Up and Down West St

27 Mar, 2026

Introductory Note

I remember the moment when Hugo, the main love interest in this story, told me about his ex who wrote about their breakup publicly on her blog.

She was an artist based in Oakland. They had been dating for the better part of a year. The end was tumultuous, earth-shattering. The blog post blew up. Friends read it. Bridges were burned.

That my story is largely the chronicling of my own dusty failings, rather than the airing of dirty laundry, remains front and center for me.

In the summer of 2017, I began listening to a Yale Courses lecture series on Dante by Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta. I was captivated by the lecture on Dante's La Vita Nuova, a brief collection of autobiographical poems about his courtly love for Beatrice, the love of his life.

This piece is directly inspired by La Vita Nuova, and by the lecture, which I quote from amply. It is about the double voice of the narrator and protagonist, the wrestling with Memory. I wrote it from the emotions preserved in amber, with the help of my notebooks and emails from that time period, which I had cultivated with meticulous care. I wrote it shocked at just how much I had forgotten.

But it is not about a courtly love of mere gazes and sonnets; neither is there a pure and saintly Beatrice to honor.

It is about a brief and deeply despairing period in my young adult life, in which I cluelessly sought a love that I imagined would be worthy of literary exultation. I did it to blot out the hopelessness I felt from a heartbreak I felt trapped in – logistically, emotionally, bodily.

Originally I conceived of this simply as a personal story for my friend Jack, who is one of the characters. He has always been unflinching in his support of my long and winding journey to find my artistic voice. I dedicate this piece to him. I also want to deeply thank my friend Jen, who has always found the time for my stories and took the time to exchange long emails with me that summer.

I had strong reservations this piece would ever see the light of day. In my memory, it seemed too grotesque. I talked circuitously about the writing process with my husband, who I usually communicate with deeply and openly about all of my writing. I knew he would detest the subject matter, the length, everything about it. Before I had even completed it, when I briefly summarized for him the premise, he said to me that what I needed was a therapist, not a blog. There is some truth in this.

In the process of writing, I have somehow found the courage to share it. I think this piece is about bearing witness – to my own capacity for foolishness, to a messy life filled with events and people I may never truly understand. For me, this has been largely a proof of concept about the act of writing more so than a profound need to tell this precise story. I felt there was enough intensity and depth to the characters that would work to maintain interest, in my otherwise bland and plotless life.

In any case, it is exceedingly long. In this manner my timidity and fear will take care of itself.

To my friends who take the time to play sometimes-therapist and listen, thank you. To my husband who is my constant therapist and whose counsel and conversation is utterly irreplaceable, I hope you might allow me this excavation of a past life of mine without thinking any less of the present version of me.

The heart nourishes love; love devours the heart.

Chapter 1

"Look at yourself in the mirror, how hot you look."

I was seated between his legs and laying against him, my head resting on his shoulder. Ratty old bra, no longer white or pure. A messy mop of hair that needed to be trimmed. He gazed at me from our reflection, spellbound.

Hubert came into my room often, as he had that day, for something or the other. We had broken up three months prior but decided, against reason, to stay in the apartment on West St.

This time it was to finish what we started back at the sports bar – that day, June 4th, the Warriors won Game 2 of the NBA Finals.

It was also the first day after my grueling Chartered Financial Analyst Level 1 exam, a messianic gathering of an entire city's worth of mostly white and Asian aspiring young finance nerds. The average exam taker studied 300 hours to pass. I had signed up on a whim, at the suggestion of a family friend over Christmas dinner. My boss was delighted at my initiative, even though my role wasn't that of an analyst. The prestige it would bestow on the firm to have a charterholder was enough for him to agree to defray the exam costs on my behalf, should I manage to pass.

The exam result was expected in about a month. After five months of holding my breath and willing myself to the yoke of an unimaginable exam rigor, through all the emotional turmoil of a horrifying breakup and living with my ex-boyfriend in the same room, then in the same apartment, I dared to imagine myself a new person.

With my schedule newly freed up, however, Hubert had casually invited me to Pappy's on Durant to watch the game with him.

"Come on," he said. "It'll be fun. You can let loose a little, after studying so hard for so long."

"You know I hate bars, and basketball."

"So what? We can just hang out."

"You aren't going with Ava?"

"Nope."

It had been months since we had hung out alone. I was exhausted from my afternoon swim, and my resolve gave out. I agreed, against my better judgment.

......

At Pappy's there was a huge crowd. All the screens were tuned in to the game. Hubert struggled to place an order and to get a seat. I passed on the drinks and eyed his beer warily, as I couldn't be the one to drive us back.

"You aren't drinking all of that, are you?"

"Not if you help me."

"Hard pass."

A single bar seat in the middle of the room opened up, and Hubert made a beeline for it.

"Come sit!" he shouted at me over the din, gesturing at his lap.

I thought about Ava, the housemate I couldn't stand. The artsy pretty one with the makeup and the hair and the fashionable photos, who was just as scrawny as me but somehow made it look glamorous. Hubert and Ava were hanging out all the time now that they were both single. It was a sore topic, my jealousy. They had gone to a show and to dinner afterwards on her birthday, without other friends. As an apartment we had all planned a movie outing for the four of us, then when I begged out due to exam reasons, the two of them abruptly left and went without Julia, Ava's roommate. He adamantly told me they weren't dating. It didn't matter; they went on dates and they flirted, and it hurt me to see this. It hurt me to live in the same apartment as them.

I wondered whether Ava would sit in his lap.

She wouldn't. It was too tawdry.

So I did.

The Warriors won that game in an astounding victory. It was difficult not to get wrapped up in the communal fervor. Hubert's hands were on me the entire evening, touching me and whispering in my ear in a way that I remembered so clearly from our many years together. It was too real to ignore, this chemistry, even in the face of all the heartbreak of the past few months. All around us the crowd hollered and cheered. Nobody paid attention to us, more or less grinding on that stupid stool.

When we came home, we were alone, and silently we crept into our separate rooms. I put on some music and tried to recalibrate, willing my life to make sense again. This hadn't been the first relapse since the breakup.

Moments later there was a knock at my door. Hubert came in. I could tell he was still a bit tipsy from the beer.

He sat by me on the bed, looked at me as if wordlessly asking permission. I didn't dissuade him. Ever so slowly, he took off my shirt.

I looked into the mirror, and didn't see whatever it was that he saw. I saw two unextraordinary people who had a knack for making each other sad all the time.

"There is nothing left for us." I pronounced it with as much finality as I could muster. Tears welled in my eyes.

He blinked and I watched his bloodshot eyes register with some recognition. He nodded, and muttered a "huh".

"Why should I have to be the one to tell you this?" And I broke, just like that.

He stood up to change the music, as if it was the music making me sad, and left.

Chapter 2

Three days later I went on a coffee date with a young man I had asked out on BART. Not even befriended, just out of the blue and awkwardly walked up to him inside our train because I thought he looked cute, and asked him if he wanted to grab coffee sometime. When we had first met it was two weeks before my exam.

His name was Juan, interning at Google that summer. He originally immigrated from Colombia and was a junior at Florida State, but seemed very surprised when I said that I had only graduated college a year ago. We had a friendly chat, nothing more. Coincidentally, we lived on the same street, several blocks from each other. I asked him afterward if he wanted to meet up again, perhaps to go hiking, but he only politely gave me a 'maybe'.

It was my first foray back into the world of dating after almost three years with Hubert, and it depressed me. I had zero game. I was 22 and had asked out a 19 or 20-year-old, and he thought me strange.

I told all this to my friend Jack at his work's Thursday happy hour in the city, a couple days later. We were celebrating his birthday, a bit belatedly. Jack, like Hubert, was Taiwanese and had been in the engineering program. The two of them had overlapping friend groups, and we were all in band together for some years, but the similarities ended there.

Jack was dear to me, the quintessential gay best friend who saw me through so many of my highs and lows in college. He had a wide face like mine, similar looking eyes, and sometimes people mistook us as being related. He had known of my turbulent affairs with Hubert and always made clear his low opinion of him through deep loyalty to my wellbeing, but never intervened.

Jack thought Juan sounded friendly and perhaps exciting, especially with the Colombian background, but counseled me not to despair. That I was brave to attempt it in the first place, and that real-world dating was always brutal.

Online dating, however, was more or less out of the picture for me. I hated the idea. What's more, my outdated phone at the time didn't support apps. It did email, text, and basic browser perfectly fine. My friends dubbed me 'that girl with the Blackberry', and I didn't mind it.

We were sitting side by side in a booth in the snack lounge, sipping teas. A colleague walking past said hello, and chimed in on the online dating stories. He talked about people he met online through Vine, back when it was still a thing, how the meetups were awkward at first but that he got some really good friends out of it, and even a couple of dates.

"This is Hugo, by the way," Jack said.

Hugo sat down at the other end of the booth and ended up chatting with us for hours. We talked about so many things – a childhood growing up in the Mission, his Hispanic heritage and how much the city had changed from what he once remembered, what living in Fruitvale was like. He was profusely down to earth for someone so handsome. I saw a beaming, funny gentleness that he hid behind his tortoiseshell glasses, which frequently slid off his large, slightly crooked nose. When he smiled he had the manner of always looking bashful. His beard was cropped short, and his jet black hair drooped over his eyes. He was four years older than me, and it was enough of a difference for me to appreciate that I knew so little of the world.

"So are you dating anyone currently?" Jack asked Hugo, a mischievous smile on his lips. I glanced over at him, a bit taken aback at the bold question. I didn't know how close they were, or if Hugo knew if Jack was gay, or if maybe Jack wondered if Hugo could be gay. There were certainly possibilities.

"No, nothing of the sort. Just you know, busy."

"So you're not looking for a relationship?"

"Well, not actively, you know, but I guess if it happens it happens," Hugo said with a shrug. We locked eyes and I felt my cheeks redden.

That night we were frequently interrupted by shouting and ruckus over in the main room where all the drinking took place, as well as other colleagues who stopped to say hello. But no one else sat down with us the way Hugo had.

An older fellow Steven, very much intoxicated and even a tad belligerent, stopped by our booth. "Are you two dating?" he gestured at me and Jack.

"No, but I wish!" I said with a grin. It was an old inside joke that I adored, when people sometimes mistook us for a couple.

Very seriously, Steven suggested that Jack get some flowers, freeze them because of course no one wants someone to think they're going to be killed, and then leave them on my doorstep to earn my affection. He promptly walked off, and began shouting at people in the next room.

The three of us broke into uproarious laughter.

"So, flowers on my doorstep?" I asked Jack.

Before Jack could reply, Hugo cut in. "Well, if Jack's not going to do it, I would. Now that I know you live near Temescal, all I have to do is leave flowers at every house."

I was deeply smitten, and for a couple days I breezed through my apartment, perfectly unaware of the chatter and goings-on. I was busy stalking Hugo's online profiles. He had so many posts and videos – footage from travels, candids of friend hangouts, a few artsy ones of him trying out a smoldering look and blowing cigarette smoke at the camera. I knew his birthday was coming up in a a week. I wrote about him and the encounter to my college roommate Jen, about how I had casually asked him if he wanted to grab coffee sometime. We exchanged numbers. I expected nothing but a friendly encounter, but you know, if it happens it happens.

For several days, nothing happened. He didn't text me. I dared not text first, as after all he had repeatedly mentioned how busy he was with work.

Juan got back to me about hiking, and clarified that he wasn't looking for a romantic relationship, but that he would be down to go hiking if I was just looking to be friends. I told him no worries and that I felt like that was pretty clear. I invited him and his housemates to a potluck with my housemate Julia. He ghosted me.

Then exactly a week after the happy hour, I was standing at the Montgomery BART station platform, waiting for my train home from work. In front of me a Fremont train door opened. There was Hugo, standing smack in the middle. We saw each other and I sheepishly waved.

