His head rose and fell with her every breath. He listened intently nearly all night to her throbbing heart, knowing his actions would dampen its force. He felt her warmth beneath him, though it did not lessen his resolve.

Careful not to wake her, he rose and dressed and then gathered all he needed, running through the checklist he had perfected in the two years since the very notion was born. It was an idea that came in this same city as he sat and sipped a cappuccino in the piazza, tapping on a laptop, intent on business matters. It entered his thoughts, like a small speck of sand into machinery gears; the eventual grind slowed him to a plotting phase. So, he plotted.

The early morning chill and his dedication to this plan sharpened his thoughts. Now, back in the same piazza, the fountain pen he had purchased for this purpose, for visual drama purposes only, tapped slowly upon the parched paper before him. Coffee steamed. The words flowed as they were well memorized by this point.

The paper was now filled with ink and explanation. It rested beside the airline tickets he remembered purchasing. There were the two tickets to Rome, then one home for her and one to a new life for him. Her ticket and his letter filled an envelope that he intended to deliver beneath the hotel door, thus signifying his last act upon her as he marked the precise moment of his desertion.

She heard a shuffle of something beneath her door. The hotel bill perhaps, she wondered without opening her eyes. She had slept only an hour or so, unable to rest the entire night due to his heaviness upon her chest. And because of her contemplation. It was time for her to depart him; she knew that now. He would be devastated. So, she began the plotting.