All of these moments added weight to the sadness I would feel when he left, but I never paused to debate if the joy was worth the cost.

Still, there was a limit to how much I would pay, thrown into relief by the fact that Will seemed to value our relationship less than I did. He prioritized his education and career and would soon return to law school on the other side of the country, then take a job in Boston, and ultimately land back in Vermont to settle down. So certain was he in each of these steps that I dared not question him. It seemed clear that there was no place for me in his plans and that he felt no need to create one.

So ours was not the timeless, priceless romance I had hoped it to be. Like everything, it was constrained by cost. To Will, I wasn’t worth the cost of a change in plans or the distraction of a long-distance relationship. This was understandable, I told myself. But still the question loomed: Exactly how much money was I willing to spend for a morning at his apartment?

I thought it might help to treat it like an economics exercise, one that I could solve based on a collection of variables. I diligently noted that paying $5.50 didn’t seem like much when it meant we could stay up later and drink more wine the night before, but it felt steep when Will spent the evening fixated on his corporate-sounding law course options.

Still, most influential of all was the inverse relationship between the number of days we had left and the value of that morning time, which grew increasingly precious. As I could count our mornings left together on two hands, and then one, I focused on the math and put off ruminating on more difficult questions, such as whether I loved him.

Love is an investment, after all — of time, emotion and, yes, money — and our investments didn’t match. Knowing that, I hid ParkMobile from him most mornings, as if protecting him from a harsh economic reality. In truth, I couldn’t bear to have him see how much I was willing to pay for our time together and risk comparing it to his own valuation. As his departure ticked closer, I sensed his excitement to get back to school, back on track. I didn’t want ParkMobile to confirm what I already knew, so I let him sleep.