“I think that’s a good way to describe it.” I pick at the label on my beer bottle, considering. “There’s so much I don’t know about him, so in those ways heisa stranger. I don’t know his contours. But I know his mind. So I don’t know how to explain it, but I just feel in my gut that this person is my person.”
“Are you nervous, then?” Tom asks. “For your meeting?”
I laugh. “Uh, yeah,” I scoff. “What if he’s different in person? What if he doesn’t like me? There’s a million what-ifs that are all just as realistic as the next.”
“But I think when you know, you know,” Tom says, giving me a reassuring pat on my hands. I smile, imagining whatever Meryl is up to tonight—probably getting into trouble but still speaking about Tom just as lovingly.
“How do you know he’s not married or like ... a troll?” Kwan interjects, still skeptical.
He’s been a widower for the better part of twenty years, so I imagine that’s hardened him. I wonder if Kwan and Tom—men of the same generation—started with the same level of optimism, and then their disparate experiences moved them into opposite mindsets. Evidence will change us, after all.
“He’s not married,” I say, brushing the thought away. “I write a therapy advice column, so we talk about relationship stuff pretty openly. I’ve been writing it for years, and we’ve always sort of written notes to each other. So when we were both in relationships, at various times, that came up in the conversations. He broke up with a girlfriend a little while ago. It’s kind of the thing that made me start to admit to myself I might even have these feelings—that his breakup made me feel a certain way.”
“And you suspect he feels the same?” Tom asks.
I hesitate, thinking about all our texting lately. “Intimate stranger” really is a perfect way to describe it. The freedom to be intimate with someone you don’t know, who you’ve realized understands you better than some of your closest people, has been a gift. And I knowthat’sbeenthe same for him, because he doesn’t hesitate to point it out. But romantic feelings? “I have no idea, honestly,” I admit. “We are close; there’s no doubt about that to me. But it feels so absurd to claim romantic feelings for a person you don’t know that I sort of hesitate to imagine he could feel the same way.”
“Well, I hope it goes the way you want it to,” Tom says.
“Just for the record, I do, too, even if I’m an old grump,” Kwan concurs, wincing as Dane handily beats him.
“Obviously me too,” Dane says, before flagging the waitress and ordering another round of drinks. As Kwan reracks again, she turns back to me. “So what’s this thing with Eli?”
At that I nearly spit out my drink. “There’s nothing.”
“Eli from the building?” Tom asks, and now I can feel the color of my face deepening a shade.
“Nothing is happening with Eli from our building,” I say to him just as Dane interjects, “They hang out all the time, and he goes with her on her dog walks.”
At that Kwan perks up. “I thought he was a cat person!” Man, nothing like a small building to spread useless gossip.
“Heisa cat person,” I say in a sad tone, knowing that Kwan, as a fellow dog person, will feel my pain.
“But then that just means he likes spending time with you,” Tom points out.
“Yes, absolutely,” Kwan agrees. “No cat person willingly goes on walks with a dog. It’s diametrically opposed to their entire viewpoint on animals. And no offense, but it really must be about you, because if a cat person was going to pick a dog to hang out with, it wouldn’t be George.”
Dane chokes a little on her beer from that assessment, and Tom thwacks her on the back to help her.
“Hey,” I say, morally obligated to stick up for my beloved but strange dog.
“George aside,” Tom says kindly, “what gives?”
Being a couple beers in makes me feel looser. I guess there’s no harm talking this out, even if Kwan and Tom are unlikely romantic-advice givers.
“I don’t know,” I sigh. “I mean ... look, I guess I’m attracted to him. He’s a good-looking guy.”
“AhHa!” Dane says, triumph in her gait as she takes the break shot.
“But it doesn’t matter,” I say, waving it off.
I want to point out that Eli was sort of a patient, but no one knows that other than Dane, and I’m definitely not allowed to share that information with people who know him. But even without that fact (and even without everything Ari said the other day staring me in the face), there’s so much more to it than just the increasingly less relevant former-sort-of-patient thing.
“Why wouldn’t it matter?” Tom asks. His curiosity is clearly piqued—I wonder if living with Meryl makes him more interested in gossip or if he’d always been and Meryl just seems like the more likely busybody.
“It doesn’t matter because it’s physical,” I say, brushing it off. Although, the sense of selling Eli short rears its head, and I know I need to clarify. “It’s not that I don’t like him as a person ... I actually like him a lot more than I thought I would. But he’s too guarded and emotionally unavailable. I get pieces of him, but he’s hidden behind a wall.”
“And with your writer man, it’s different,” Tom says, understanding.
