As he stepped into the now abandoned apartment, he didn't know what he felt, what he was supposed to feel, what she wanted him to feel. Everything was gone except for a few canvases, the bike Mozzie had left stowed away in the corner of the living room, and the remnants of a few cardboard boxes Kate had used to move into the place a little more than a year ago.
He swallowed thickly as he took a few steps farther inside, pocketing the keys of the car he'd only just stolen. He was tempted to go off in search of anything left behind in the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom. Maybe her makeup bag would still be tucked in the top left drawer of their bureau. Or the cinnamon scented shampoo and honeysuckle scented soap could still rest on the shelf just above the claw footed bathtub. Or even the box covered in a faint daisy pattern filled with the worn recipe cards passed down from grandmother to mother to Kate herself when she'd graduated high school.
But before he could venture any further and explore any of these ideas, something caught his eye. Leaning up against one of the supporting columns of the apartment was a bottle. A bottle he knew well, at that. His heart gave an involuntary lurch as he stepped toward it, a few pieces of hair strewn across his forehead as he took a few shaky, gasping breaths. He crouched down in front of the bottle and picked it up, turned it over in his hands, admiring it was though it were one of the Antioch manuscripts.
It was the Bordeaux bottle. Their Bordeaux bottle. He uncorked it with the calloused tip of his left thumb and took a whiff, letting out a choked laugh in the moment that followed. He could still smell the faint scent of the $13 Cabernet that she'd probably poured into it only a few nights before, and he could see the faint trace of her lipstick smudged around the rim of the bottleneck.
He fell back to lean against the column and ran a hand down over his face, staring at the bottle. He knew what this meant. What else could it have meant? The bottle had been the first sign that they could make it on their own together, and now it meant something else entirely: goodbye.