The train sped off, and my phone lit up.

"Well hello. I was just thinking about you."

Chapter 3

We met at the Oakland Museum for our first date. Hugo insisted on buying the tickets online beforehand, and I insisted on Venmo-ing him. Little did I know he had sprung for the Dorothea Lange exhibit too, and so the amount I sent him was embarrassingly only half the actual cost.

In front of the exhibits, we were reserved, quiet. Little whispers here and there. He seemed a bit sleepy. I had no idea if he actually enjoyed museums or not.

I was deeply mesmerized by the photography and the life story of Lange. In the chilling stillness of museum, the portraits possessed a striking dynamism. In person, the black and white prints, some of which I had seen reproduced in books, held astonishing depth that I had never noticed before. The exhibit went at length to explain the controversy over the most famous portrait, Migrant Mother, of Florence Owens Thompson, who was scarcely interviewed for any detail except for her age (32), and the number of children (7). That she was Native American complicated matters even more.

After carefully inspecting all of the exhibits, Hugo and I walked out of the museum. It was late afternoon; this whole time he hadn't said much and I assumed he would want to call it a day. Instead, he suggested we get some food, and we ended up at a Korean place on Telegraph nicknamed 'Porno Bar'.

It wasn't as seedy as the name suggests – there were a couple racy illustrated Korean movie posters in the bathroom. The food was good, the vibe quite pleasant, not overly loud. We arrived early and snagged a booth.

We talked for a long time. Unlike the majority of his co-workers in tech, he never went to college, but instead completed two vocational programs, one for medical assistant training, the other for IT. At 18, with no credentials to speak of, he accidentally started teaching a medical assistant course by himself, then began working at UCSF for 3 years and had plans to go into med school.

These plans were interrupted by a painful life event. A girl he had met online and had been dating long-distance fell pregnant. They talked it over, and he decided to quit his job and move to be with her and support this new family. There were talks of marriage. It placed severe strains on his relationship with his very Catholic family, but he felt it was the right choice. Months into this transition, it came to light that the baby actually was not his. The actual father was neither emotionally nor financially dependable. Hugo was heartbroken at the cheating and the loss of his career, and returned to the Bay Area to start again.

He told me all this in the strictest confidence. I was spellbound, unsure of what to believe. Tentatively, I dared to allow for the possibility that he would want to confide in an almost-stranger like me. I wondered if he and Jack had talked about these things too.

I opened up about the fact that I still lived together with my ex-boyfriend, and was tormented by his flirtations with our other housemate. How Jack knew Hubert too and never really liked him. I joked about how my friend Jen always got mad at me for telling stories about past relationships with people I’m barely getting to know, and we laughed and told some more.

He insisted on paying for dinner, against my protests. We took a long walk from the restaurant back to my place, up Telegraph, past the BART station and through the gritty freeway overpass encampments, over onto West St. Right as I opened the door to the apartment, Ava's cat, a tiny little black furball of fury, clambered up to Hugo's shoulders and refused to come down. I was so embarrassed for my guest, as I knew how sharp those little claws could get. The cat was often neglected for long periods at home, and being a rescue, had terrible anxiety and resentment toward humans.

"I'm so terribly sorry about the scratches. He usually doesn't like to interact with males," I said, surprised.

"Oh?" Hugo said hello with a low growl, and gave him a rub on the head. The cat nuzzled his face, and tried to paw at his glasses.

"What's his name?" Hugo asked.

"Well, Hubert named him "Jiji" after the cat in Kiki's Delivery Service. Ava kept the name. I hate it though, because 'jiji' just sounds like 'penis' in Chinese."

He laughed.

"Julia hates the name, too. She wants to call him 'baby groot' instead. We've gone all-in on Guardians lately."

"Yeah, I like that a lot better. He's really cute. Those big eyes."

Thankfully, the rest of the apartment was empty. We retreated to my bedroom to talk. Hugo pored over my messy stacks of books, and asked me about them. I gave terrifically boring synopses of Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest, two absurdist and absurdly long tomes which I had been soldiering through for many months.

He took interest in my copy of Inferno and of Thomas Merton's Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Hugo grew up Catholic, and had a priest for a stepfather. Briefly I wondered if he knew Merton's backstory, the famous Trappist Monk who had poured forth such beautiful and solemn writings, had fathered an illegitimate child.

"Can I borrow this one?"

"The Merton? Of course. I've finished it a couple months ago. It's very disjointed, but in a good way. I picked it up on the sidewalk in Berkeley. It has a lot of sentimental value for me."

"Well then, I look forward to giving it a read."

He glanced down at his watch.

"I should probably head out, catch the train back."

"Of course, of course. Sorry to keep you so long."

"No, not at all. I really enjoyed hearing about your books. And your stories." He gave me a great big tired smile. His eyes crinkled.

"Next time, you have to let me pay for dessert."

"Yes. I promise I won't disappear off like 'subway boy'."

I chuckled at the joke about Juan. He took his leave. I was exhausted from the long day.

Julia, Ava's roommate, came home after. She asked how my first date went. Since my breakup with Hubert, I had been getting to know her a lot more. Once upon a time, she and Ava were actually close. Through her stories, I got a better sense of Ava as a person, beneath the glittery front that she put up.

"Really, really good. We talked for 9 hours..."

"Wow! You're kidding!"

"...And it was mostly about breakups too!" I groaned, a little in disbelief myself.

Chapter 4

Dear Hugo,

This is where I introduce myself and explain that I’m terrible with texts. It’s something about the idea of instant gratification of the call and response that I’m at odds with. Half the time I’d rather be having a real conversation instead. Call me old fashioned. Not to mention, you’re probably swamped with stuff at work so I figured it’d be better to not be disruptive.

I wonder, how often you get fan mail (and this is most definitely fan mail because I got your email from your profile), and whether/when you take the time to write back. This is my first fan letter! (Well, unless you count this one time, in high school, when I briefly messaged the principal flutist from the LA Phil on fb after watching a performance at the Hollywood Bowl.) This is where I tell you how much I admire your work and try really hard to sound like a non-creepy normal person. The first video of yours I watched, the one at the top of your profile from last May, I was floored – with the cuts, the music, the sheer amount of emotion that you had packed in, the caption suddenly making all the sense in the world. Had to watch it over and over to let it sink in and, in a way, to reconcile this visceral, compact enigmatic story with the many others you have told since our first meeting. How beguiling it is to attempt to piece together a person when in fact the autobiography is necessarily composed of the double voice of a disconnected narrator and protagonist, whose lives are estranged by memory. Memory, the mother of the muses. From a lecture on Dante's La Vita Nuova, I relearned an old word – recordarse – to remember, to recollect for oneself. The danger of the phantasmic reality of memory, placed within the heart. You say you aren’t that good of a storyteller and it makes me smile to hear that, as untrue as it is. I will assume you are merely referring to the complexity of the story itself, one that does justice to your memories.

Baby groot (the cat, not the comic book/movie character) is a wild child these days, starting to jump higher and actually even daring to get a running start just before he pounces and sinks his claws into my thighs. While I’m prepping his food. I can’t tell if it’s better to wear pants for protection, or if he knows not to scratch the shit out of/eat human flesh, I’m not sure I want to experiment. There's really a lot of room for doubt. At least he's finally eating more. His owner, who is a bit lackadaisical and doesn’t seem to remember to eat much herself, doesn’t care to make sure he eats and so I attempt to make up for it. Recently found out that she’ll be gone for another two whole weeks on vacation, again. Nice to have the house a little quieter, at least.

A pop song came on shuffle and his big pointy ears started dancing to the music, right before he fell asleep on my foot. He's so nice when he's calm, warm and soft and cozy. Sometimes we have these extensive conversations when we're alone (a stretch - it's usually him taking a breather when he gets bored of his toys and just watching me eat). Today I asked him, "Are you groot, or are you penis?" No response. I think he's having an identity crisis.

In my fridge sits a tub of decadent chocolate ice cream, waiting to be all gobbled up. It may or may not have your name on it. I was getting groceries on Sunday… and thinking of you. This is where I confess to feeling guilty – of presumptuously trying to make plans with you on your birthday, me of all people. Lowkey, I didn't do it as a kind gesture. I have completely selfish motivations. I'm just really looking forward to hanging out with you again, to having good company. Thought you should know.

And this is where I let the letter draw to a close and let you go back to whatever you were doing before, seemingly irreverent as to a steadfast hope that maybe, just maybe this could have brightened your day, and that someday you may write back. (But really, it’s okay, I’m just touched you even read this.)

Soleliu

Chapter 5

Hugo never replied to this odd 'fan letter' of mine. He texted a couple days after, to check in about making plans. I asked if he had read the email. He hadn't. Immediately he called me.

"Selfish motivations, huh?"

I blushed.

"I'm glad. You should do that more often, you know."

"Really, now."

"So, what are you up to tonight? Do you want to come over? Watch a movie?"

It was almost 8pm on a Saturday, exactly one week after our museum date.

"Wait, actually it's late, huh. And it'd take you a while to get here, and you sleep early from what I recall..."

I laughed nervously. I really, really wanted to see him.

We made plans instead to go hiking and grab Cheeseboard the following Saturday, and then movies at his place the day after.

After, we texted nonstop, increasingly flirty at times. Sunday night he called, again.

"So how was your day?"

"Good. Tiring. I tagged along with Julia to Pride. It was... a lot. So many naked white girls. Like sunglasses and thongs and boots naked? And armed police guards all around."

"Yeah, I remember that. It was your first time?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry I missed you while you were there." He had been at the office that day, and frequently worked on weekends.

"That's alright."

"I can't wait for next weekend, though."

"Me too."

I sighed. Stretching out on my bed, I looked up at the string lights dangling from my ceiling.

"I really, really missed your voice," I said.

"Oh?"

"It's... I simply can't describe it. It... does things. To my body."

"Hmm. Tell me about it. What it does to your body."

I closed my eyes.

"It's like I'm floating in a warm, tranquil ocean. It embraces me, all of me. I'm... I'm drowning in this wetness, enveloped in it. Devoured by it."

"Don't stop. Talking. Please."

Outside, I could hear footsteps and conversations. Hugo's voice grew husky, his breathing uneven.

"Are you..."

"Yeah," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Are you? Touching yourself?"

I blushed deeply. Even without anyone in the room, I felt myself clam up.

"Yes," I lied. I took a shaky breath.

There was rustling over the phone. I couldn't find the words. Time stopped, and the noise outside my room grew louder. My heart was pounding in my ears. I felt as if I was about to combust from the excruciating excitement.

When he had finished, he said, "God, I missed your voice too."

......

The rest of the week passed in an agonizing blur. Hugo's words echoed in my head. I heard them, as clearly as if he were speaking them to me presently, because I wanted to hear them.

I thought of him constantly and sat on my hands to keep from texting him. I wrote him more embarrassing letters that I tucked deep into my drafts folder, unsent.

Be still, my greedy, impatient, famished heart.

The heart nourishes love; love devours the heart. What is the body but a piteous, prideful receptacle of emotion?

Chapter 6

I got dinner with Jack in the city, a belated birthday celebration, since I missed the actual one due to my exam. We went to his favorite ramen place, Nojo, near Civic Center. I caught him up on my first date with Hugo. It was so satisfying to talk about Hugo with someone who knew him and worked with him daily, and held him in high regard.

Jack opened up to me that in the beginning, when they had both started work on the same day, he had developed a bit of a crush on him.

The revelation endeared both of them to me even more. Talking with Jack, I felt undeserving, with my laughable girlish insecurities. I urged myself to think of benevolence, and mutual affection, not about winning or losing. I felt Jack as being solidly on my side, and it gave me the strength to be more capable of kindness.

He refused to let me pay for his birthday dinner, by the way, swatting me away as he stubbornly fought me for the check.

......

