Chapter 1, Part 3

When a woman’s interior world enters peacetime, it rarely lasts long.

When a woman’s interior world enters peacetime, it rarely lasts long. 

Before Sam, I’d achieved somewhat of an equilibrium in my dating life. It had been about six months since my college boyfriend, Oliver, left me for a new job (and, shortly afterward, a new girlfriend) in a fancy city on the West Coast. I no longer checked his Instagram multiple times a day. No longer looked at my own social media as if he were looking at it. No longer searched his name in my email to find old messages between us, because it somehow felt less sad than scrolling back through our texts. I was, miraculously, only through the grace of time, over the guy—and finally pulling into the station where you are open to something new, something permanent again. 

I have never been very good at being single, in the same way that I’ve never enjoyed running. Amelia, my best friend since third grade, ran cross country in high school and at Penn State. Between semesters, she was always pestering me to join her on runs around Maidentown, assuring me that the intense burning in my chest would fade as I improved. That soon, we’d be able to comfortably run and gossip for five, six miles like it was nothing. I’d achieve a runner’s high and actively seek more and more of it. But it never happened. I could never overcome the sensation that I was suffocating, like the walls of my own body were caving in on me. That’s how it felt being single, too. I didn’t know what to do with my time, the endless expanse of it. And I had only the example of my single mother, who, after my parents divorced, always had mystery men crawling out of her bedroom like roaches in the morning. None of them made her happy. None of them gave a shit about her. I never knew their names. Only that they were the physical evidence of late nights at local bars where she drank too much and flirted with men to forget that the one she loved no longer wanted a life together. 

After Oliver, I equated being single with defeat. Almost immediately, I downloaded Bumble because everyone said it was the best one for relationships, and swiped and swiped and matched with a few guys but it was Maidentown after all, slim pickings, even with my settings open to a 50-mile radius. Sam asked me out on a date, and then another date, and for a minute there was this cautiously happy new beginning, where you don’t really know each other yet, only that you like each other—which in and of itself is such a rare and exciting equilibrium—and then another date, when his mom died, and my interior world went black. Wartime, you old friend. 

I went to him hesitantly and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. His head sunk into me like an anvil in the ocean. I heard the words “I’m so glad I’m here” come out of my mouth, but I wasn’t sure if they were true. It felt wrong to be there, like the mere arrangement might be accosting his mother on her way to the after life. Why was he here when she was that sick? I felt that pressure in my chest, like I was running but standing still, standing across from a guy whose beef with his mother no longer mattered because he would never talk to her again. 

“I’m glad you’re here too, but I need to go,” he said, and lingered, then pulled away. 

“Of course, of course, I understand,” I said, monumentally relieved. We cut through a parking lot to get back to our cars and I dug for my keys to avoid any further physical contact. I turned on the engine and the radio blared, still on a Top Hits station from when I needed pump-up music on my way to our date. I slammed a button to get back to quiet and caught his face, still white as snow, as he bolted out of the parking lot. One hour later, I got a text: “I’ll talk to u soon.”

“I’m so sorry,” again, was all I could think to say.

I went to bed that night till mostly in shock. I’d never been that close to death before. There was nothing for me to grieve—I hardly knew Sam, let alone his mother—but it was the first time I’d seen grief up close. The sheer power of it; how it could twist and squeeze the insides of someone like a rag.

In the morning, I peeled my eyes open. Remembered. Reached for my phone. There were a couple notifications: a group text in motion, two new followers on Instagram, and a notification from People. Already, I was looking for it. A message from him. I thumbed my way to our text conversation and read the night’s exchange: I’ll talk to u soon. / I’m so sorry. It was 9:41 a.m. and I wondered if he was even awake yet. If it were me, I’d want to stay asleep as long as possible. I’d want to ignore the whole world.

He texted me at 12:03 p.m., “hi.” I observed the message under his name, Sam Green, on my lock screen. To any bystanders in the frozen pizza aisle at Walmart, I looked like your average woman in her mid twenties, attempting to run an errand while distracted by something on her smartphone. Really, though, the first domino was hoisting itself into position.

There’s no other way to put it: Hearing from Sam while he was grieving made me feel special. Not only was I the object of attraction and lust, but I came to feel like he genuinely needed me, an even rarer jewel.

During those first weeks that he spent in Ohio with his dad, planning the memorial service and the burial, cleaning out the house, reheating casseroles, we spoke on the phone almost every night. Sometimes I just listened. Other times he wanted to hear about my day—even what felt to me like stupid complaints given the circumstances—because he said it was a nice distraction. I began looking forward to these conversations, especially the way they made me feel afterward. Whole. Useful. Sam would end our talks, late into the night, long after his father had nodded off down the hall, by saying things like, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” / “I can’t wait to see you again.” / “You’re the one thing I look forward to.” / “I think about you every time I get sad.”

It was intoxicating to feel like someone else’s drug. I grew to love that feeling, and later told myself it meant that I loved him.