“Or maybe,” I say, my voice dropping an octave, “the reason the search has come up empty for ten millennia is because there’s no one to find. Maybe the seat is vacant.”
She narrows her eyes. “You’re very sure of yourself for a man who lives in a world of variables.”
“I’m a scientist. I go where the evidence leads.”
“And the evidence leads to…nothing?”
“The evidence leads to the conclusion that humans created God to explain the unexplainable. And as science has answered more questions, the things we attribute to God have gotten smaller and smaller. We used to think God made thunder and lightning. Now we know it’s atmospheric electricity. We used to think God made people sick. Now we know it’s viruses and bacteria.”
“So God is just…shrinking?”
“God is filling in the gaps of what we don’t know yet. And the gaps keep getting smaller.”
Annie’s quiet, thinking. Then she says, “But doesn’t that make life feel kind of…meaningless? If there’s no grand plan, no purpose, no reason we’re here?”
“Why does there need to be a reason?”
“Because otherwise we’re just…random. Accidents.”
“Weareaccidents,” I say gently. “We’re the most spectacular accidents in the history of the universe. Billions of years of stars exploding and molecules colliding in the dark, all leading to this. To us, on this floor, right now. But that doesn’t make us meaningless. It makes us miraculous.”
She looks at me, her eyes searching mine.
“We get to create our own meaning,” I continue. “Our own purpose. That’s not depressing, it’s freeing.”
“Or it’s terrifying.”
“Maybe both.”
She laughs, soft and a little sad. “You’re very comfortable with uncertainty.”
“I’m a parent. Uncertainty is the job description.”
“Fair.”
We sit in comfortable silence for a moment. The wine bottle is almost empty between us.
I like this. Actually, no—I’m obsessed with this. There’s something fundamentally intoxicating about the way Annie doesn’t just take my cynicism on the chin. She catches it, challenges it, asks me if I’m sure I want to keep it. She digs.
She doesn’t play the part of the agreeable audience. She’s in the ring with me, and damn, it’s the most alive I’ve felt in a long, long time.
With Rebecca, everything was so…linear. We talked about the rent, we talked about the department holiday party, we talked about whether the chicken was too dry or if Emma needed new socks. We were constantly hovering over the surface of things, like two people skating on a frozen lake, absolutely terrified that if we stopped moving or dug our heels in, the ice would crack and we’d have to admit we didn’t know how to swim in the deep stuff. We traded intimacy for safety, and for a long time, I convinced myself that was just what “grown-up” love looked like.
But with Annie, at 3:30 in the morning on my living room floor, talking about the cosmos and fate and what it all means—I realize I’ve been starving for this.
I need the friction. I need a partner who looks at my dopamine-mapped world and tells me it’s a bit small sometimes. Because as a man who spends his days explaining how people think, I am desperately, pathetically in need of someone who can explain why it matters. I need someone who doesn’t just fit into my life, but someone who expands the borders of it.
Talking to her about the universe and the terrifying, beautiful “more” doesn’t feel like a performance. It doesn’t feel weird. It doesn’t feel awkward or pretentious or like we’re trying too hard. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. Like this is what conversation is supposed to be. Like I’ve been having the wrong kind of conversations my entire adult life and didn’t realize it until now.
“For the record,” she says softly, “I’m not religious. I don’t really know what I believe. I don’t need a guy on a throne. But I like the idea of a thread. Something that ties the mess together. Energy, intention. I don’t know…something.”
“You don’t need a deity for that,” I say. I can’t help the grin. “You just need physics.”
She looks up, her eyes wide. “Physics? The most boring subject in high school?”
“Physics is the most romantic thing in the world, Annie. First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It only changes form. That means every bit of energy in you—the heat in your skin, the pulses in your brain—it’s been here since the Big Bang. You aren’t justinthe universe, youarethe universe. The carbon in your DNA was forged in the heart of a dying star. You’re literally made of stardust. That’s not a metaphor. That’s a fact.”
Annie stares at me, her mouth slightly open. The air in the room feels charged, like the moments before a thunderstorm breaks over the Hudson.
