We had already broken up three times in ten months when we first said, “I love you.”
She said it first and launched our doomed winter of love.
The day she gave me a hamper for my washing, she said, “It can hold two loads.”
I took her in my arms and said, “So can you, baby.”
She called my name more than any girl I’ve known. She’d say, “Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke!” And she said like she meant it.
“I’m so open to you,” she’d say and our connection kept getting stronger even as our differences in matters of religion and politics became more stark.
Eventually, I was able to keep my eyes open at the end and I didn’t need to think about anyone else.
It was so good, it didn’t make any sense to me that we would end. Normally, the excitement wanes well in advance of the breakup.
What kind of relationship ends while the connection keeps getting stronger?
One Wednesday afternoon in February, I emailed her: “I got a sore arm. I want you to come rub it. Do you have anything in need of rubbing?”
She replied: “Luke, I don’t want to date you anymore.”
Fourteen months later, I called her and we talked for 70 minutes.
“When did you last have sex?” she asked.
“With you,” I said.
“That’s good,” she said. “Do you still have your beard?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Even if I didn’t have my beard, why would I call you? It makes no sense for me to talk to you.”
“I’ve been dating someone long-distance for the past year,” she said. “It turned out he was an alcoholic. It ended very badly two weeks ago.”
A few days later, I emailed her: “I’d like to interview you for my blog. I’ll keep you anonymous. Show it to you beforehand. It would be good for me, good for my blog, good for my writing, good for my therapy. It gives me an adrenalin rush to think about it.”
She responded: “I don’t know.”
