Chapter Text
Columbina knew it was over before Sandrone said anything.
It was not one moment. It never is. It was a pattern. A shift. A slow erosion that made everything feel thinner than it used to be.
Still, she chose tonight.
The campus was loud in that artificial way it always was after sunset. Too many people, too many conversations, too much noise that meant nothing. The lights outside the engineering building flickered slightly, casting uneven shadows across the pavement. Columbina stood just off to the side of the entrance, arms folded loosely, watching the glass doors.
She did not check the time. She did not need to.
Sandrone was late.
Again.
Columbina tilted her head slightly, listening. Footsteps passed. Laughter. Someone dropped something metal and cursed under their breath. None of it mattered. She stayed where she was, still and patient, like she had always been.
The doors slid open.
Sandrone stepped out without looking up.
Her bag hung off one shoulder, heavy with books and papers. Her hair was slightly disheveled, like she had been running her hands through it. She was already speaking before she fully registered Columbina’s presence.
“I told them the model was flawed, but no one listens until it fails in practice. It is inefficient. If they had just followed the initial—”
She stopped.
Her eyes landed on Columbina.
There was a pause. Not long. Not dramatic. Just enough.
“You’re here,” Sandrone said.
Columbina smiled faintly. “You asked me to wait.”
“Yes. Right.” Sandrone adjusted the strap of her bag. “I was delayed.”
“I noticed.”
There was no accusation in her tone. That was the problem.
Sandrone seemed to relax at that. She stepped closer, already shifting back into whatever she had been thinking about before.
“I need to go back later. There is an issue with the calibration and if it is not corrected tonight, the entire data set will be—”
“You said that yesterday,” Columbina said.
Sandrone paused again. This time, she frowned slightly.
“Yes. Because it is still true.”
Columbina watched her. Really watched her.
There were small things most people would miss. The way Sandrone did not quite meet her eyes for more than a second. The way her posture stayed angled, like she was already halfway somewhere else. The way every sentence felt like it was competing with another thought.
***
Many years ago…
Columbina looked over at her roommate, Sandrone, who was sitting on the couch. Not standing. Not rushing. Sitting. Her laptop was closed next to her, a sight she rarely saw.
Columbina sat beside her, expecting the usual excuse.
“You are done early,” Columbina said.
“I’m not. I stopped,” Sandrone replied.
That alone had been unusual. Columbina had looked at her more closely. “That is not like you.”
Sandrone leaned on her shoulder, eyes on the campus lights outside their window. Columbina shifted slightly at the contact, then relaxed. For a while, neither of them spoke. The air had been colder then, but it now felt warmer. Sandrone had eventually tilted her head slightly toward her.
“You are more interesting than anything in there,” she had said, a slight uncertainty in her voice.
Columbina didn’t reply immediately. She remembered that clearly. The pause. The surprise. The small shift in her chest she had not named at the time.
***
Columbina stepped a little closer. “Walk with me,” she said.
Sandrone hesitated. Not long. Just enough. “I do not have much time.”
“You never do.”
Sandrone’s expression shifted, irritation flickering at the edges. “If this is about earlier, I already explained. The meeting ran over.”
“It is not about earlier.”
“Then what is it about?”
Columbina turned and started walking anyway.
After a moment, Sandrone followed. They moved through campus side by side, but not quite together. There was space between them. Not a lot. Just enough to notice if you were paying attention.
They used to walk closer.
Columbina kept her gaze forward. The path ahead was lit by a row of soft overhead lights, each one casting a circle of pale gold onto the ground. She stepped through them one at a time.
“Do you remember,” she said, “when you used to skip your evening sessions?”
Sandrone glanced at her. “That was different.”
“How?”
“I had less responsibility.”
“You chose to have more.”
“Yes.” Sandrone’s tone sharpened slightly. “Because it matters.”
Columbina nodded once. “And I do not?”
That stopped her. Sandrone’s steps slowed. “That is not what I said.”