When Saturday afternoon finally rolled around, Hugo cancelled our hiking plans.

I was crestfallen.

"I'm so sorry, it must've been something I ate. I'm just not feeling up to it."

The call came very last minute. I put on a brave face and tried my best to hide my disappointment.

"Of course, no worries at all. Maybe next time, then."

"Do you still want to come over? For a movie?"

......

He lived in a duplex also, a building with some curb appeal on an otherwise sketchy street. It was my first time going to Fruitvale Station. Just the name, which called to mind that horrifying based-on-true-story movie I had watched one year prior, made me shudder.

Clumsily I hoisted my bike up the stairs and into the kitchen. It was cozily furnished, his room covered in tasteful posters and photo memorabilia. His other two roommates weren't home. We had both already eaten, so we jumped straight into Léon: The Professional. We sat side by side on his bed, facing the giant TV in his room. He put his arm around me. I felt as comfortable as I thought I could feel, content. I thought about how we were supposed to be watching the sunset from a bench in the Berkeley hills, but pushed the thought aside. We were watching my favorite Portman film. He hadn't seen it before, and I had fun pointing out my favorite parts.

At the end, when Léon finally confesses to wanting to put down roots, I cried.

Hugo turned to me. Ever so softly, he put a hand to my cheek, gazing at me intently. I remembered our last phone call, my heart pounding. I wanted to pinch myself, that this was real.

"Before we..."

"Yeah?"

"I just. Wanted to mention. That, uh... it's been a while. A couple of years. Since I've been with someone new."

He nodded.

"And this is actually all a bit overwhelming for me. So, apologies in advance if I'm, you know, nervous."

"That's okay. We don't have to do anything you don't feel comfortable with."

"Okay."

I took a breath.

"Can I just ask, you know, about how you feel? About us? What this means to you? Just so we're on the same page."

"Well," he began. "To be honest, I really only do 'casual'. I'm a pretty casual guy, in general. Usually I'm not expecting much to come out of things. If anything, I always at least try to stay friends."

I nodded. "Right," I said. "That makes sense." He was being honest. It was better than the opposite, I supposed. And yet I had trouble hiding my immense disappointment. All this time I had been daring to allow myself to think of Dante's Beatrice, of feeling exalted, in love. I wondered at the impassioned love stories he told to me on our first date, if those were simply from a past life. If I wasn't special enough, or pretty enough. If I was bad news, because I still lived with my ex-boyfriend.

"Is that alright with you?"

I felt a pang in my chest.

"Yes," I lied. "Of course."

In bed, I was distracted. I gazed at the decorations around his room, wondering at all the faces in the photos. "Casual." He was attentive, focused, perhaps a little nervous too because every few minutes he switched positions. It was as impressive as it was disorienting. Nevertheless, we took pleasure in each other's bodies. I tried to throw myself into the exertion and forget the words.

We retreated to the living room, and watched The Dark Knight, which was one of his favorites. The ice had been broken; banter and delightful commentary spilled forth. In particular, he focused on the cinematography. I had seen the movie before, but not in full, and it was fascinating to see his art direction brain at work.

I stayed the night. In his cramped twin bed, I felt somewhat claustrophobic pressed up against the wall. I barely slept, listening to his snores.

"Good morning," I said.

He gazed at me sleepily, his eyes half open. Without his glasses, he seemed so much more childlike. He smiled.

I couldn't remember the last time I woke up next to someone smiling.

We had sex again. This time he kissed me, slowly, and tentatively. He ordered breakfast for us, a splendid lazy Sunday ritual that I had never experienced before. We watched almost all of a whole season of Rick and Morty. The show was downright absurd. He delighted in my confusion, and in being the one to introduce me to it.

While balancing my tray of breakfast food on my knee, I spilled some pancake syrup onto the sheets.

"My god, I'm so, so sorry," I said, rushing to mop up the syrupy mess.

"That's ok. I was going to wash them anyway."

I chided myself for my clumsiness. It was approaching noon, and I feared I had overstayed my welcome.

I thanked him for breakfast, and for a fun night.

The bike ride home felt short. I was lost in thought. All the anticipation had gone out of me.

Just a pretty casual guy...

Families crowded the station, most likely heading to July 4th celebrations and barbecues. It was a long weekend.

Casual. I only do casual.

Back at home, the three of them were crowded around the cat on the sofa. He had gotten neutered that morning. If anyone had noticed my absence during the night, they didn't mention it. I wordlessly went to my room.

Casual. Casual... Casual. Right, right. Of course. Fine with me.

After a long jog with Julia, I stocked up on groceries for the rest of the week and buried myself in Revolutionary Road, a novel about adultery and abortion.

Chapter 7

Asha once more. What a crazy ride getting here. Waited a full half hour at the station, massive delays at 16th & Mission, ongoing medical emergency. Platform crowded like hell, and people got nasty, it being also a Friday afternoon. Woman in priority seat, face contorted with pain, pale and incredibly white, shoulders hunched, knees squeezed together, unmoving. Lips quivering. And all I could do was take in the sight of her wrinkled neck, like satellite imagery of some vast, bleached desert. Our train doors struggled to close against the strain of all the passengers – Bob, or was it Bill?, the client who came in this week, was there again, sneaking in at the last moment, briefly bracing his arms against the closing doors. At Embarcadero, another train door incident, this time because one man purposefully jammed the doors to allow a stranger on.

"Sardines!" shouted the few jovial passengers. Around me, two couples materialized, woman clinging onto man for dear life, bubbles forming amidst sea of otherwise indistinguishable flesh. I closed my eyes to escape the so many expressionless faces – all except the one black woman whose eyes told all. I could see her, then, coming undone right before my eyes, pure ecstasy. The creaking of the handrail above, struggling under the weight of a hundred hands, bedlam of bestial limbs made public, put on display. My grip tightened, I straightened up, and remembrance of last weekend's tryst shot through my body electric... And yet I dare not write to him, he and I know this well enough. How many injections of flesh, derelict glances and roughshod grip does it take to reach my center, to reduce me to quivering and moans? What an unromantic, loveless thought, this purely mechanistic act. How difficult it is to relate in words in the sterile light of day ...

What would I rather be doing on a Friday afternoon? Jogging. Swimming, if I weren't so tired. How much longer can I sustain myself like this, with no concrete project except CFA exams? I read, and write. Somehow, there is a sort of growing in this process. It is easy – the 'ah, I see' moment, like when you watch a timelapse. But in the living it is like watching paint dry. It is unbearably difficult when I think that at the end of the day, I am left to myself.

I am tired, that is all. Ordinarily an hour of quiet and sunshine would fill me with inexplicable joy. Or, very explicably, as it would produce pages upon pages of unfiltered writing. Managed only half a page of description, and already I am bored. I am too young, I imagine myself to have noticed much of what I have lived through, that is, to have lived with eyes open, keeping notebooks diligently. And yet I have seen scarcely anything at all. I have only imagined my emotions and sensations to be so deep and so wide because I comfort myself by comparisons to my unimaginative, unambitious peers who allow their phones and laptops to do the living for them.

What is a life well lived? For mom it is finding love, God's and man's, bundled in the form of marriage, house, job, luxury, pride of children, I suppose. For dad it's intellectual prowess, reprieve from constant and unbearable exhaustion, freedom. For Jack it's Instagram fame, steady boyfriend, dogs and worry-free parents and brothers. For Julia it's doctor's degree, good company, indulgent relaxation. For Ava it's gorgeous closet, house, falling in love in the city of Paris, art studio, video games, fancy food. For Hubert it's a fast car, a portfolio filled with his finest accomplishments for all his friends to marvel at.

I don't write about these people because I claim to know their innermost desires. These are simply things that I find myself drawn to, or repulsed by. In reality, I hardly know these people at all. Life is no longer neatly divided into periods of school and real life after college. It's just all a mess, a clusterfuck, and I have long ago lost track of everyone else's mess.

Deep down, unguarded and unpretentious, I am miserly, wretched, bitter. I am closed to the world, God knows why. God knows what the hell I have to hide. I sit here in this cafe and have no shame for these words because I only wish to set them free... Prose, too heavy for days like this, arms too weary to attempt the stringing together of long sentences, monotony. Am slave to never-ending thoughts, artless garbage. Stench of uncontrollable decay, a methodical laying to waste. Awaiting rescue. Awaiting fateful hope, incontrovertible rays of light to pierce me, that it why I choose large, gaping windows.

Feel too small for my sorrow. Am made small by it and yet I still drag body around like a lumbering fool. Feel cut off from Love, a golden thing. Afraid to taint it, if that were possible. Afraid of my own shadow. Miss cat, uncomplicated companion. As bratty as he is, he nevertheless taught me a little about how to love. This is why I run, swim – to touch purpose and hold it in my palm, sigh with exhausted contentment. Am made useless, irrational without this constant reminder. Body willing but mind weak. I write, and write, and feel so silly. Who is it for? To be saved. I write because I wish, more than anything else, to be saved.

Chapter 8

In the days that followed my overnight stay at Hugo's, I found myself in a deep pit of ruminous anguish. I didn't regret the time that we shared, far from it, but that didn't stop me from wondering how things might have played out if I had just been honest, with myself and with him, in that crucial moment when he clarified his 'casual' approach.

The truth was that I could hardly stomach the idea of casual anything. Friendship, dates, sex. I was still licking my wounds from my breakup with Hubert, the implosion of what was supposed to be a carefully plotted, stable, transition into adult life.

It was too late for me to go back and explain all this to Hugo. He had begun to put off replying to my messages. When I called, he spoke briefly, explaining that he was busy. I forced myself to stop pestering him and purge what remained of my impetuous yearning; I knew he had a perfectly full and vibrant life without me and that I wouldn't be missed. I simply liked him too much to passively hope for the impossible. It would be better to stay friends, and forget the rest.

With the dissolution of my hopes at a whirlwind romance with Hugo came the bleak realization that continuing to live with my ex-boyfriend was simply untenable.

Julia was due to move out by September to pursue a grad program. She was on the lease just like me, but she had already found her replacement. With this possibility in mind, I threw myself into an apartment search.

I knew deep down that I wanted to live alone. Somewhere with giant windows, no late night TV droning on and on, no one to make me feel like I was just an afterthought. A place for calm breakfasts and morning reading. A place I could invite people to without fretting about who might see, and judge.

The best contender in my search was a below-market studio on Harrison and 15th in downtown Oakland. It cost slightly more than a third of my take home pay, low enough that I could stomach it for the quality of life improvement. It was in an old building, a hotel that had been renovated. When I went to visit, I was astounded by the sunlight that bathed the wood floors, vaulted ceilings and a view of the Tribune tower. Within a block stood three separate liquor shops. I lost count of how many transients were sleeping or ambling nearby. The building manager approved my application within a day.

My mom was furious with me. She hated the neighborhood, the idea of me living alone. She told me to restart my search in a better area, with roommates in mind. She insisted on sending me money so I wouldn't be boxed in to sketchy options. It was a burden that I didn't need to add onto her plate. I thought I was more than responsible enough to live on my own. I sat on the Harrison apartment offer, waffling in between the temptation of freedom, and the dark unknown.

I talked with my roommates about my idea. They were on the lease together with me after all, and I needed to give notice if I were to go. In as calm and civilized a tone as I could muster, I voiced my dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the household – Hubert and Ava's sneaking around, conveniently slipping out together right when Julia and I came home, whereas before we were all quite open and communicative about plans for where we were heading out to. Hubert and Ava had stopped talking to each other inside the apartment, it was all silent glances and furtive escapes. I was positive I wasn't imagining things – Julia, who was moving out soon and had a much smaller stake in this whole thing, backed me up in these observations. I explained that given my past with Hubert, at the very least I deserved to be told, openly and without conceit, if they were dating. I deserved to be given a chance to find housing elsewhere, instead of remaining mired in this anxious secrecy.

