I miss him.
And that hurts.
It’s weird, though—it’s the same verb: to miss. If you Google it, the third definition of miss has three entries: to notice the loss or absence of, to feel regret or sadness at no longer being able to enjoy the presence of, and to regret or be sad about not being able to do, have, or be or go.
I can say I miss Adrian, and that I miss Nathan, but despite meaning the same semantic thing, the two are a universe apart.
What do I do with it all?
Was this whole “I need space to think” an experiment? To see how I’d react to not being around Nathan? If it is, I’m not sure how I feel about the results.
I don’t know what possesses me to do so, but I dig into my purse and pull out the letter from Adrian.
Read it, more than once.
I pause and reread a specific section several times:
There will be more for you to do, in learning to live again, but the important thing for you to hold foremost in your mind, my love, is this: I WANT you to move on. In every way. Please. When I made you promise to live, this is what I meant. Move on.
Love again, Nadia.
Yes, even that.
It hurts, I admit. You’re mine.
But I’m gone, now. And it’s time for you to live again. You have too much love to keep hidden inside. To keep buried under my skeleton.
Dig that up, my love. Dust it off. Try it on, and then, before you feel ready, use it again.
I want you to. I expect you to.
If we meet in heaven and you have spent the rest of your life alone, I shall be angry with you, my love.
Life is for the living. So live.
Easy for you to say, Adrian, you’re not the one here left trying to do it.
How do I do that?
I’m not ready.
I’ll never be ready.
But I guess that was his point, huh?
I put the letter away, back in the envelope, back into my purse.
It’s late. Past dark, into the cricket-song night. His porch light is on. I’m not thinking. Not planning. I just let my feet carry me to his porch. Let my fist knock on his door.
I forget how I’m dressed until he answers. My comfiest, tightest, shortest booty shorts, which until recently hadn’t fit; a sports bra, and my T-shirt fabric hoodie, only half zipped. No more protruding ribs, and I’ve even got something to put into a bra, finally. I’d almost forgotten how that feels.
His eyes slide down, back up, and fix on my eyes. “Hi.”
I have no clue what I want to say. “Um, hi.”
Not stellar as far as opening gambits go.
“You think about what you need to think about?” he asks.
I laugh. “No. I just realized I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I gave up.”
He lets his door swing open, revealing his table, where a bottle of whiskey sits half-empty beside a glass, along with his carving materials. “You want to come in?”
It’s the first time he’s asked.
“Uh, we can sit out here.”
“All right.” He glances at his kitchen counter, where a small wrought iron wine racks sits empty. “I don’t have any wine or champagne. Just whiskey or beer.”
“Would you be mad if I asked for lots of ice in the whiskey?”
“No,” he laughs. “I’m not that kind of whiskey snob. I like specific stuff, and I guess it’s true enough I don’t drink cheap shit, but if you like it with ice, you like it with ice. No harm in that.”
He removes a tumbler from a cabinet, reaches into his freezer—it’s an antique, that fridge, avocado colored and half his height—for a white tray of ice. Twists, cracking ice out. Scoops four big cubes into the glass, then a fifth for good measure, and fills the glass with amber whiskey.
We sit on his porch, in the rocking chairs—it must have been a set of four, his two and my two, because they’re nearly identical, but for little differences which only highlight the individual craftsmanship that went into them. The whiskey is smoky and tastes like fire and honey. It’s almost viscous on my tongue, and the ice is cold on my lips as I sip.
“What did you mean by that?” he asks.
I don’t have to clarify what he’s asking about.
“I think it was more just to see how I’d feel not seeing you every day.” I swallow hard— the truth is thick and hard to get past my teeth. “It was getting too familiar, seeing you every day. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a widow and a widower gettin’ to know each other, Nadia,” he says, his voice low and rough. “Not sure a body could take things much slower than we’ve been.”
