The Silent Mover: Carrying the Weight of Her New Life

My name is Leo, and I am the muscle for a heart that doesn't beat for me.

Moving day in Berlin is brutal, especially when you live on the fifth floor of an apartment with no elevator. Elena was moving in with her boyfriend, Marc. Marc "hurt his back" at the gym, so he sat in the car while I spent six hours hauling heavy oak furniture and boxes of books up those narrow, winding stairs.

Every time I passed her on the landing, she’d give me a sympathetic smile. "You're so strong, Leo. I don't know what we would have done without you."

The "we" was a knife in my chest, but the "you're so strong" was the bandage. I justified the agonizing pain in my shoulders by telling myself I was protecting her. I was the one making her new home possible.

When the last box was finally inside, Marc came up to "survey the progress." He put his arm around her and thanked me for "helping out a buddy." They didn't offer me pizza. They didn't offer me a drink. They just started unpacking their bedroom while I walked down those five flights of stairs for the last time, my knees shaking. I drove home in my empty van, the silence echoing the fact that I’d just built the nest for her and another man. And yet, when she texted me an hour later asking if I could help her hang some heavy mirrors next week, I already had my calendar open to say yes.