I do not speak to strangers.

And Julian, whatever he still imagined we had shared, had become a stranger to me the moment I understood that everything I thought we shared had been a lie he was telling.

There is a clean freedom in that recognition, once you fully accept it.

I did not have to hate him.

Hatred requires a relationship, an ongoing emotional entanglement with the person who wronged you.

I simply had no relationship with him at all, had never really had one, and so I felt toward him only the mild, distant, uninvested politeness one feels toward any stranger with whom one has some minor administrative business to conduct.