I gave Tea the manuscript in April. She said she would read it slowly because she wanted to enjoy it, and I accepted that sentence as proof of love. It was my first longer story. I expected neither a publisher nor prizes. I merely wanted someone close to read what I had worked on during evenings she often spent travelling. Occasionally I asked how far she had got. Her answers were always precise enough to prevent further questions.
In June she praised the relationship between the two brothers. In July she said the ending left a powerful impression. By then I had told her almost the entire plot, worried that my work was becoming a burden. At a mutual friend's birthday someone asked what I was writing. Tea took over the explanation, proudly and convincingly. She described a character removed from the final version before I had sent her the document.
At home I asked whether she might have opened the wrong file. I offered an explanation that could save us both. She said she did not remember every detail. Then I asked about the final scene, the one I had never described to anyone. She did not know it happened in a cemetery. She claimed to remember a station. I stared at the books on the shelf for a long time, searching for a less pathetic response than that of a wounded amateur writer.
Finally she admitted she had read the first ten pages. Continuing had felt difficult, but she had not wanted to disappoint me. Later she had assembled comments from our conversations. Every compliment created another obligation to remember the previous lie. She asked whether I would truly have found it easier if she had said she disliked the story. I replied that we would never know, because she had allowed neither of us that possibility.
I did not break up with her that night. It would have been too simple to turn the manuscript into a measure of all our years together. But I stopped offering it as a bridge across every silence. A few days later Tea said she would read it now. I asked her not to do so out of guilt. I needed time to trust her attention again, and she needed to stop believing love meant always saying what the other person wanted to hear.
I sent the story to a group of readers I did not know. One said the middle was slow. Another did not believe the ending. Their criticisms hurt, but I could use them. Tea asked how it had gone and listened to the answer without offering praise. For the first time in a long while, we talked about writing without either of us pretending to be a reader who was not there.