“It is what you show.”
Silence settled between them. Not comfortable. Not yet broken.
Sandrone exhaled, clearly trying to control her response. “You are taking this too personally.”
“I am your partner. How else should I take it?”
“You know what I mean.”
Columbina stopped walking. This time, Sandrone stopped too. They stood facing each other in the middle of the path. A few people passed by, glancing briefly before moving on. No one stayed. No one ever did.
Columbina’s expression was calm. Sandrone’s jaw tightened. “I have a project that requires my attention. You knew that.”
“I did.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
Because you stopped choosing me. Columbina did not say it out loud. She did not need to. Instead, she asked, “When was the last time we spent time together without you checking your messages?”
Sandrone opened her mouth. Closed it. “That is not fair,” she said finally.
The air felt heavier now. Thicker. Like something inevitable was pressing in on them. Sandrone ran a hand through her hair again, more agitated this time. “What do you want from me?”
There it was.
Columbina held her gaze. “I want you to care.”
“I do care.”
“Not when it costs you something.”
“That is not true.”
“Then prove it.”
Sandrone stared at her. For a moment, there was something almost vulnerable there. Something unguarded.
Then it disappeared.
“I cannot drop everything every time you feel neglected,” she said.
Columbina blinked once. Slowly. “That is how you see this?”
“I am being realistic.”
“No,” Columbina said quietly. “You are choosing to be somewhere else.”
The words landed harder than anything else had. Sandrone’s expression hardened in response. Defensive. Closed. “And you are being unreasonable,” she replied.
Columbina felt something settle in her chest. Not pain. Not exactly.
Clarity.
She had been waiting for something to change. For Sandrone to notice. To turn back toward her on her own. She had not.
And now she would not.
Columbina took a small step back. The space between them widened. Sandrone noticed. Her brows furrowed slightly. “What are you doing?”
Columbina’s voice stayed steady. “I think we should stop.”
The words hung there.
Sandrone did not react immediately. It was like her mind needed a second to process them. “Stop what?”
Columbina met her eyes fully now. “This.”
A pause, the silence louder than ever.
“No,” Sandrone said flatly. “That is not necessary.”
Not necessary. Of course.
“We are not working,” she said.
“That is an overstatement.”
“It is not.”
“This is a temporary imbalance. It will stabilise once the project is complete.”
Columbina shook her head slightly. “You said that last month.”
“And it is still true.”
“You always have something that is still true.”
The worst part was that Columbina still understood her. That made it harder.
If Sandrone had been cruel, this would have been simple. If she had stopped loving her entirely, Columbina could have hated her for it. Hatred was clean. Easy to hold. Easy to survive.
But this was not cruelty. It was ignorance. Obliviousness
Again and again and again.
And every time Columbina told herself she could endure a little more of it.
A missed dinner because the prototype failed.
A conversation interrupted halfway through because Sandrone suddenly remembered an equation she needed to rewrite.
Falling asleep beside someone whose hands still smelled faintly of machine oil and graphite because she had gone back to the lab after midnight.
None of those things had seemed large enough on their own.
That was the dangerous part.
Love rarely collapsed all at once. It thinned quietly. Slowly enough that you kept adjusting to the absence before realizing something essential was gone.
Sandrone looked away first.
It was brief, but Columbina felt it like a confirmation.
“You know this period is important,” Sandrone said softly. “Everything depends on this project succeeding.”
Columbina studied her face carefully.
There had been a time Sandrone looked at her with complete focus, like the rest of the world had temporarily lost relevance. Columbina remembered noticing it in small moments, while making tea in their apartment kitchen, while listening to her ramble half-awake about dreams she barely remembered, while sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by papers neither of them intended to organize.
Sandrone used to look at her like discovery.
Now she looked at her like interruption.
The realization should not have hurt anymore. But it still did.
“You keep saying that,” Columbina said softly.
