Zachary’s mind had quietly filed away the onion preference of a woman he was no longer married to, kept it safe and ready for five years, because some part of him had never stopped orienting toward her, never stopped treating her comfort as a thing that mattered.

And that same mind had let the fact of my allergy — a fact about the woman he shared a bed with, a fact that was, quite literally, about whether I could breathe — slip through and vanish, again and again, because some part of him had never once oriented toward me at all.

He would have sworn he loved me.

He may even have believed it.

But you cannot love someone your own mind does not bother to remember.