“I know.” I shake the tumbler lightly, and ice clinks. “I guess it’s that I’m not sure I’m ready for there to be anything to take slowly.”
“Doesn’t have to be that,” he says.
“But it is.” I look at him. “We both know it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Do you want it to be that?” I ask, watching his reaction closely. “For there to be something to take slowly?”
He nods, and it’s as if his head is heavy, too heavy for his neck. “Yeah, I guess I do.” He sips. Stares out at the lake, which is lit only with slivers of moon behind a ripped blanket of gray fleece. “I said I like you. I meant it. Doesn’t mean it’s not weird, and scary. And hard. Doesn’t mean I know what the hell I’m doing. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t…feel what I feel. If you’re not ready, I get it. I can be friends. It’s all it is right now anyway, right? Coffee on the porch. A meal here and there. A walk around the lake. A drink of an evenin’.” Sometimes he sounds like he’s from a different millennium, an older time.
We drink whiskey over ice and listen to the crickets and the frogs, watch the last of the fireflies flitting on the fading warm evening.
“I like you too,” I whisper. So quiet, I wonder if he even heard me.
He did. His eyes slide across the space, to mine. Search me.
“You always hear that the first step is the hardest,” he murmurs, in his rough woodsmoke voice. “Maybe that one’s true.”
“Maybe it is,” I agree.
I finish my whiskey.
“Coffee in the morning?” He sounds hopeful.
And that does something very complicated to my belly.
“Yeah,” I say. “My porch. Six thirty.”
“Could you, uh, sometime, if you feel like it, could you make that bread with the little pieces of chocolate in it? That stuff was good.”
I laugh. “Pain au chocolat.” I’m glad he picked that one—I’ve never made it for anyone but him. “Yeah. I can.”
“I didn’t mean tomorrow morning.”
“I know.” I consider how long it would take. “We’ll have to see how early I wake up.”
I walk back home, and I feel him watching me. The sensation of being watched, looked at, seen—I don’t mind it. There’s no judgment in his eyes. No pity, either. Just warmth and understanding and the depths of a soul, which some part of mine seems to recognize.
Like when you meet someone, and it feels as if you’ve been friends before, if you were to believe in reincarnation. Similar to that, with Nathan. Only…far more complex.
I go to bed, and I’m thinking about Nathan as I drift off. That’s new.
* * *
It’s over coffee, the next morning.
I’ve made pain au chocolat, he’s made scrambled eggs and bacon in a huge cast iron skillet.
We’re done eating. Sipping coffee and watching the sun poke salmon-colored fingers through the rim of pines over the lake.
“There’s a restaurant, just outside town,” Nathan says, apropos of nothing. “A nicer place, I guess. On a lake kinda like this one. Do you want to have dinner there with me, tonight?”
I swallow hard. “I…I…” I search myself, and again the truth is a viscous, multilayered thing within me. “Yes, I do.” I lick my lips, run my finger aroun
d the rim of my mug. “This might be weird and stupid, but…could we drive separate?”
His smile is not mocking. “Yeah, of course.”
“I just—”
He holds up a hand to halt me. “What’d I say about explanations or apologies?”
I sigh, and I’m almost smiling myself. “Fine.” I take the last piece of bacon, because it’s obvious he’s not going to, and I munch on it. “What time?”
“Leave at six?”
“Okay. Next question: what should I wear?”
A shrug. “It ain’t a formal place, I don’t think. Never been there, but folks in town have told me it’s nice. Whatever that means.” He picks at the crumbs of pastry and bits of chocolate on the now-empty plate. “It’s called The Boat Dock.”
“Six o’clock then.”
He nods. “Nadia, just so you know, this can be just two friends sharing a meal—”
“No explanations or apologies is your rule, Nathan. Goes for you too.”
I mainly don’t want to rule anything out any more than I want to label it with anything.
His smile is hesitant, like he wants to be happy, eager, excited, but doesn’t want to get his hopes up, or let me see what he’s really feeling. Or some confusing emotional admixture of all that and more.
