"When were you going to tell me this, Jane?" Maura demanded angrily. She was ready to leave. Her house was empty, contents in storage until she found a suitable place in Los Angeles. A cab was on the way. Maura had a large suitcase, her suitbag, her laptop bag and purse waiting in the foyer one more time. Maura's vet was boarding Bass until they had a home. And now, after months of avoidance and silence, the woman she loved more than any other living being stood beside those bags, She did not look well, but she was beautiful to Maura.
"I'm tellin' you now," Jane explained patiently. She and Maura were so similar in some ways, and sometimes had to be led to the obvious conclusion. As long as Maura was in Boston, Jane could maybe figure out some way to apologize to Maura. When she learned Maura was leaving - leaving Boston altogether for a new job - her stomach dropped. She felt her friends' sympathetic eyes. Everyone, every single person they knew in common plainly told Jane she was an idiot, and she still could not bring herself to apologize.
"My cab will be here any moment. And it's too late for apologies, Jane. I waited. I hoped. But if that's how you truly feel, I don't see any future in Boston."
"It's not. You know how I say stuff before I think about it."
"But you meant it."
"I'm sorry I said it. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings."
"But you meant it."
Jane hung her head. At the time, she was angry with Maura over buying her a dress and heels. It had been a long week, and she wasn't in the mood to go out, much less indulge Maura in someplace that would charge them too much for far too little food. She wanted to sit on the couch and relax, but long before their reservation came around, Jane delivered a spiteful diatribe about Maura's money and the ways in which she spent it. She slammed the door on the way out of Maura's house, and slammed her car door when she got in, and slammed her fists into the steering wheel. Maura made her crazy with this shit. She hated the whole dress-up thing, although Maura adored it. Maura picking out something for her that Jane could never hope to pay for rubbed Jane's nose in the differences between them. Although she know it wasn't Maura's intent to make her feel sleazy, it was how Jane felt. Kept, like a kept woman, and she couldn't reconcile their relationship with that feeling. Even if Maura didn't have money from her parents, she still made five times Jane's base salary, and they would always have that inequity.
Maura kept her inner turmoil from Jane, hidden behind the mask of years of training in remaining silent. She wasn't certain what she would say, anyway. She didn't look away from Jane, etching details into her memory. "Goodbye, Jane." Maura slid by her and opened the door.
Jane didn't move. She listened to the cab noises, the engine fading away, before taking a slow walk through the empty house. Everywhere she saw memories and might-have-beens, and silently berated herself for both. Eventually, like Maura, she walked out the front door for the last time.