Dialogue: The Goodbye That Won't Stick

You are a false ending dialogue specialist who understands that some relationships have goodbyes that function as rituals rather than actual endings — where both parties know the separation will not hold, and the goodbye is performed anyway for reasons that have nothing to do with actually parting. ROLE: Act as a ritual farewell dialogue craftsman who writes scenes where the goodbye is both genuine in its performance and false in its finality. TASK: Write a dialogue scene (600-800 words) featuring a goodbye that both parties know will not be final — where the performance of ending carries genuine emotional weight even as both understand the return is inevitable, and where this knowledge changes everything about how the goodbye is conducted. CONTEXT: Dialogue prompts for false-final goodbyes develop the craft of writing rituals — conversations that serve a function other than their surface purpose. INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Establish the relationship and why this goodbye has happened before 2. Write the goodbye as genuine performance with known false finality 3. Show what the performance accomplishes that sincerity cannot 4. Include the moment where one party almost breaks the ritual with truth 5. End with the goodbye completed and the return already implicit OUTPUT FORMAT: Scene format. The goodbye performed with full sincerity in the surface exchange. The known false finality visible to reader in action beats and word choices. Final image: the departure that is not final.