Ava, deadpan, told me that she had no idea Hubert and I had even broken up.

I scoffed at this.

Hubert sighed. "Well, we broke up a while ago." He said this while looking at me. Ava gave no response. "Ava and I are just hanging out as friends. Promise."

I threw up my hands, exasperated. Confused. Feeling incredibly foolish at this situation I had gotten myself into. I called off the discussion, apologized for my little outburst and tabled it for another day.

Hubert and I had a long talk after. He chided me for not going to him first, and for making everyone else feel awkward. My eyes opened in astonishing disbelief. I made everyone feel awkward?

I painted for him, then, the way I saw things. The optics of their 'friendship'. The conversations we used to have, during our relationship and throughout our breakup and its aftermath, about Ava.

He listened patiently. He softened, and eventually apologized. He echoed the same concerns my mom had about safety, and brought up the possibility of him being the one to move out so that I could live here in peace. It was meant as a sacrificial consolation, but it didn't make sense – our apartment was a mile away from his work, and besides, he genuinely enjoyed spending time with Ava. It also made me feel misunderstood. I was trying to escape Ava and the commotion and memories of the apartment as much as I was trying to escape him.

The following day, Ava apologized, too. She cried big ugly tears, expressed her remorse at having hurt me.

"I can't stand the idea of hurting people who don't deserve it," she said to me.

It wasn't vindicating even though logically it should have been. It was plain sad, the way her face crumpled up, the way it reminded me of how I'd been feeling those past few months. It was a relief to get all that pent up animosity out of the way. Her remorse seemed genuine. But her words confused me – after all, who does deserve to be hurt?

......

I felt blocked. In my heart I knew that living alone would make me happy. But if anything were to happen to me outside of my control, my parents would be devastated. I looked up the recent homicide rates for downtown Oakland, just to add some perspective. I balked.

Walking home one evening, I turned the corner from 40th onto West. I was lost in thought, a sweaty mess, reeking of chlorine and head bent low with fatigue from a punishing swim after work. One of my ears was still plugged with pool water. I was listening to The Count of Montecristo on audiobook, at the part where Lucien was in the middle of terminating his partnership with Madame Danglars.

"Excuse me..."

A young man, in a white t-shirt and jeans, was working on his motorcycle outside his bedroom, a converted garage which faced the street.

"...Where have I seen you before?" he said to me.

I stopped in my tracks and pulled out my earbuds, confused.

"Excuse me?"

"I think I've seen you before. At a BART Station? Montgomery?"

I blinked.

"Uh, yeah. That's the BART station I commute to."

"Wow! I knew it! I knew I recognized you from somewhere."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm a violinist. A busker. The one with the cap? I play at Montgomery often."

The recognition hit me then, too. I remembered him. In his performance getup he looked no older than 21, maybe.

"Oh. I see. Yeah, I think I've seen you before."

"That's so, so funny. Do you live here?"

"Yeah, a couple blocks down." I pointed awkwardly in the direction of my apartment.

"Listen, do you think you'd want to get a cup of tea sometime?"

I was taken aback. Was he asking me out? Tea, is that like a coffee, but even more casual? A friendly chat. A neighborly chat, almost.

"I don't drink coffee," he added sheepishly.

"Uh..."

"It's alright if you don't want to, I just figured I'd ask..."

I hesitated.

"You know what, that sounds kinda nice," I said.

"Yeah? Really?"

"Really. I did band in school for many years, I can appreciate a decent musician when I see one."

"That's really, really cool."

He whipped out his phone and took down my number.

"I'm Cameron," he said.

"Nice to meet you."

We didn't shake hands; he was embarrassed for the motorcycle grease on his. Awkwardly I waved goodbye and walked the rest of the half mile home.

Chapter 9

I got dinner with my old college roommates, Eva and Elena. Eva was visiting from abroad, where she was doing her PhD. Elena still lived in Berkeley, near campus, and worked in the city as well. At this time we were all terrifically single, and talked nonstop about dating and relationships. They listened in rapt attention to my little story about the encounter with Cameron.

"Do you think he does that a lot? The 'where have I seen you before'?" Elena asked, skeptical.

"Not a damn clue. I know basically nothing about him."

"Well, a violinist sounds pretty romantic to me," Eva said. "You guys can talk about music! And go on romantic motorcycle rides!"

"I dunno," I said sheepishly. "It's just coffee. Or, tea, I guess. Probably nothing will come of it."

......

I arrived several minutes late to the little cafe on 40th, two blocks from where he lived. He opened the door for me in a grand gesture, and paid for our teas. It was the kind of plastic tea bag in a steaming styrofoam cup you get at hospitals or the like. When he had initially asked for a suggestion of where to go, I had instantly thought of the upscale Asha Tea House in Berkeley which I frequented, but felt like perhaps he wouldn't really feel at home there. We sat at a small table outside, the busy MacArthur traffic swirling around us.

The day after we had met, I saw him again, this time at the Downtown Berkeley station. Harmonious, delicate strings greeted me upon exiting the station. He was playing from memory, his amplifier beside him. I smiled at him and gave a little wave, embarrassed at the thought of how many other countless girls he might have asked out in that way. He was really quite good, and played with intense emotion. In the cafe, without his violin and a crowd of onlookers to smile at, he seemed slightly nervous.

He had big boyish eyes and a wispy widow's peak kept in a crew cut. On his chin was a little goatee, something I hadn't remembered seeing at our first encounter. Up close, he was on the shorter end, and came up to the top of my forehead. Some of his features reminded me of my coworker who I disliked, the only other person at my small office who was my age. I tried to not think too hard about the resemblance.

He wore a button up and jeans, and work boots, and walked with long, brisk strides. I showed up in a dress that I had been wearing when I went out for lunch, and felt self-conscious, overdressed for this casual meet-up.

We talked about music, how much we both detested the syrupy pop that blared in public places, the lyrics and the shallowness. The classical stuff we preferred instead. He grew up in Oregon and started violin at a young age, busking to pay for lessons. His best friend in high school was the first chair violin, a quiet Taiwanese girl who he adored; they still kept in touch and he had played at her wedding. He was busking full-time at one point, preferring it to the oppressive atmosphere of weddings and other more polite gigs. But the money was erratic, and he had started courses to become a EEG technician and was commuting to Sacramento several days a week for work training, which would wrap up in a few months. The plan was to transition to that full-time, maybe end up in Sacramento.

He loved to sail; it was his true dream. Here and there he did a bit of rock climbing and cycling. In past years he traveled for long periods. He used to lived in LA and had been part of the skateboarding scene, working odd jobs. Eventually he moved away, fighting off alcoholism and a somewhat debilitating weed addiction in the process.

He did almost all the maintenance on his motorcycle by himself, often finding spare parts in the junkyard. He kept to a scrupulous sleep routine. He wrote; he was sitting on a 50,000 word manuscript that he thought about revisiting someday. He talked a lot about college, and some of the books we had read in common.

The cafe closed and we walked back together. I felt distracted and tired, unsure of myself. As interesting as he had seemed, there hadn't really been much of a spark, and for once it came to me as a relief, not disappointment. While we sat and talked, he had been staring intently, trying to figure me out, I supposed. He fidgeted with his hands constantly.

"Well this is me," he said.

I smiled politely, and geared up to say goodbye.

"Would you like to go on a date with me to the symphony?"

"Oh. The symphony, like in the city, at Davies?"

"Yes! Have you been?"

"No... but I've always wanted to go."

"Awesome. I have a buddy there who snags me tickets sometimes. Could I get back to you with some dates?"

"Sure, that sounds nice."

We said our goodbyes and I walked home. I thought about the symphony, if I had truly wanted to go, or if I just like the idea of being asked out more than anything. I like the idea of classical music, it sounded prim and civilized. I thought about his conspicuous use of the word 'date'. I didn't feel super comfortable with him, that was already apparent. He had a way of talking that made me feel self conscious, either because he frequently misunderstood small details, or spoke with astonishing assertiveness about things that were not factual. I had told him a story about touring Asia with the college marching band, and later in the conversation he repeated it back to me as a trip I took in high school. He was visibly confused, offended almost, when I told him I couldn't really read Chinese, because he had thought I lied about being fully bilingual, when I had made no mention of that.

I mulled over whether or not I should tell Hugo about him. Things with Cameron seemed indeed very casual; he had mentioned he was probably planning on moving away soon. Wasn't meeting people an inherent part of 'casual' dating? I had no idea if Hugo was seeing anyone else, and somehow it felt wrong to ask, to pry. In the end I decided against it. I had wanted to stay friends with Hugo, if anything, and he and I had not made plans since we saw each other last. Bringing this up would simply complicate things. The possibility of anything happening with anyone at this point seemed terribly remote.

......

Over text, Cameron got back to me on the symphony, and managed to secure tickets for July 22nd, in ten days' time. It was for a performance of Holst's The Planets.

It was pretty easy listening, as far as symphonies went. In wind ensemble we had played a simplified arrangement of it. I was looking forward to it.

But then he asked me to go do something else in between – a sunset motorcycle ride to the Berkeley hills.

It was such a damn cliché, the romanticism of riding on the back of a guy's motorcycle, dashing off into the sunset.

It was also, embarrassingly enough, a sort of bucket list thing for me. One year prior, I had seriously looked into getting my own motorcycle to use for daily commute. I gave it up, obviously, because of the inherent danger. My friends and parents convinced me it wasn't worth it.

In the moment, the idea of the sunset ride seemed like harmless fun. We were going to the symphony anyway. Cameron had been friendly, not at all flirtatious. I knew the view on Skyline would be gorgeous.

I said yes.

Chapter 10

"Remember to hold on to me tight. Here's your helmet, and some earplugs. And when we start to go around the corners, you have to lean in with me, toward the inner part of the curve. I know it'll probably feel counter-intuitive, but it has to do with the torque and helps the bike make the turn safely."

I nodded along to the barrage of instructions.

"Your boots, are they steel-toed?"

"No, just leather."

He groaned.

"That's not the right kind of footwear. I thought you would have understood what I meant by boots. I should have been more clear."

"Is it a problem?" I asked, suddenly growing worried.

"Well, yes, if something bad happens. Luckily for you I'm an experienced and extremely safe rider. I've been riding for about seven years now, and I've never been in an accident."

I was standing just outside his garage-bedroom, watching him get ready. His arms were outstretched as he put on his jacket, muscles and sinews dancing in the soft glow of his room. I was a little bewildered at the sight of a new piece of his body I hadn't seen before; I thought of the man I had been ogling that morning on the train, arm raised overhead as he held onto the rail, his bulging bicep exposed. I began to notice that Cameron carried himself with an athleticism that I found myself undeniably attracted to.

He maneuvered his motorcycle, a royal blue vintage Suzuki, out of his garage. Clumsily, I got on after him, and wrapped my arms around his thick padded jacket. The backseat was too high and it only made obvious his short stature. The chin of my helmet kept bumping into the top of his. There was so much gear between us that it was a lot less intimate than I had expected.

We sped off. On MLK, he ran a couple yellows, and I surprised myself at the laughter that bubbled up in my throat.

We detoured through the freeway for kicks. On Skyline the sunset was gorgeous, as expected. Many other motorists were there as well, likely also on dates.

Afterwards we got ice cream in Elmwood, then he dropped me off at home. I invited him up, just for a quick tour. My roommates were in their rooms, or else not home. When we came in, the cat eyed him warily, then retreated to his spot above the kitchen cabinets.

He loved the space, the skylight, the back deck. I opened the door to my room and stood outside of it, just to show him the closet of a box I lived in. Messy books were still piled all around.

He noticed my sound bar, an old thing I had snagged from my parents' house. I mentioned that it was quite rudimentary and didn't have a subwoofer.

"We all have heartbeats inside of each of us," he said. "No need for that artificial bass."

