Confession received through the anonymous form. First names changed. The rest, we don't know.
We broke up in February. Cleanly, like adults: a coffee, a list, two boxes. He took back his console, I took back my coffee maker, and we swapped keys across the table like two spies handing over hostages.
Except I'd had a second one cut, in October, when he was losing everything. He never knew. I never said.
I never went in. I swear. Not once. I just wanted… to have it. To know there was a door, somewhere in this city, that I could still open.
In May, he moved in with someone. I found out from a story — not his, hers, tagging the flat the way you tag a restaurant. New home 🏡. My flat. My couch, with a throw blanket on it I didn't recognize.
I looked at the key in my kitchen drawer for three weeks.
On June 12th, I walked past the building. By chance. That's not true, but it's what I told myself. I pushed the front door. I climbed to the third floor. I didn't take out the key.
I rang the bell.
She opened. She smiled, she said "yes?" in that voice happy people have when they expect nothing bad. And behind her, on the hallway console, in the little dish where we used to put our keys, there were two sets. Hers. And his.
With the key I'd given back to him in February.
"I think I've got the wrong floor," I said.
I went back down. I dropped my copy into a storm drain on rue de la Roquette. I heard it fall for a long time.
What I haven't told anyone: before I dropped it, I kissed it. Don't ask me why. I don't know what it means, and I don't want anyone to explain it to me.