I teach my students that love is nothing more than neurochemistry. Dopamine, oxytocin, a feedback loop the brain generates and sustains until, inevitably, it doesn’t. Romance has a documented shelf life—eighteen months on average, sometimes less. After that it becomes a decision: stay or leave, build something tenable or abandon it entirely. I used to find this framework comforting, almost liberating. If I could reduce love to its constituent parts, map its predictable trajectory, then perhaps I could control the outcome.
After Rebecca, I told myself I’d wait. After Emma’s in college, after the acute phase of single parenthood has passed, thenmaybeI could attempt a relationship again. I’d meet someone at a faculty mixer, perhaps, or through a colleague. Someone who wouldn’t demand I reconstruct my entire existence to accommodate them. We’d share pleasant dinners, a bottle of wine on the weekends, maybe an annual trip somewhere like Florence or Versailles.
But then there’s Annie, who leaves everything—her family, her fiancé, a wedding that probably costs more than my annual salary—because she refuses to spend her life with someone who doesn’t adore her, because she wants a Great Love or nothing at all. At first, I thought she’d been naive. I thought she didn’t understand how the world works, how love works.
But maybe I was the one with the limited perspective. Maybe I’d convinced myself that what I had with Rebecca was a Great Love because I needed it to be at the time. We got engaged, we had a child—it was the path of least resistance. It was love-adjacent. It was a comfortable, low-stakes arrangement that collapsed because there wasn’t enough friction to keep us warm.
Annie is the friction. She’s a challenge. She makes me want to be the version of myself I haven’t seen in years—the one who is brave enough to be honest.
I’ve spent years reducing love to chemical equations when maybe the whole point is that it defies measurement. It’s different every time. Every person rewrites what it means for you, changes who you are inside of it. There is no control group, no reliable data set. What happened before tells you almost nothing about what might happen next.
And I think I want a Great Love, too. I want it with a ferocity that surprises me, that feels almost indecent at thirty-two with a failed engagement and a daughter who’s terrified everyone’s going to leave her. I thought I’d forfeited the right towantlikethis—thought it was the province of younger men, unbroken men, men who hadn’t already proven themselves capable of spectacular failure. But the wanting is there anyway, persistent, undeniable. I want to believe I deserve it. That I’m not a fool for wanting it. Maybe I deserve to be seen—not just tolerated, or managed, or scheduled. I deserve someone who looks at the topsy-turvy disaster of my life and decides that the view is worth the climb.
Maybe I deserve something extraordinary after all. Maybe I could deserve Annie.
The thought is terrifying because it requires hope, and hope is the most dangerous chemical in the human body. It’s the belief that the future isn’t just a repeat of the past, that it won’t all fall apart.
Annie and Emma are strolling toward me now, the empty bread bag dangling from Annie’s fingers, crinkling faintly in the breeze. The wind kicks up just right, sweeping her hair back over her shoulders in a tousled cascade, and she lets out this laugh at whatever Emma’s babbling about—her nose crinkling, the fine lines bunching at the bridge. It’s such a small thing, but damn, it gets me every time.
“We have a situation,” Annie says as they reach me, her eyes bright and reflecting the slate-gray of the water behind her. “Apparently, the Mayor is a hard taskmaster. Emma’s worked up an appetite.”
I reach down and scoop up Emma’s hand, her palm warm and a little gritty from the crumbs. “Is that right? What’s on the menu,koukla?”
“Sal’s!” she announces immediately.
I knit my brows, shooting Annie a quizzical look. “Sal’s? Is that code for some underground toddler speakeasy?”
She grins, tucking the bag into her back pocket. “It’s a pretzel stand near the playground. We go sometimes after the park.”
“Sal’s mustache is like a caterpillar,” Emma chimes in, dead serious, her free hand gesturing wildly. “And he gives me extra salt ‘cause I’m special.”
“Extra salt? You’re going to turn into a pretzel, Bug.”
Emma rolls her eyes. “You can’t turn into food, Daddy. That’s silly.”
“Is it? Because I’m pretty sure it happened to a guy in a fairy tale once.”
“That was gingerbread,” she counters, swinging my hand as we start to walk. “That’s a cookie. Pretzels are bread. It’s totally different science.”
Annie’s biting her lip, shoulders shaking with a laugh. “She’s got you cornered, Professor.”
“Fair point,” I concede, chuckling as we amble along the path, Emma tugging us forward like a tiny tour guide. She’s got her camera glued to her eye now, clicking away at the world: a street juggler mid-toss, balls arcing in blurry rainbows; a shaggy dog in a knit sweater, tongue lolling like it’s mid-pant; even a random patch of sky, framed by skeletal branches scratching at the blue, the leaves rustling as if they’re giving a distance applause.
“You gonna have any film left for the ride home?” I ask, dodging a rogue cyclist.
“Tons,” she mumbles, not looking up. “Annie says you gotta capture everything or you miss the good stuff.”
I glance at Annie, who’s smirking. “Guilty as charged.”
Emma halts abruptly, pivoting to face us. “I know! We need a picture of all of us!”
The air in my lungs does a weird little hitch. “All of us?”
She shrugs, already looking back through the viewfinder. “I want it on the fridge. Next to my drawing of the shark.”
My throat clenches, this sudden swell that catches me off guard. “Sure thing, kiddo.” I meet Annie’s eyes; her cheeks are blooming pink. “You in?”
“Absolutely,” she says, soft but sure.