Neither of us seems to know what to say next; we just agreed to what is, despite my precaution of driving separately, a date.
We’re not calling it that. We’re not calling it anything. But it’s a man and a woman, who have tacitly agreed that there is in fact a thing which is being taken slowly, having dinner together. It’s a step beyond breakfast on the porch, but a step less than inviting him in for wine by the fire.
He grabs his pour-over, his skillet. Stands up. Goes down one step, hesitates, turns. “I’m looking forward to dinner with you, Nadia.”
“I’m looking forward to it, too.” I stand up, too. I’m not sure why. “See you at six?”
He chuckles. “It’s gonna be a long day, isn’t it?”
I laugh at that. “Yeah, I think it is.”
“You, uh, you ever been fishing?”
I hold up both hands. “Not if you paid me, Nathan.”
“Too boring, huh?”
“Watching golf is boring. Watching C-Span is boring. Fishing is…something there isn’t a word for.”
“So that’s a no.”
“Firmly.”
“See you at six.”
I laugh. “Yeah, see you at six,” I call after him. “If you catch anything, I’ll cook it. I think I remember how.”
He waves a dismissive hand. “They’re all tiny, in there. Fun to catch, but not worth trying to eat.”
Weird how we both seem to have trouble ending conversations.
He smiles at me over his shoulder as the conversation just kind of abruptly, awkwardly ends, because he’s doing his thing and I’m doing mine and we’re going to see each later. So do you say goodbye, see you later, or do you just stop talking and do what you do until it’s time to see each other again? Neither of us seems to know how to navigate that.
I can’t help wondering what that means, and then further wondering if maybe I know what it means, but I just don’t want to admit it.
Time to go spend the rest of the day worrying about what I’m going to wear on this date-not-date.
Is it a date?
Do I want it to be a date?
* * *
I head inside and paw through my hanging clothes, dresses, skirts, blouses. And while I’m trying on outfits, I’m also trying on, experimentally, how it would feel to let myself admit that tonight with Nathan is a date and that I do in fact want it to be.
I can’t quite get there.
I haven’t been on a date, as in a getting-to-know-you-because-I-think-I-like-you type of way, since I met Adrian freshman year of college. Which feels like a long, long time ago. Because, damn, it was. I was nineteen when I met him. That’s almost twenty years ago.
Makes me feel old.
I like Nathan. That’s an established fact. But I hate how that feels, sounds—like I’m a sixth-grader with my first crush. Do you like me, check yes or no. But what other language is there for this feeling? I appreciate who he is. I enjoy spending time around him. Conversation with him is easy, natural, and lively. I feel safe around him. At no point has he ever done or said anything that makes me feel physically uncomfortable, pushed past my limits of propriety and comfort. He doesn’t look at me like I’m a piece of meat.
Which, I mean, until lately, at least, there wasn’t any meat on me for him to be looking at me in that way anyhow. I was emaciated. By the time I got that letter from Adrian, I was working a hundred hours a week, sleeping four or five hours a night max, and eating maybe a thousand calories a day, most of the time far less, and what I did eat was largely nutritionally useless, bits of fruit, some cheese, a microwavable frozen burrito from Costco, half a bagel dipped in cream cheese as I drove to work.
I’m back to normal, to some degree. I’m not even doing yoga. I’m eating, sleeping, and relaxing. Reading. I barely have what you could call a hobby. I’ve read almost all the books in the loft library, which is going to start prompting more trips to the library in town, especially now that I’ve been there with Nathan. I’ve put on plenty of weight, which for the first time in my entire life is a good thing. I not only need to wear a bra again, I’m not cinching it to the tightest set of clasps anymore. My jeans don’t hang off my hips anymore. My yoga pants are actually stretched around my legs instead of flapping loosely. My fitted T-shirts fit like they’re supposed to. I can actually look in the mirror and not cringe.