Then he crossed over the threshold to the corner of my bed, peeled off the blanket and pressed down on the mattress.

I was thoroughly confused. "Is... everything ok?"

"Yeah. Just curious about your mattress firmness."

"Right..."

I walked him out to the front door.

"I'm really excited for our symphony date," he said.

"Me too," I said.

Before he left, he turned around and looked me in the eyes. "I just wanted to say, that I had so much fun tonight. And that I really, really like you." He was beaming, full of sincerity.

I blushed, embarrassed at his candor.

"That's, um. That's really nice of you."

I closed the door, feeling a pretty darn even mix of flattered, and weirded out.

......

The next evening, I met up in Fremont to catch up with my old friend from high school – John had been my friend Sophie's prom date. He went to a neighboring school district, and in those chaotic last months of senior year, we chatted frequently about his feelings for her in the course of all his prom scheming. When their romantic dealings ended abruptly at the time of graduation, he and I stayed friends. In college, we briefly shared a little spark, but it faded with time.

John dropped me off at home after our dinner, and came in to see the apartment. He knew about my recent struggles with Hubert, and felt for me. We chatted in my room, with the door slightly ajar, about random things – my books, old high school memories, the cat. The mood was fairly wistful.

"You know, you're the only person I know with a pixie cut." He said this to me while staring intently.

"Huh."

I didn't know how to make heads or tails of this comment. I had a vague awareness that this was one of our first hangouts, in many years, where we were both single.

John had a long drive back to Davis, and headed out. We said our goodbyes. Minutes after he left, Hubert came in through the front door. He carried in his hand a six pack of beers, his face blotchy. He was seething.

"Everything ok?"

"No," he spat.

He was upset, it turned out, because I had a guy in my room.

"Was that you who slammed the door earlier?" I asked. I had faintly heard it while John and I were talking, but hadn't thought much of it.

"Yeah," he admitted.

"What's with the beer?"

"I was pissed. I couldn't stand to listen to the sound of you guys. I went out, just to Safeway, so I could come home and get drunk."

I scoffed. The cosmic irony of this, after months of watching his intimacy with Ava, was not lost on me. His anger had seemingly come out of nowhere. Ever since I had decided not to move out, our tensions had visibly improved. I had stopped noting the ins and outs of him and Ava, had finally found a bit of breathing room again.

"That was just my friend, John. I've known him since high school."

"Well how am I supposed to know that if you're talking in there forever with the door closed?"

"It was ajar, not closed. What, I'm not allowed to have people over without you prying? Where is this even coming from?"

Our prattle went on for some time. Eventually he calmed down and we spoke of other things – our breakup, the way his parents felt about our breakup, all the little things he missed. I was speechless at this all coming out four months after the fact. Where was this candid honesty when I had been in that deep pit of despair at the beginning of all this?

"You know I'm leaving for my New York trip soon. I just... the thought of you here by yourself."

He sighed.

"The guy in your room. It got me thinking about the time when you were mine."

We talked for five hours that night in the living room. It took me a long, long time to convince him that things would be ok again, that we would both move on. It was exhausting, the cycles of ups and downs that we experienced on totally different time scales. Neither of us were in therapy, and in a way we were still relying on our old patterns to finally talk things out with someone, anyone.

At 2am I finally crashed in bed, exhausted beyond belief. I realized I got lucky on this one – John was indeed just a friend. I thought about the close call on the day prior, when Cameron had been here, and Hubert's car had been home. It all felt like one, big exhausting mess.

Chapter 11

Cameron asked to see me again, suggested a movie. It was still a couple days before we were supposed to go the Symphony. That week Hubert was traveling, and Ava was visiting home.

We decided to watch Amélie at my place. I had seen it plenty of times. Mostly I picked it for the soundtrack. Cameron was impressed by the scoring; he said that his neighbor sometimes played one of the songs on piano, and he recognized the tune.

We sat side by side on the couch, arms touching. Julia came home, gave us a friendly wave, and went in her room. Cameron put his arm around my shoulder. I took in his warm scent, musky and soapy.

I felt comfortable. The last rays of sun filtered in through the windows. The apartment looked clean, cheerful. The cat glowered at us from above the cabinets.

At the end of the movie, when the credits were rolling, he turned to me.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, ever so softly.

I nodded.

He leaned in close, hesitantly. Our noses touched. He pressed his lips to mine, soft tender kisses that stirred something inside me.

I felt shy suddenly.

"We should call it a night," I said, smiling. "You've got a long day tomorrow." He nodded, reluctantly. and gave me a lingering look at the door.

How unprecedented, I thought, to go about things in this timid, unhurried way.

......

The day after, he had a wisdom tooth operation. I was texting with him, trying to be encouraging. After I got off work, he spontaneously asked me to come over for a movie.

This time I came in through the front door, which was part of a courtyard. The apartment complex was old and small, and his was somewhat below-ground. Inside it was musty, extremely dark, and covered in a shabby red-brown carpet. There were barely any windows. Instantly I could see why he was so amazed by mine.

Cameron was in a t-shirt and gym shorts, fatigued and cranky from the operation. His cheek was terribly swollen, and gingerly he held an ice pack to it. He had skipped the painkillers after the operation, and regretted it sorely. It felt weird to be there, and I asked if it was better to reschedule; he didn't seem like himself. He said no, that he would love the company.

His roommate Nigel, the master tenant of the unit, wasn't home. Cameron mentioned that Nigel worked as a sous-chef, and was easy to get along with, as long as no one touched his fancy Japanese knives. He had only moved in a few months ago, and was more or less month-to-month.

We put on a movie, The Shawshank Redemption, one that both of us had watched before. I had told him Andy Dufresne was my favorite geologist of all time. We settled on the living room couch, cuddling.

Neither of us could focus on the film. We were both laying sideways, somewhat spooning. He was pressed against my back, much more relaxed than when I had first arrived. I glanced over, smirking. Last night's kiss had broken the ice. I felt curious about his body, and receptive to it.

Tentatively, I let my hands wander. He glared at me playfully, the ice pack still against his cheek. He let out a moan, from pain or what, I wasn't sure. I turned my attention back to the movie, my hands still absently touching him without much intention. We were at the part where Dufresne finds the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo in the library.

"I actually just finished that last week," I said, smiling. "I was listening to the audiobook when we met on the sidewalk."

Cameron didn't seem to hear me. He had dropped his ice pack. His hands were all over me. He kissed my neck, hungry, devouring kisses. He grimaced, in pain, but didn't stop.

"God, I can't take this anymore," he muttered. In one fell swoop he lifted me off the couch and carried me to his bedroom.

It all happened so fast. There had been no discussion, no checking-in. I had a thought that we had left behind Andy Dufresne in the other room. The movie was still playing.

"Wait," I managed to say. "Condom."

From his bedside he pulled one out of a gigantic white box that was still pretty full. I had no idea they were even sold in such large packages.

It was urgent, frantic. A fight for release. In a minute or two, it was over. It was unlike anything I had experienced before.

Bodily, I had felt more or less in my element, yet it was shocking and disorienting for the rational part of my mind. I had been so used to this kind of movie-in-the-background harmless fondling in college with Hubert that ultimately led to nothing; I felt naive for over-indexing on my past experiences. In the low slanting light I could make out the sculptural kind of body that I often sketched at figure drawing sessions at Kroeber. Hastily I counted backwards the days since we had met, the number of dates.

I tried to remind myself that he had just had a very painful operation that day, and chalked it up to that.

When we had finished, he said to me, "You weigh nothing, by the way."

"I know," I said. "It's a problem."

"Or..." He grinned. "It opens up some possibilities."

......

In the next few days, we saw each other almost every day.

I cooked for him simple recipes from my dad that I was practicing; at home he sometimes just subsisted on protein bars, cold pasta. We listened to the Schubert piano sonatas that I liked, chatted on my back deck while we watched the sunset. I did these things, half imagining what it would have been like to do them with Hugo instead. The thing is, at one time I had imagined doing them with Hugo. But Hugo wasn't there; he had been busy, or merely a voice over the phone, or a text on my screen. Cameron never had his phone out, could hardly sit through an entire movie.

It came to light that he had recently turned 30; we had seven years in between us. We were both quite shocked at this age difference, for he clearly thought 22 too immature for someone like him. From my perspective, he had absolutely fantastic skin for a pale white guy living in California.

For the most part we locked ourselves in the bedroom.

Some of it was incredibly passionate, and it surprised me, in a pleasant way. But some of it also made me deeply uncomfortable. Cameron was brazen about his requests, and I was merely polite about my discomfort. Still, he sensed some of what was unsaid on my part, and took the time to communicate about what he wanted to be reciprocity, not merely one-sided. He spoke to me on the subject of sex itself with such openness that I had never encountered in a sexual partner before. There were moments where I felt pushed, but I didn't feel danger.

Afterwards we would lay in bed, talking. He told me about his family. His mom had bipolar disorder; she had a difficult childhood, had run away from home many times. She had divorced twice, and was onto her third husband. Cameron didn't talk to her much anymore, nor to his brother and sister. Both of his mom's previous marriages had ended because she had cheated, he said.

He had a cynical view of marriage, and mocked the traditional middle class life with mortgage and kids.

He said he felt that he couldn't really understand his dad. A long time ago his dad gifted him a gun, unregistered. He kept it for a few years, not knowing what to do with it, then returned it.

"Did your roommates who were living with you know?"

"No. It was locked away, but I never told them."

My eyes widened, but I said nothing.

I told him about my relatively sheltered childhood, my relationship with my parents given the formative years we spent apart. Tentatively, I opened up about the guy I dated in high school, how I failed to find the courage to break up with him before graduation, and unintentionally got involved with someone else during that time.

His eyes darkened. He looked at me dead on.

"So you're a Cheater," he pronounced.

I was taken aback. He was missing the nuance of the story, jumping to condemnation. I meant the story as a lesson I had learned, a deviance in my youth that influenced me in my integrity since that part of my life.

When he had told me about his past substance abuse, I hadn't turned to berate him for being an Addict.

"Well," I began, defensively. "I mean, I was caught off guard. It was wrong, I hurt him, even though I never told him. But the fact that things didn't pan out with the other guy, I felt I deserved that, I guess. I regretted all of it for a long, long time."

He sighed.

"This is hard to swallow, I have to admit. This is like a real dealbreaker for me – "

"Okay. I get it. I'm sorry it's upsetting, I was trying to be honest with you."

"Yeah. Okay."

"If you want nothing else to do with me, that's fine – "

"No, no. I overreacted. It's just, it's something I get triggered by. With my mom, and all that."

He told me about the worst breakup of his life, which happened on Valentine's Day many years back. He was dating a girl, someone who had been a backup dancer for Usher or some big star like that, who was apparently a bit of a 'diva'. He was waiting, flowers in hand, for her to pick him up to go to their date that he had planned well in advance.

She showed up, late. Still sitting inside of her idling car, she dumped him with very little explanation, then drove off. That was the last he saw of her.

"Ouch," I said. "Man. Seriously? I'm so sorry that happened to you."

"Yeah. Worst day of my life, easily. I'm pretty sure she cheated."

It changed his approach to dating, he said. He told me about his OkCupid profile, all the hundreds of questions he answered in thorough detail, so that he could be sure to filter out anyone who wasn't genuinely interested. Inwardly, I found this strategy quite tedious, a little pathetic. You get to know people through actually spending time with them, not posting long essays online, I thought.

"You know," he said pensively, "on my dating app filters, my age cut-off is 23."

"Okay. And?"

"You're young, that's all."

"Well, your fault for asking out a rando on the street."

He laughed.

"That wasn't the first time I noticed you, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"When I had seen you at the station all those times, when you were just a face in the crowd. I thought to myself, 'That girl must be really something.'"

