Queenie and Tom’s breakup marks the loss of a relationship Queenie regarded as possibly the love of her life, but its significance lies also in how she explains it: she believes she pushed Tom away before she could understand what was happening to her. Recalled during therapy, the separation sits alongside pregnancy loss, disrupted independence, and later attempts to avoid the loneliness it left behind.

Background and Unraveling

In a later therapy session, Queenie describes the breakup as one part of a cascade of losses. She had lost her job and the ability to pay rent, moved in with her grandparents, and lost the independence of living on her own. The relationship with Tom had also fallen apart, which she initially described as her fault. Remembering that Anna had tenderly touched Tom’s bare waist, Queenie pauses before continuing, revealing how the relationship’s end remains bound up with painful memories and self-reproach. Earlier, Tom had noticed that Queenie seemed unlike herself. She had felt sick and light-headed for several days, but told him she would try to sleep it off. When he asked whether she was all right, she responded with irritation and withdrawal. In another recollected moment, she feels unwell when Tom touches her and asks him to stop; he offers to get something for her, but she moves away. These exchanges show the distance between them growing before Queenie can explain its source.

Miscarriage and Self-Blame

When Janet asks why she considers the breakup her fault, Queenie says she pushed Tom away because she did not know why she felt so bad or how to talk to him. By the time she understood what was wrong, she says, it was too late: she had miscarried. She had not wanted a baby, but still experienced the pregnancy loss as a loss. Her account complicates her initial certainty that the relationship’s collapse was simply her doing: she was grieving an event she had not yet been able to name or discuss with Tom.

Life After the Separation

At a party after the break, Queenie drinks heavily while Darcy and Fran gather friends to make an OkCupid profile for her. Queenie says she does not want to do it, but, too tipsy to resist, lets Fran take her phone and help shape the profile. The scene turns the end of the relationship into a social project: her friends treat dating again as an opportunity, while Queenie is still trying to drown her sorrow. Later, in an Uber with a man she has just met, Queenie considers going home with him. She tells herself that a fling can have boundaries and require no personal details, but recognizes that going home alone means returning to a cold, empty bed and falling asleep in Tom’s T-shirt. The encounter is framed by her effort to escape that particular loneliness, rather than by any indication that she has moved on from the relationship.

Significance in Queenie’s Story

The breakup becomes part of a wider account of Queenie’s distress, not an isolated romantic disappointment. Looking back on the year, she links the loss of Tom with the loss of work and housing, while her later reflections describe how anti-Black stereotypes and sexualized treatment shape her sense of whether she can be loved without fear of rejection. The relationship’s end therefore remains entangled with grief, self-blame, and pressures that exceed the couple themselves.