It’s a short walk to the complex. In only a few minutes we’re in the elevator, Neil leaning against one mirrored wall and me against another.

I slant a look at him and some of my anxiousness wanes. He doesn’t seem the slightest bit distressed and doesn’t have the look of someone who intends any more weighty discussions today. He’s just sort of there, letting me be.

The doors open and he has my hand again. Outside our door, he fishes in his pocket, and removes his key chain. I can feel my eyes widen as I watch him unlock the door. I hadn’t noticed before now that Neil still had a key to my place, that I had forgotten to ask for it back when we broke up in December. Strange, but I didn’t even think of taking back my key.

Inside the condo I freeze. The condo looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane. We were only gone for four hours and it doesn’t even look like home anymore. Tall moving boxes sealed with black—or pink?—tape make it nearly impossible to get across the living room. In giant letters names have been written on the cardboard. Rene. Rene. Rene. Chrissie…shit, she started packing my things, too.

I rapidly notice the rest of the room. The pictures are gone from the walls. The books from the shelves. The CDs and albums. All the stupid clutter Rene and I accumulated in four years here, gone.

The music is blasting, and my anxious gaze floats through the room, but I don’t see Rene. How the heck did she do this in four hours? Jeez, I knew we had to finish packing today, but I didn’t expect it look like this and I definitely didn’t expect it to plunge my emotions into free-fall again.

My brain can’t keep up with what’s happening here. Neil makes a low whistle, pulling me from my stupor. “Someone is eager to get out of Berkeley,” he says, amused and jeering. He looks at some boxes, pausing at one with his name written on it. “She might have let us pack up our own shit, don’t you think?”

“Rene? Are you here?” I call out.

The music switches off and Rene comes bouncing from the kitchen. She’s dressed in short-short cutoff overalls and a tube top, her black hair pushed back from her face in a pink bandana. Perspiration speckles her rich olive skin.

She smiles, brushing at a wayward curl with a forearm. “I’ve packed all the kitchen things and marked them to go to LA for my new apartment, like you said I could.” She stares down at something in her hand. “Do you want this or can I keep it?”

I maneuver through the boxes to see what she’s looking at. It’s a picture of the three of us our first Christmas after Neil moved in.

I hold out my hand, a lump rising in my throat. “No. I want to keep this.”

Rene shakes her head and sighs. “I sort of like it. I was hoping you’d let me keep it.” She stares at me expectantly, I stare back, and then she sets it next to an unsealed box. “Fine, you can have it.” She taps two boxes. “These ones are yours, Chrissie. I haven’t sealed and labeled them yet. You can finish putting your stuff in here. I haven’t even started on your bedroom.”

“Let’s not have you packing our stuff from the bedroom,” Neil says, sitting down on the couch.

Rene sticks out her tongue at him. “What’s the matter? Afraid I might get all hot and bothered looking at your boxers?”

Neil laughs. “Nope. More afraid you might steal Josh Moss’s phone number from my address book.”

Rene flushes, her eyes sparkly. “Asshole!” She crosses her arms. “So how is Josh?”

“Josh will be here tomorrow. He’s driving back to Seattle with me.” A teasing glint brightens Neil’s eyes. “Might be your last chance with him, Rene.”

She scrunches up her nose and shrugs. “Too bad my plane leaves at 6 a.m. Well, it’s his loss.”

Neil laughs and clicks on the TV. It’s one of the only things in the room not disconnected or shoved into a box.

I finally find my voice. “I can’t believe you packed my things without me. I don’t even know what’s in the boxes. I thought we were going to do this together. You didn’t even wait for me.”

Both Rene and Neil stare at me. Shit! Why did that have to come out so loud and sound so irrational?

Rene arches a brow. “My plane leaves early in the morning. We can’t put it off any longer, Chrissie.”

In the morning. I tense. For the first time it sinks in and holds the feel of realness that we are all leaving tomorrow, heading in different directions.

“Besides, it wouldn’t be right to leave you having to do everything,” she says.

She takes from her pocket a folded sheet of paper, shoves it at me, and sinks down on the arm of the sofa.

Her finger moves along the list as I read.

She says, “That’s my address in LA. That’s my new phone number. That’s my new mobile number…thank you, Patty, for no longer being a cheap-ass mom and getting me a mobile phone. The boxes with the pink tape go to LA. And the boxes with the black tape go to Santa Barbara.”

I nod. “That’s easy enough to follow.”

My head is swimming. After twelve years I will no longer be living with Rene. I’ve spent my entire life with her, neighbors in Hope Ranch, sharing a dorm room at boarding school, and now the condo in Berkeley. And poof, tomorrow we will be in different cities with different lives.

I move toward my bedroom. “I’ll change and be right back to help you finish,” I announce over my shoulder.

I close my bedroom door and sink down on the bed, trying to will the anxious churning of my stomach to stop. I’m frantic again and I don’t want to be.

My eyes roam the confines of my bedroom and all the things I still have to do before the movers come tomorrow. Neil’s junk is mingled everywhere with my own. It’s strange how a guy’s things can rest in your bedroom and you don’t even notice them.

How could I not notice?

Neil’s belongings are everywhere. A completely normal and comfortable thing. He may have moved out in December, but we have never totally pulled apart our lives, and staring at his possessions I’m shocked to realize it was because I didn’t want to.

I held on to Neil even after I told him to go.

I’m not completely clear why I did that. I pick up his picture from my bedside table. I didn’t even put this away. I kept it. Neil has never left me. Not for a moment. He’s been with me every minute of these awful months since December. How could I not see it before today?

“It’s going to be all right, Chrissie.”

Neil’s quiet voice makes me turn. He is standing in my bedroom doorway watching me. How long has he been watching? And why is he staring at me that way? The expression in his eyes is compassionate; sad and hopeful at once.

“You’re going to be OK,” he adds quietly. “I’m going to be OK. If we stay together we will both be OK.”

I nod, even though I don’t know what I’m nodding about or what Neil means by we will both be OK. There is nothing for Neil to have be OK over. He’s wonderful. Perfect. Emotionally together and not needy.

He settles on his knees on the floor beside the bed, his body between my legs. I stare at him and he has that look in his eyes, the one that is glorious but makes my heart contract.

He runs his hands up my thighs. “I’ll help you with this when I get back.”

“Where are you going?”

The edge in my voice surprises us both.

Neil’s eyes widen, his thumb lightly brushing my cheek. “To get Chinese with Rene. I won’t be long. That vegan carrot cake just didn’t do it for me.”

I laugh, a little sputter, rough. I lean forward and kiss his hair. “Didn’t do it for me either.”

Neil smiles. “What do you want?”

“I don’t care. Surprise me.”

I watch him leave the room and in a few minutes I hear the front door slam. I change into a pair of sweats and go back into the living room. I stare at the boxes and all the things still unpacked, not sure where to begin.