I was the first to say we should go. Mladen received an offer in another city and hesitated over accepting it. I said I needed a change, would find another job, and our current apartment was too small anyway. I was not lying then. I pictured broad streets, a new kitchen, and who I might become away from tiring habits. The trouble began when he believed in that picture more seriously than I could.
As we packed, I grew afraid. My job might not have been interesting, but I knew people. My mother lived nearby, my friend had a key, and the shop saved the bread I liked. I did not tell Mladen I was reconsidering. Instead, at our farewell dinner, I said I had not had much choice. His career required sacrifice, and somebody had to make it. Friends looked at me with an understanding I enjoyed.
Mladen heard only later from a man who kindly advised him to make my adjustment easier. He asked why they thought he was forcing me. I replied that they had not understood it that way, although that was precisely what I wanted. Being a selfless woman felt easier than being someone who had strongly requested something and panicked upon receiving it. I protected my image by slowly turning him into a selfish man.
The argument erupted beside a box of books. Mladen said he could accept my change of mind, but not a life in which his reputation paid whenever I failed to say what I wanted. I started crying, expecting comfort. This time he remained seated. He waited for an answer to a simple question: did I actually want to go? I said I did not know. For the first time I told the truth without choosing a role that made me look better.
He went first. I kept the apartment several more months and paid the expenses my hesitation created myself. I told friends he had not forced me. Some tried explaining that I had merely felt pressured, but I would not let them retell my story in a more comfortable form. Mladen and I talked often, sometimes warmly, sometimes with exhaustion that did not disappear merely because we remembered loving each other.
I moved in spring. I did not bring everything at once or expect my arrival to close the previous months. On the first morning I went out alone for bread and bought the wrong kind. Mladen offered to come with me next time. I said I wanted to learn myself. It was no great declaration of freedom. I was simply trying to take responsibility for the daily part of a decision for which I no longer needed somebody else to blame.