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124 Walden Seth Harwood Noah Bennett didn’t know the right thing to do. He and Corinne had just broken up, something that felt right, but he couldn’t be sure. After a hard year apart, trying to navigate the difficulties of a longdistance relationship, Noah had come back to Boston for the summer break from his MBA classes at Northwestern. They had both come to recognize that spending their summer together was critical. If they never saw each other, what was the point? So Noah moved back to Boston, into Corinne’s small apartment where everything was tastefully decorated in light colors and floral prints from where she’d grown up in the south of France. In Chicago, he could have lined up an internship with any of a half-dozen brokerage houses, but in Boston the job searching went slowly. After two weeks of interviews that led to nothing , he began to realize that spending his days alone in Corinne’s apartment , waiting for interviews or for her to come home, was not what he wanted. They started talking at five that morning, after she found him awake in the living room, watching the sunrise. When she came in, Noah didn’t look. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I wish I could, but I can’t.” “What is wrong with this?” she asked. “We were going to try.” “I know,” he said. “But it’s not right. That’s the best I can explain. I wish it was another way.” On the other side of the street, one of the thin pipes atop a large brick building emitted a trail of steam that rose up into the sky. “I’m sorry.” She called in sick. He wished she wouldn’t, but she was crying, hard, and wanted to help him pack his things. Noah left—he had to get out of the apartment; he went to Cambridge to get his mother’s car, but Corinne was still there when he got back, which made packing even harder. She refused to do anything but help him, a kindness he could 125 Seth Harwood barely endure, and together they turned the morning into a series of crying and ruined goodbyes. When the car was packed, he went to his mother’s. His father was there, waiting to talk to him, to find out what his plans were. Noah told him the relationship had come to a permanent-feeling close, that he felt like he’d finally made an important decision. It felt right, he told his father. Then, in the late afternoon, Corinne called him. “I’ve just been laid off,” she whispered over the phone. “I don’t have a job.” “Jesus,” he said, sitting alone in what had once been his bedroom at his mother’s, the room where he had once punched a man named Vaughn—a boyfriend of his mother’s whom Noah had thought she should not date. Now, he held the phone close to his head and looked at his suitcase on the other side of the room. He closed his eyes. “How did this happen ?” he asked. “They said they have to make cutbacks,” she said. “Jana told me they’re laying off six people.” She said she wasn’t even supposed to show up to work tomorrow; they’d told her today had been her last. “I thought they had to give you two weeks,” he said. He had been back from Chicago for less than a month. “Do you want me to come over?” She did. “I want to,” he said. Of course he should go. He felt guilty for offering in a way that forced her to ask. He would see her, that was what made the most sense; he would go there, set himself aside and go because she needed him. He could push his decisions away for tonight, at least. He found his parents in the backyard talking, behaving like friends, for once. When Noah told them what had happened, they couldn’t believe it. “That’s terrible!” his father said. “I know. I’m going over there. That’s the right thing to do...

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