Case in point, for the first time in months, if not more than a year, I strip naked and stand in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and look at myself. I don’t know that I feel pretty, yet, but that’s likely as much a mental hang-up as it is anything to do with what I actually look like. My hair has its luster back, glossy and full of life again, although I badly need to trim my ends. My skin isn’t papery thin and dry and sallow anymore, or pale. I’ve always been on the more svelte side, but I finally once again have something like feminine curves, and I like that.
Feeling pretty, let alone beautiful or desired, though? That’s going to take a hell of a lot more than filling out my bra and underwear again. That’s heart work. You have to like yourself to feel beautiful. You have to be desired by someone to feel desirable. I’m not sure I’m in a place where either is possible. I’m getting there, slowly, but I’m not there yet.
And I think…if I’m going to be brutally honest with myself, part of me doesn’t want to get there. Liking myself enough to feel beautiful and having someone in my life that desires me so that I feel desirable again means I’ll have moved on. Left Adrian behind. Forgotten him.
Let him go.
I’m not ready to do that.
I’ll never be ready to do that.
So why am I going on a date with Nathan?
Because of that other part of me, which does want to feel beautiful and desirable, and if not cherished and loved again, at least admired and liked.
I know it’s very unfair to Nathan, but I’m going into this date-not-date holding a lot back. Knowing I’m doing something that I know I’m not psychologically or emotionally prepared to allow, not in the fullness of what it is, and could or should be.
Is it another experiment, like the week without him?
Or is it an experiment of another kind, one wherein I test the waters of letting him a step or two closer, a little further in? I want to warn him, in a way:
Beware—it’s dark in here, close to my heart, near my soul. The curtains are drawn, and sheets cover the furniture. Dust inhabits the corners. Ghosts moan in the halls. Are you sure you want me to let you in?
I’m opening the door a crack, letting him peer in—maybe he’ll see the wrecked abandon within me and get scared off. Or maybe I’ll panic and slam the door in his face.
&n
bsp; I don’t even know anymore.
I’m going on this date-not-date, but how I’ll react is a mystery to me.
Too Right, Too Soon
It was the third or fourth date-like outing before anything felt like more than just friends doing friendly hang-out stuff.
His POV. It’s five thirty, and I’ve been ready for an hour, so I’m reading to pass the time. And maybe, possibly, hoping for some helpful hints as to what the fuck I’m supposed to do, feel, say, or be. Hints as to her.
The first date, we just talked, on the front porch of my house. Second, we went for a walk in the park, several feet between us, almost as if it was the nineteenth century and we were courting. Third date, she had me over to her house and I brought carryout from a local Chinese place and we ate on her back deck and there was no alcohol and we sat on opposite sides of the square, glass table with the hole in the middle for an umbrella she didn’t have. That one felt almost like a date. It was the fourth one that crossed some sort of invisible line. I’d found this place online, a restaurant way out in the country, in the hills, surrounded by forests and two-lane highways. I figured the drive there would be as much the date as the dinner itself.
The place is called The Boat Dock. Cute, quaint, and unique. It has a very much misplaced nautical theme, considering the lake it’s on is barely big enough for Jet Skis and tubing. I wouldn’t call it pretensions of grandeur, exactly, but close. Big thick nautical ropes on the walls in ornate knots, which probably have complicated names and functions. Oars from ship’s boats, the ten-foot-long kind meant to lock into rings on rowboats. Draft charts and maps with incomplete representations of shorelines with antiquated names for familiar places. But it’s cozy, with little booths in shadowy corners, votives on the tables and single-sheet laminated menus with imported fish-and-chips and tender veal and overpriced lamb chops. Low ceilings and big windows overlooking a maze of weathered docks festooned with an excess of largely decorative ropes.
We sat outside, and there were tiki torches that gave off thick smoke smelling of citronella. In the center of the table was a small glass vase with a single bright orange Gerbera daisy.
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