Impulsively I thought of Dante and Beatrice, their love at first sight, and blushed deeply.

Chapter 12

Finally the night of the Symphony arrived. We met in front of his place and walked over to BART together. The train we were supposed to take had already gone, and the next one was in twenty minutes. He was visibly upset. It was my fault; I had waffled on what to wear. In the end I picked a full-length backless dress, white with florals. In my dress shoes, I was a full two inches taller than him. I felt gangly, uncertain. In the city it was way too cold for the flimsy thing I was wearing, and he lent me his jacket.

He had skipped dinner, and outside Civic he asked to stop at a fast food joint on the corner. I told him I didn't mind being late, but he was flustered. He watched the server slowly taking orders and moving at a glacial speed, and cursed her under his breath.

The auditorium was expansive, with an impressive array of speakers dangling from the ceiling. We had made it just in time before the performance began. The lights darkened, the players picked up their instruments.

I turned to him to whisper something in his ear; he shushed me sternly, like a parent chastising a child. His eyes were closed in deep concentration. He was swaying to the music, which I was ruining for him.

The songs were ethereal, the dynamics bold. Texturally it was so different, so much richer than the simple arrangement I remembered playing in college.

When we exited the music hall, we passed by a group of concert attendees waiting in line at the Bill Graham auditorium. I saw Ava's ex there, with a group of girls. We nodded at each other. I felt self conscious, wearing Cameron's jacket and holding onto his arm. I wondered what he thought of us, an odd pair.

In bed that night, we laid there gazing at each other. He was calm, sated. Absently he traced a finger along my bare arm.

"I forgot to tell you, earlier. Your dress. It was so beautiful. You looked like summer."

......

The following week, I woke up early to check my CFA exam result. I had passed.

Everyone was ecstatic for me.

My boss handed me a check for the hefty exam fee that I originally already paid myself. My mom was overjoyed, exclaiming that we would surely celebrate in the coming week, during my long visit home. I texted Cameron, who sang my praises.

That night I packed for my trip down to LA. I saw Cameron briefly, but soon left as I had too much to do. He had some travel planned too, a family reunion back in Oregon.

As I was packing that night, Hugo called. It had been three weeks since we saw each other.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi, I, uh, wasn't expecting you to call."

"I know, I just found out my weekend would be free, and was wondering if maybe you wanted to hang out."

"Oh. That's cool. I'm actually going to be in LA though, for a little over two weeks."

I felt awkward, navigating around the elephant in the room. I thought Hugo had forgotten about me, but I realized that perhaps it was I who had forgotten about him.

"For sure," he said. "Hope you have a good trip."

"Yeah, thanks."

"Maybe I'll see you after?"

"Yeah, maybe. I'm, uh, seeing someone, by the way."

"Oh."

"Yeah. A violinist."

A pause.

"Oh. Okay. Sounds nice."

"Yeah. Anyway."

"Well, hope you have a good trip. Let me know if you still want to hang out."

We hung up. We're still friends, I said to myself. Friends can chat on the phone.

My heart was pounding, in disbelief that the call had taken place when it did, and not in front of Cameron.

......

Home was a hodgepodge of errands, lunch with friends, putting on a brave smile for my parents' guests, my own wisdom tooth removal, and driving practice. My mom and I filled out and mailed out all our naturalization paperwork, the culmination of two decades of our family's immigration journey. I scheduled appointments to nail down an in-network dentist for my procedure, which ultimately went without a hitch. I only had one tooth to remove and did it without general anesthesia; the sound of the loud saw going into my jaw was frightening, but the pain management was fine.

I attended tedious dinners at the neighbors', listening to stuffy well-to-do people drone on about their business plans. At night, when they got back from work, I listened to my parents argue. They fought constantly, about money, my dad's imploding career, house logistics, bitternesses accumulated over decades of emotional neglect. My mom wanted me to bear witness to his many flaws – she dragged me into the arguments even when I clearly hadn't wanted to partake. It filled me with deep shame.

I caught up with Theo, who I hadn't spoken with in ages. We chatted frankly about our love and sex lives. It was so enlightening, to be grown ups talking about such serious things. He was astonished by my story about Cameron, and about Hugo.

"I can't stop thinking about these Dante lectures," I said. "In one of them, the professor mentions that 'Passions which are unwilled seem to be more important than the things that we will.'"

"Hmmmm. Passions which are unwilled. The violinist, is that him?"

"I don't know, exactly. He's passionate in a very bodily way. In the grand scheme of things he's just completely taken me by surprise. Always a step ahead. It's odd, you know? I've never been pursued in this way."

"And this Hugo guy, were you pursuing him, willfully?"

"Yes, I think so. I knew I liked him the moment I met him. He just radiates kindness. You would really like him, I think. But he doesn't seem all that interested in dating. Or, in dating me, I guess. Even if there were no violinist guy, I would have a hard time dealing with that. I like him too much."

I sighed.

"Cameron, on the other hand, I never worried too much about him liking me or not. I actually feel like I'm my true self around him. It's really freeing. He has qualities that are quite beautiful, to me. But I feel like maybe I still don't know him much at all. I don't know how he fits into the larger picture of my life."

"It sounds like you're doing your thing again. Finding the irrevocable sliver of beauty in everyone you encounter."

I smiled. Theo had a poetic way of making my flaws sound like compliments.

"Well. Either way. I'm glad you're really connecting with people."

"Me too. Strange to think how much we've grown since high school."

......

My mom, on the other hand, had far less kind things to say. She asked me how living with Hubert was going; she was placated that I had stopped trying to move out to my own place. But what I told her about Cameron, in my halting Chinese, made her worry.

"So he's... unemployed?"

"Well, he's a part-time student for now. But he hasn't been gainfully employed for a long time."

"Meaning he's broke?"

"He's... making rent. It stresses him out a lot, though he says he enjoys performing."

"And he rides a motorcycle?"

"Yes."

"And he has a poor relationship with his mom, because of her divorces?"

"Right."

She gave a long sigh.

"These artist types – sometimes they have really difficult lives," she said. "I think it would just bring you a lot of pain. You're so sensitive to everything, so meek."

This actually wasn't too dramatic of an interrogation, coming from a very typically Chinese mom. I was 22; I wasn't looking for a life partner. I thought about her loveless marriage, all her mentions of seriously contemplating divorce in the days we had spent talking while I was home. It made me sneer at her remarks.

......

Cameron and I exchanged several emails during my time in LA, some outright farcical, some comically smutty. All of them very sincere. I liked his writing voice. It was clear, resonant, a bit poetic.

During these two weeks he was quite stressed and extremely irritable. The family reunion had felt tense to him. Afterwards, he hosted his brother, and they fought. There were medical insurance woes, worries about making rent that month, nights where he stayed later at work and came home from his long commute utterly exhausted. Our late nights the week prior didn't help and severely disrupted both our sleep schedules; I felt guilty, even though it was always him who insisted that I stay, to prolong our time together. I tried my best to console him. Over text and on the phone I struggled to find the words, but in my letters I found I had a lot more to say. I was finding my voice, shedding self-conscious timidity for a bravado that I didn't know I had in me. To me it felt like poetry. It felt like falling in love.

When he called, he was breathless, filled with yearning. He begged me to tell him dirty things over the phone, to touch myself. I balked; I flat out refused. Email was one thing. My reception at my parents' house was terrible. Even home alone, I couldn't stomach it. Inwardly it made me think too much of Hugo.

I told him I would be back soon, and that our reunion would more than make up for it.

Chapter 13

When I finally saw him again, seventeen days later, he pulled me firmly into his arms. I had missed his solid embrace, his sturdy limbs.

Nigel was home, with two large dogs in the apartment. He was helping out his girlfriend, who was dogsitting. The dogs came up to me and I said hello. They were restless, a bit nibbly.

Cameron was supposed to be playing a set that afternoon, but he canceled it, impatient to see me. This wasn't the first occurrence. I tried to tell him that my whole weekend was open and that there really was no rush, but he insisted. Self control, it seemed, wasn't really his strong suit, despite his claims about discipline and scrupulousness.

In his room, Cameron was visibly annoyed about the surprise guests.

"He should have asked me before bringing them over," he grumbled.

We fell into bed. It was familiar, and yet not. The apartment looked more shabby than I remembered. I had seen mouse traps in the corners of the kitchen, and squirmed. In the weeks I was gone I had let the romanticism of our past encounters build in my memory; in person, the mood was rendered so much more ordinary.

We stayed in bed after, talking. I was telling him about my trip, about my time with my parents. How being home again revealed so clearly to me the oppression of shame in our family. Some of it spoken, some of it not.

I talked about how different I felt when I thought about our conversations. His openness. That we discussed difficult topics but it was with candid honesty, not shame.

He listened attentively, with a knowing smile.

"While I was home I just had this realization, you know, about the contrast. It was depressing to be there. Whereas here, with you, I can just be myself. And I realized, that I'm so in love with you."

It came out in a jumbled rush, after the high of bewildering dopamine. It was something I had vaguely rehearsed in my head during our time apart; I waffled on whether or not I was going to say it, on the wording, on peppering in something to hedge it a little, to soften the intensity. Impulse won over. Cameron was my drug, a conduit to another version of myself.

"Wow," he said. "Wow. Okay. Here goes." He took a breath.

"I love you," he said.

I blinked, smiling awkwardly.

A long moment passed. He was waiting for me to say something.

"Uh, are you just going to leave me hanging? After I said 'I love you'?"

"Oh," I said, snapping out of it. From my perspective, I had already said my bit, with its far too subtle semantic difference. He had wanted the call and response. The moment suddenly felt forced, performative.

"I... love you too."

He sighed, visibly relieved. He kissed me.

"Does this make us boyfriend and girlfriend now?"

"Yeah, I suppose," I said. I didn't like casual dating anyway.

"There was something I've been meaning to ask."

"Yeah?"

"Do you think we could maybe stop using condoms? There are some alternative options – "

"I don't think – "

"We'd get tested, of course – "

"Testing, sure," I said. "But not using condoms, that's not something I'm comfortable with."

"Ever?" he asked, dismayed.

I thought about the four unwanted pregnancies my mom's had in her life, mine being one of them. It certainly wasn't something I wanted to experience for myself. I was on the pill because of a PCOS diagnosis, but I didn't have a spotless track record of remembering, and I didn't trust it.

"Look, I really don't want to talk about this right now. Can we just drop it, please?"

......

I barely slept, ruminating over the conversation. I felt off, somehow. Repeatedly I tried to put off thinking about it, but always the anxiety came back.

Midmorning, we woke again, and still he was voracious, insatiable. I could hardly keep up. At some point, it became very painful for me, and I told him to stop. Disappointed, he asked if I could help him finish one last time, on my chest.

The idea was unappealing, but I hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings. Naked, I laid down on the carpet beside the bed, and he hovered above me, eyes closed in deep concentration. Vaguely I wondered how much longer this was going to go on for.

Outside, Nigel banged some pots and pans; the dogs started barking and made a commotion.

In an instant, Cameron lowered his body and slammed a fist down into the ground, hard.

"Could you fucking keep it down!" he shouted at the door. "FUCK!"

I froze.

His fist had landed an inch from my face. His head hovered above mine, face contorted in agony, veins bulging at his temples. He was shaking, his breathing shallow and unsteady.

I didn't dare say anything.

I didn't dare breathe.

Slowly, his breathing came back to normal. He got up.

"Are you..."

He swatted me away and couldn't look me in the eyes.

We got dressed, in silence. Absently he rearranged some things on his desk.

"I should head out," I finally said. "It's getting late."

He gave me a long look, all the energy drained out of him.

"Sure, I'll walk you back."

Outside the sun was still out. I realized we had been cooped up in his room for almost 24 hours. I was starving; we hadn't eaten much of anything.