“Because it is true.”
“And what happens after this project?”
Sandrone frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”
“There is always another one.”
“That is how research works.”
“No,” Columbina replied. “That is how you work.”
For once, Sandrone had no immediate response. Columbina could see her thinking already, assembling counterarguments, reorganising the conversation into something solvable. That was what Sandrone did whenever emotions became inconvenient.
But relationships were not equations, no matter how desperately Sandrone wanted them to be.
A cold breeze moved through the path between buildings, stirring fallen leaves across the pavement. One scraped lightly against Columbina’s shoe before disappearing into the dark.
She suddenly remembered another night.
***
Rain against the apartment windows.
Sandrone half-asleep at her desk.
Columbina standing behind her, gently removing her glasses because she had drifted off while working.
Sandrone blinking awake just enough to catch her wrist.
“Stay,” she had murmured.
Just that.
Stay.
Like it mattered.
Columbina had stayed for hours.
***
Now, standing in front of her, she realized Sandrone had not asked her to stay in a very long time. The grief of that settled strangely inside her. Quiet. Heavy. Ancient. Sandrone crossed her arms. Defensive now.
“You knew what I was like when we started dating.”
Columbina’s expression flickered at that. Barely. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “But you were different with me.”
Sandrone’s jaw tightened. “I am still the same person.”
“That is exactly the problem.”
Something in Sandrone’s face changed.
Not anger.
Not immediately.
Guilt.
Small, sharp, and quickly buried. But Columbina saw it.
For one suspended second, she thought maybe this was the moment. Maybe Sandrone would finally stop defending herself long enough to understand. To really understand.
Columbina looked at her quietly. Silence.
A group of students passed nearby laughing loudly about something neither of them heard. The sound felt distant, unreal, like noise from another life.
She had spent months compensating for the distance between them. Initiating conversations. Waiting through canceled plans. Pretending she did not notice when Sandrone answered questions distractedly or forgot things she had already told her.
Pretending loneliness was temporary.
At some point, she had started feeling alone even while sitting beside her. That had been the beginning of the end.
And perhaps the cruelest part was that Sandrone probably had not even realized when it started happening. Sandrone had simply believed Columbina would continue waiting forever. And Columbina almost had.
But Sandrone ruined it. Her expression grimaced and her frustration broke through more clearly now. “So your solution is to end the relationship?”
“My solution is to stop pretending it is still one.”
That did it.
Sandrone took a step forward, closing the distance Columbina had just created.
“This is impulsive,” she said. “You are reacting emotionally instead of logically.”
Columbina did not move.
“I have been patient for months,” she replied. “There is nothing impulsive about this.”
“You are exaggerating the problem.”
“I am acknowledging it.”
Silence again. Longer this time. Sandrone searched her face, like she was looking for something to contradict what she was hearing. Some sign that this was temporary. Reversible. Not real. Columbina did not give her one. Finally, Sandrone spoke again. Quieter.
“You are serious.”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
Then, more sharply, “And you are not willing to reconsider.”
Columbina’s expression softened, just slightly.
“I already did,” she said.
That was the closest she came to explaining.
It was enough.
Sandrone’s shoulders stiffened. Something in her posture shifted. Not collapse. Not quite. But a withdrawal.
“Fine,” she said.
Just one word.
Flat. Controlled.
“If that is your decision.”
Columbina nodded once.
“It is.”
Neither of them moved.
The world around them kept going. Voices. Footsteps. Light and motion that felt distant now.
Sandrone adjusted her bag again, more abruptly this time.
“I have work to do,” she said.
Of course you do.
Columbina stepped aside, clearing the path.
“Then you should not be late,” she replied.
Sandrone walked past her without another word.
Columbina did not turn to watch her go. She stood there until the footsteps faded. Until the noise of the campus filled back in around the empty space where Sandrone had been.
Then she exhaled. Slowly. Carefully.
And started walking in the opposite direction.