest way to do that is to stop. Just stop everything."
"Just stop everything? Dude, that's self-destruction."
"I know but I've been in self-destruction mode since we met, Syd."
"But - but the good times, there's been good times, you have to have seen that, right?"
"Yeah, but I just - I can't do it anymore." Carmen felt an eerie sense of dejavu to when he had been screaming on Claire's steps. But that was insane. Claire had wanted to know Carmen, but left the moment shit get real. Syd didn't want Carmy to know her at all really, she had been intentionally keeping her distance, which Carmen understood because why would anyone actually want to know him?
"Alright, whatever. Goodbye Chef." Syd should have gone with the start up run by Shapiro. Financial stability, a job with people she barely knew, now she just had a job with people she barely knew (that was a lie, but she wished it wasn't. If she still didn't know Carmy this wouldn't hurt the way it did.).
Carmy watched Syd walk away towards the train. He wondered what happened now.