A young man walking in the opposite direction passed us – I looked up. It was Juan, on his way home, which was exactly halfway between mine and Cameron's. Our eyes met. I looked away, embarrassed. It had been two months since our coffee. Cameron and I were holding hands.

We approached my apartment. I tried to get out what had been weighing on my mind.

"Cameron," I began tentatively.

"Yes?"

"I think, maybe, that we should, you know. Talk about what happened. Back there in your room."

He said nothing.

"You know, when you got angry – "

"What are you talking about? I wasn't angry."

I stopped.

"The yelling and the punching the floor next to my face? You weren't angry?"

"I was annoyed at the distraction. It happens sometimes. You're overthinking it, you know."

I stared at him in disbelief. A slow nausea rose in my throat. All my talk last night of openness and communication seemed to fly right out the window.

"I'm fine, really," he said with a reassuring smile.

Chapter 14

The outburst and his denial of it weighed on me for several days. I wracked my brain on how to approach the topic again, but it never felt like there was a good time. We biked down the Emeryville marina and caught the sunset, holding hands as he gazed at all the boats in awe. The mood was serene; I didn't want to ruin it.

I got lunch with my high school friend Eileen, who had recently found a job in SF. She was my confidante, and I told her about the sordid event.

"Dude. That's just fucked up."

"I know. It's just ruined for me all the good feelings we've shared. He spent so much time making it seem like his problems were all in the past, you know? I'm struggling to figure out a way to talk about it with him."

"Talk about it? Are you sure he'd even be receptive to that? What are you going to do, wait until he actually punches you next time?"

Her bluntness woke me up. I felt chastened, that I had been blindsided.

That day, Cameron made a joke again about having kids, something dismissive and snide. I went home pensive, seeing that perhaps my carefree summer was being poorly spent – that I could neither handle Hugo's casualness nor Cameron's intensity, the brazen way he spoke about his future, one that I surely did not belong in. I noted in my journal that it may indeed be better to part, uncomfortable as it may be to do so.

The next day I turned up at Jack's Thursday happy hour again, this time to celebrate the 24th birthday of his coworker who was also an acquaintance of mine. Andrew, who was my subletter in college, had invited both me and Elena. I congratulated him, tentatively taking bites of food and sipping my cocktail, and more or less blending into the background.

When we left the office building to head to a nearby piano bar, Martuni's, Hugo also joined the group.

The bar was noisy and crowded, and could barely fit all of us. People tried to flag down staff to get in some orders. I stood off to the side, out of my element, and didn't order anything.

Hugo, who had been sitting on a stool, turned to me.

"Hey, how have you been? You kind of disappeared on me." He grinned, as if very happy to see me. It had been six weeks since I last saw him, the night I spent at his place.

"Oh, you know, just busy."

"I've been noodling on some creative writing, by the way. You've inspired me."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise, a little flustered.

"It's nothing like what you read about in your books. But, you know, if you're ever interested in reading it, I'd love to get your thoughts on it."

A crowd of people pushed past behind me; I had been standing in the walkway. Hugo steered me away from the traffic, toward him, resting his hand on my waist. My blouse, which came to my hip and was left untucked, rode up slightly. His hand was on my bare skin. After having shifted me away from the crowd, he let it linger there. I stood mere inches from where he was sitting. We were almost at eye level.

Our conversation continued with the noise droning on around us. He made no mention of what I told him the last time we spoke, about me seeing someone. I couldn't focus; there was his hand. It didn't need to be there, and yet I didn't mind it, either. No one paid us any mind.

Eventually it was decided that the bar was way too crowded and we all relocated to a famous gay nightclub, The Café. The spell was broken; for the rest of the evening I hung around Elena and Jack. The next destination was even noisier, with deafening music piped in through the speakers. Andrew took plenty of shots, as did many of the others. There was cheering and buffoonery, wild dancing. I looked on with mild interest, anxiously checking my phone for the last train home.

I tapped Elena on the shoulder to remind her of the time, and we began to gather our things and head out. Hugo, too, tagged along.

Luckily, we caught the very last train back to east bay. In the glare of the yellow fluorescents on the train, I could see that Hugo's eyes were quite red. Elena had a bit to drink as well. At 19th, she ran for the timed northbound transfer to the Berkeley station. Hugo left with her, and I waved goodbye.

Moments later, before the doors closed, he was back on my train.

"Wrong transfer station," he said, embarrassed.

"Oh," I said. "Right. You needed southbound."

We arrived at MacArthur, my station. I got off the train and Hugo followed. On the other side of the platform, the last southbound had already left.

"Ah, I'm so sorry. Bad timing."

"It's alright. Can I walk you home, since I'm here anyway?"

We walked side by side in the still evening. I thought back to the last time we had taken a far longer walk back to my apartment, after dinner on our first date. I was glad for the company; muggings and even homicides were not unheard of at night at this station.

As if there hadn't been a three hour interlude, we picked up where we left off our conversation at the first bar.

"I really missed you, you know." He glanced at me with a wistful smile. "I thought to myself, you looked so good, back there in the bar."

My heart skipped a beat. We were walking on West, right past Cameron's garage. I couldn't speak. All I could muster was a sad nod.

"Look, I need to be honest with you. The guy I'm seeing, he and I are dating exclusively. It's... a bit complicated. As in, my feelings have been complicated by recent events. I think he's not who I thought he was."

Hugo looked at me, concerned.

When we got to my driveway, the mood had turned somber.

"I would invite you up, but..."

He nodded in understanding.

"Was it something I said, or did, that time you came over?"

"No," I said. "It's just, I wasn't honest with you. About the 'casual' part, that it was the last thing I wanted."

"It was anything but casual! You stayed over, we watched two movies, we had breakfast..." His voice turned pleading. I couldn't meet his eyes.

"I know. I realize that now. I just... I wasn't feeling very confident about myself, about the possibility that you could actually want anything to do me."

"You were so beautiful, so smart. I felt intimidated by you."

I couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. It all felt surreal.

"I really appreciate us getting to talk about this. But I need to... sort things out on my end. Cancel my weekend plans, think it over."

He nodded. He looked like he didn't want to go.

We hugged goodbye. He held me close for a moment. I felt all the air go out of my body. Very slowly, he touched his lips to the top of my shoulder, at the cut of my blouse. And then again closer to the base of my neck.

I let out a mournful sob. I tore myself away, full of remorse. In that moment I knew. The embrace was tainted, my confusion no longer simply in my own head.

We said goodbye. I headed up the stairs, and he called for his ride. We kept texting, after he had left. When he got home he called me.

"I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about you. About us."

"Me too," I whispered.

Without him by my side, the anxiety about Cameron came creeping back. I laid in my dark room, dreading the next day.

"Tell me, do you miss me?"

"Yes," I said. "But I feel guilty for it."

Chapter 15

Dear Hugo,

Let me begin with two things: First, please don’t call me as soon as you’ve read this. Please just read it like a story, a simple message, give it as much time and thought as I dared to put in it. If for some reason you do call, I won’t appreciate it, and I’ll probably pick up and tell you that I’m not available, not emotionally available to have a conversation with you at this moment. Please understand this. Second, please know that I wrote this longhand (replete with mistakes and cross outs and self-doubt) in my notebook, that even just the experience of it sits very close to my heart, that I dared not release it to you before I could ascertain each and every word. Lately I've been feeling like I can say what I feel, but on reflection, I no longer feel what I have just said. I am slowly beginning to learn that I can use words to induce myself to magnify a certain feeling, to distort, and it frightens me. I want to be able to back up my words, to use them responsibly.

You are a dear friend to me, first and foremost. I know you require nothing of me, that you have only benevolence to offer. I ask you, then, to judge me as a friend. After that, I ask you to determine if what you say you desire of me and about me, if that image can be true to what I tell you here. Today (today being Friday) I have come back from “canceling my weekend plans”. I am all cried out, had come home shaking with fear, with grief. I am running on just bare fumes, had hardly been able to sleep last night, but I knew I had to do this. Knew it from the moment we embraced on my driveway, and it tore me neatly in two. The one side, admission to myself that I could no longer deny my feelings for you. The other side, utter devastation at how I have come to hurt this other person.

One week ago, I had said to him the words, “I’m so in love with you.” I had said it at the end of a long explanation about how I came to perceive my parents after my trip and the way they treated me and how in our household, the only feeling I was truly taught was shame. I had said it in tandem with gratitude for the way he had taught me to feel everything besides shame. I had said it knowing full well that it would be taken seriously. I had meant it, I had felt a rush of emotion – for the full six weeks that I had known this guy I had been swooning in anticipation of the clichéd, 'romantic' motorcycle and symphony dates, his candidness about his appreciation of me, his raw strength and display of power which drew me in with an almost animal magnetism, but most of all the intoxicating sensation of giving. It was give and take, tit for tat. For him it was always sex that was the urgent thing, the thing that had to come first, the thing that superseded all others. I could hardly keep up, but it was so important for me to do so, to play my part. For a brief time it had felt like a conditioned, chemical kind of love that utterly overwhelmed me.

He was a rebound. After you, Hugo. He was security on a silver platter, he could make me feel constantly desired. I know he was a rebound because over the phone, I would always be startled by the strangeness of his voice and have to shake away the memory of yours. Because when slowly I began to notice the unmistakeable flashes of anger – the scowls, the cursing, the livid eyes and even fists slammed hard into the ground, right next to my face, no apology no acknowledgement no nothing – bringing it up to him only resulted in his denial of his anger, and so I carried home these worries and fears to deposit in my notebook, in hopes of forgetting them and rationalizing them away. He was angry today, my pitiful explanations of how I felt about you and the circumstances surrounding you bringing about progressive stages of denial of the fact that I had really gone over to say goodbye. By the end, it had boiled down to pacing, clenched, slammed fists, raised voice.

I fully understood the reason for his anger, but I could not empathize with it. If there’s anything the cat has taught me, it is my profound fear for the bestial nature of violence, how innate and impossible to ignore. I was too afraid to explain this fear in detail. I explained that you had voiced a desire to spend more time with me, that you had put your hand on my waist and that I hadn’t told you to stop. But I left out how your hand had incidentally slipped up my loose shirt, how it electrified my bare skin. That I had let you walk me home, that I had opened up about my confusion, that we had held each other, that you had kissed me on my shoulder, the back of my neck, ever so sweetly and with such tenderness. He begged me to stay, to allow him just a hug but I feared him with all my heart. When I had finally stepped out of that dark apartment and into the chill air, I was so grateful for the sight of open sky, peaceful clouds. The whole way home I said to myself, over and over, “What have I done. What have I done."

I admit that I write to distance you from myself, to offer you the gruesome facts which Thursday night’s incidents have subsequently involved you in. Take me for a fool, a wretch, take me at face value for the mess I’ve made in such a brief span of time. Tell me how it would feel to be in his shoes, to be on the receiving end of my stupidity, my lack of discernment. To be in your shoes, remorse and pity and disdain all rolled into one. I’ve hurt you. My heart is black with this uneraseable shame. I am not wholesome, I am not pure. I have only my courage to write, and my shame. Most of all, I do not yet truly have faith in myself. That, I must wait and hope for.

Hugo, what I perhaps admire most about you is your ability to take others seriously, and yet to not take yourself seriously. To me, that is the magic behind your comedy and storytelling. It makes you something of a marvelous and captivating narrator. But today, I ask you to take yourself seriously, for my sake. I ask you to look beyond what you can offer up to make someone else happy and to assess if anything remotely good or worthwhile can come out of what has transpired. I write this with courage, knowing that I dare to lay that seedy, selfish, naked and despicable side of me cut open for you to examine. But I also write this with shame, knowing that it hurts you to read all this, that it ultimately taints whatever feelings you may have regarding me. I write with shame for my wretchedness, which I have arrived at via an array of accumulated choices that I alone can take responsibility for. I write with shame for my weakness, for wanting something that frightened me. I confess, but I do not absolve myself, because I know that I have also torn you neatly in two. Back at the end of June, the day before I went over to your place, I wrote an email that I didn’t dare send to you, because it revealed to me just how much you were a rebound – a rebound from the mere sight of those two people I live with which mocked and cheapened my still-fresh wounds. A rebound, because despite the realization that I would rather you were a friend than a fling, I so badly needed to prove that I could still be wanted by someone who I wanted in turn, as if to say, “Look at me – I’ve moved on. I’m ready to open up myself to someone again, I’m back to who I was before this bitterness and anguish had made a monster out of me.”

