I inhale slightly. I can feel the sweat on my back. It’s a hot day, and there doesn’t seem to be any air-conditioning in here. My cotton T-shirt is suctioned to me like Saran Wrap.
“You don’t,” I say. “Not really. You just think you do because I’m with someone now and we’re talking about it.”
“Don’t say that,” he says. “I hate being a cliché.”
“It’s true. Hugo, we’ve been broken up for five years. You have never once wished for things to be different.”
Hugo shakes his head. “How do you know?”
I think about how Hugo and I became friends, after our breakup. How it felt seamless, almost—like he was meant to be in my life. I liked that I didn’t have to lose him like I had everyone else. I didn’t think I could bear to, honestly.
We met for coffee, a month after, and then ran into each other in line at Erewhon three weeks after that. Hugo suggested lunch, and then we just started spending time together.
One lunch turned into five years. Five years of drunken nights and hungover mornings and girlfriends and boyfriends and birthday parties and New Year’s Eves at midnight. There have been times I’ve thought about it—of course I have. But my time with Hugo was up. We never backslid.
“Hugo, come on.”
He shakes his head and picks up his water glass. “You’re right. Maybe I’m more fucked up about Natalie than I think I am.”
I feel something sharp pinch my stomach and then a deflation. Disappointment and relief, all in one. Because Hugo doesn’t miss me. He’s just having some crisis of identity, and I’m the closest thing he has to a therapist right now.
“Listen,” I say. “Maybe you want a relationship.”
Hugo laughs. “Ha. Right. Home sweet home.”
“I’m serious. When was the last time you’ve even been monogamous?”
He peers at me, and I swallow, because of course. It was five years ago.
“So have you told him?” Hugo asks.
I glance down at my plate—a half-eaten bagel with scallion cream cheese, tomatoes, and capers—and then back up at him. “No,” I say.
Hugo nods. “I guess I’m still special, then.”
I raise my eyebrows at him, and he looks back at me. But he does not appear triumphant. There is something even sad about the way he says what he does next: “I’m still the only one who knows your secret.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three months go by, and then two more. Jake and I keep seeing each other. Our relationship progresses slowly and easily—like an open road with no traffic. We just keep moving forward.
I start spending the night regularly, and then entire weekends dissolve in his apartment—pizza boxes and old movie rentals. I bring Murphy. He and Saber get along like Craigslist roommates. They don’t go out of their way to engage, but they don’t seem to have a problem with each other, either.
Jake gets me an electric toothbrush. The whole thing—its own base and cord.
And then, in late winter, Jake asks me if I’d like to move in with him.
He is sitting on the couch, and I’m on the floor, a box of SUGARFISH sushi on the coffee table in front of us—tuna and cucumber rolls and salmon sashimi—when he just out and says it.
“Do you want to live here?”
I pick up a roll with my chopsticks. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you want to move in with me and have this be your home, too?” He dunks a piece of salmon into the soy sauce. “Could save on toilet paper and apples. I buy a lot of apples.”
I put down my chopsticks and arch around to look at him. He is smiling—a big, goofy grin.
“You’re serious?”