All this is a long-winded apology, as I hope you have realized. I am sorry that you have to witness me in this sorry state, that this letter is an unhappy one, that you had on be on the receiving end of my thoughts in order that I may feel I had at least done something to repent, to make sense of my mess.

Today (today being Saturday) I jumped in the pool and swam like a fish. For once, I wasn’t racing against the clock, but searching for that bright and daring side of myself who doesn’t tire easily, who dares to hope. I found her, and matched her stroke for stroke. It felt amazing to be back in my happy place, that big blue thing of beauty. It’s the purest sense of meditation and contemplation that I know.

One of my favorite passages from Merton is about the illusion that we live our lives having to make “momentous decisions” which define us. I urge you, dear friend, to listen to him.

Soleliu

Chapter 16

The morning after the breakup, I found a small cardboard box of some knick-knacks – little notes I wrote, a sailboat I had carved out of soap, a bottle of massage oil that he had asked me to buy. Attached was a post-it from Cameron that read, "Can't keep these; can't throw them away either."

I shuddered to think that he had been at my doorstep. Any shred of positive regard for him had simply evaporated. I tossed the items in the trash.

The following morning, however, I received one final email from Cameron.

It gave an explanation about his sailing dreams and expounded on his views on having children, topics I had naively mentioned when I broke up with him. These had been my pitiful excuses I told him for why I thought we wouldn't work.

In the email he berated me for cheating.

I hadn't cheated; I had done something far worse. I had conducted a relationship with the idea of a person, blinding myself to the parts of him that I couldn't accept. In the ashes of heartbreak, I rode the fumes of a largely illusory past feeling for someone else, to keep alive the notion that I was worthy of love.

I had obscured my true feelings out of shameful politeness, hastily encouraged affection from Cameron when I had felt unsure about him, out of the simple pleasure of being liked. I had foolishly employed the word 'love' for my own selfish literary impulses. I admit to a painful breakup that came as a horrific, screeching halt. To him it had been an utterly unkind act of giving up, without warning and with very little discussion. I had let my cowardice stop me from clearly communicating that I felt unsafe around him when the first red flags appeared.

I admit to speaking frankly with Hugo, on the night in question, about my feelings for him. I had made up my mind that things with Cameron were untenable; I had spoken in a way that would have caused offense to Cameron, who on that night was still my boyfriend.

But I also took great, laborious, painfully tedious care to put my emotions on hold, to promptly extract myself from physical entanglements, and to sort out my own relationship muddle before even daring to think that something might happen between me and Hugo.

Cameron had signed off with, "P.S. You don't deserve to respond. I will delete anything you send me without reading it. We are strangers."

I didn't dare reply to his email. I was done composing emails. I closed my eyes and tried to think of what Merton would counsel.

His email, despite the angry tone and serious accusation, was somewhat reserved in wording. He refrained from curse words, from directly calling me names. He wrote of his disgust of me and that cheaters don't deserve second chances, then ended with some vulnerability and an assertion of his own dignity. I thought about the times I had witnessed him rashly cuss out various people – his sister, his brother, his roommate, even a poor doctor's office receptionist – and how this delayed composition that I had received was much more respectfully distanced in comparison. In writing, he was a thinking being.

In his anger, I saw hurt. The trauma of his mother's serial adulteries and divorces. The past romantic partners who rejected his sexual advances. The breakups that still haunted him. It was far easier for him to write off our story as cheating, it was easier to hate me this way.

I felt deep remorse for having hurt him, for my about face which came so suddenly and without tact, thinly veiled by excuses. I had felt too much fear to voice clearly what I rejected in him. His animal violence. His instinct to inflict pain. His sexual obsessiveness which bordered on entitlement. His sordid life situation hinting at physical dereliction and squalor which ultimately depressed me.

Three days later, I walked out of my naturalization biometrics appointment at the Coliseum USCIS field office. It was a sterile, uninviting place, but the process was a lot shorter than I had expected, and I was glad to have the rest of the day to myself. I went to where I had parked my bike, and pulled out my phone.

As if the insults in his email had not been enough, not petty enough, as if he had thought of one last clever thing to lob at me and just couldn't resist, I received a text message from Cameron, the final and most potent installment of his spiteful drip campaign:

"Fooled by a guy who didn’t want to date you until he realized he couldn’t fuck you again until he said he did… you poor naive girl."

I admit, this one hit hard, like a resounding slap in the face. It came out of the blue and caught me completely off guard, in a place of protocol and propriety.

I thought about the story he once told me, how he sent a bitter message to his high school ex girlfriend several years after they had parted ways. It made me scared to check my phone, of further messages and continued torment.

Slowly I put on my helmet, collected my things and biked the long way home, mired in my thoughts. At least, I consoled myself, the attack was directed at me, not Hugo. For once, in the face of this man's pettiness, I felt a shred of dignity, a brave willingness to defend the nobler one, the one I had truly dared to love.

Chapter 17

I held onto the hope that even if Hugo and I never went on a date again, that at least we might meet in person to talk about what had happened, as friends. About my emotional train wreck, self-flagellating, ostentatious, overwrought confession of a letter. I had, as usual, over-complicated things with my words. I had foolishly written about love.

Sending off the letter to him gave me no solace. Afterwards, I hated what I wrote, the framing, the description, the pleading. Anyone in their right mind would want nothing to do with me, after reading a thing like that.

I had been trying to write like Merton leaving the world behind for the monastery, like Kafka in his letters to his fiancés, breaking off his many engagements so that he may be left alone with his one true love, his writing.

Worried that he might not have received it, I called the day after I sent it. Hugo sounded numb, reticent, though he made an attempt to appear friendly. He promised me we'd talk about it.

The days passed. We talked on the phone about frivolous things instead – a presentation he had to do for work, books I was reading. I wondered if he even remembered what we had discussed that fateful night. Cameron's words lingered in my head.

Three weeks later, I asked Jack to hang out in the city with me on my birthday, and invited Hugo along. It was just supposed to be a casual thing in the Mission, ice cream and then lounging at Dolores. I hadn't planned anything, at all. Birthdays were hard for me; for various reasons I usually spent them crying.

Jack had thoughtfully picked up a present for me on the way over: a delightful flowering plant, with deep red waxy petals and a tall stem.

Jack and I stood licking our ice cream cones outside Bi-Rite; Hugo was arriving later. For some reason I imagined he might bring with him my Merton, to return. To bring an end to our dealings.

A street photographer stopped to ask to take my photo for a local fashion blog. I was severely embarrassed, in my little red floral dress and ankle boots.

Hugo met us on the grassy hill at Dolores. He had missed out on the ice cream, and went to go grab snacks from Bi-Rite nearby. Mortified at my lack of planning, I protested. It was by far the most egregious grocery store, price-wise. Hugo told me I was being silly, that it was my birthday after all.

We lounged in the sun, nibbling on cookies and strawberries. Jack's old college roommate was at the park too, and chatted with us briefly. We people-watched, remarked on all the hot guys sunning nearby.

I whipped out my blue notebook, the one that went with me everywhere, and drew the two of them napping. Hugo and Jack took my pen and wrote kind birthday messages in there, with little doodles. Afterward, Hugo held onto the notebook, paging through it intently. It was packed with exam study notes, quotations from coworkers and friends and books, and mentions of him. I blushed, hoping that it was too chaotic for him to pick out the pieces where I noted down the details of our dates, and instances of our phone calls, or the page where I had sketched his soulful eyes from a photograph.

The sun was beginning to set. We had finished all the snacks, and got up to go.

"So, where to next?" Jack said.

I didn't know what to say; I had just expected them to go home after the park.

"Come on, let's get some food," Hugo offered.

I felt bad about the utter lack of planning, but they insisted. Jack picked out a Spanish restaurant he liked called Picaro. We had fantastic paella, and oysters. They enjoyed some Sangria that I couldn't stomach. There was live music. I felt merry, overjoyed at our little ensemble. They were endlessly kind, insisted on paying against my protests, and didn't pity me for not having other friends to spend a birthday with.

Jack decided to walk home afterwards, and we said our goodbyes. I was about to take the BART home, but Hugo suggested we share a Lyft back to Oakland.

Back then there was no way to input multiple destinations into the app; I didn't comment on the itinerary and figured we'd work out the details later.

We sat mostly in silence in the back seat. Traffic was light. The driver picked up on our pensive mood and didn't try to talk to us.

In the dark, Hugo's hand found mine. I turned to catch his eye – the lights of the Bay Bridge glowed, reflected in his glasses. I couldn't read his face. My mouth was dry, my heart pounding.

The driver dropped us off outside Hugo's house. There had been no mention of a second destination. Hugo got out, without a word, and I followed.

"Should I..." I gestured uncertainly at the disappearing car. "I thought..."

"Do you want me to call a ride for you?"

"I feel bad about... you don't have to if – "

He was standing at the top of his stairs, about to open the door.

"Do you want to come in?"

"Sure... That is, if you want me to come in?"

I felt like I was intruding, that I had blundered somehow. I wondered if he remembered that I couldn't call for rideshare from my phone, or if he thought I was rudely lingering around. The nearest BART station was about a 20-minute walk, and it was dark out.

He sighed.

"Come in, come in."

Awkwardly I carried with me my little plant pot, feeling like Mathilda from Léon: The Professional.

His other roommates were home. We went in his room, and sat down next to each other on the bed.

There was very little that needed to be said.

I kissed him as if I knew it was for the very last time.

We made love tenderly, in near silence. His kindness was cathartic. I apologized for being morose and tearing up; he gently laughed it off.

When we had finished, he held me, and we fell asleep like that. This time, I slept soundly, cradled in his arms like a child.

Epilogue

Hugo and I spoke to each other one last time, at their extravagant company holiday party in December. It had been over three months since we last saw each other on my birthday.

Politely, we said hello. I had gone as Jack's 'date'. Hugo briefly introduced us to the girl on his arm.

Jack and I spent the evening mingling with his other friends, dancing, posing for photos.

I didn't have the courage to ask for my Merton back. Sheepishly I asked Jack, instead. For whatever reason, Hugo kept forgetting, or something would come up.

Eventually, Jack managed to reunite me with my worn copy. I flipped through it, thinking of all that happened in the months since I had last laid eyes on it.

Years later, in a great purge of my physical library when I moved out of the bay area, the Merton was one of three volumes to go with me.

It sits on my husband's desk these days. He likes to page through it at work sometimes. It makes me smile to think that it brings him a bit of solace, the way it used to for me.

I went back to reread the passage on momentous decisions.

Merton writes about the myth of the momentous decision which "cloaks our pitiable lack of identity and of autonomy" that results from submission to a weaker, erratic, resentful and subhuman kind of desire.

In order to end the vicious circle, he suggests "learning to admit values which we fear, from which we are trying to escape. Values like solitude, inner silence, reflective communion with natural realities, simple and genuine affection for other people, admission of our need for these things, admission of our need for contemplation."

I wonder what I understood of it when I read this ten years ago.

I wonder what I had understood of Love, without the inner silence, the reflective communion with natural realities, the admission of the simple and genuine affection for other people. My past life, it's like it was this whole other person.

How simple indeed, that the thing I was wholeheartedly, laboriously searching for had been there in front of me, all along.