* * *
We sat at a shellacked block of wood beneath a canopy of Christmas lights that never got taken down. New York was perpetually waiting for the cold, steeling itself for gray skies and sleet. I pawed for hooks beneath the bar and put my foot onto Amos’s stool so that my leg hovered between his. We clinked glasses. Then he asked me why I wasn’t in love with Boots.
“Good morning,” I said, swallowing beer foam. “You never did like to preheat the oven.”
“Neither did you. Answer the question.”
“I do love him,” I stressed.
Amos winced. That “do” was pretty damning. But all I wanted was to feel the brush of Amos’s fingertips on my kneecap, to rent some of our old electricity. Of course I loved Boots. We’d been together for two years—over two, by his count. But admitting I was not being held captive in a loveless cage was a buzz kill.
“Were you ever in love with him?” Amos asked.
“Define love,” I said, tossing chum in the water, “define ever.”
Amos rolled his eyes.
“You’re asking if I’ve ever had a six-hour phone call with him? Or driven upstate in the middle of the night to tell him I’m sorry only to get into a second fight and lock him out on the porch with the raccoons? No, I have not.”
“Glad it’s just me.”
“I never said it was just you.”
“Clever girl,” Amos said, taking a sip of his drink.
“That’s what they call the dinosaurs in the movies right before they shoot them.”
“You’re still quick.”
“Fuck you. We’re the same age. Don’t talk to me like I have dementia.”
Amos sighed into his lap, exposing the flesh beneath his collar. I played out a reality in which we had never broken up, in which he had only ever wanted to see me, only wanted to put his penis inside me. Would he kiss me right now or would we be annoyed at the sight of each other? Just because something ends prematurely doesn’t mean it won’t end eventually. Usually that’s exactly what it means.
A wiry gentleman in a short-sleeved button-down emerged from the bathroom, removed a book from his backpack, and began reading and drinking Fernet. He looked like a grad student. Amos and I watched him do these things, taken by the mutual distraction. He wanted to know what the man was reading. I wanted to know why some grown men wear back packs. At their best, they suggest an insolent outdoorsiness; at their worst, a lifetime of student loans.
“I know what you think of me,” Amos said, twisting back around.
“This should be good.”
“But we wanted the same things, Lola. I wanted a real relationship with both of us sitting in the same room, eating takeout, not fucking.”
“You wanted to sleep with half of North America.”
I knocked the outside of my knee against the inside of his.
“Yeah, but that wasn’t the only reason we broke up.”
“Amos. I’m not sure ‘extra reasons’ is kind at this juncture.”
“I’m of the belief that our kind of love, the six-hour-phone-call kind, melds into the other kind of love. And the second kind is more important. Agreed. But for whatever reason, we only had the intense kind. I couldn’t reach the second kind on your timeline.”
“We dated for years. Literally. Years.”
“It’s no one’s fault.”
“Is it not mostly your fault, though?”
The man at the end of the bar read with his elbows spread out in front of him, as if we were in a library with a liquor license. Perhaps my generation made not enough of selecting jewelry but too much of selecting a partner. Perhaps the internet had spoiled us more than we suspected and we already suspected quite a bit. Why couldn’t I just mate with this guy at the end of the bar? Why couldn’t we be happy? What difference would it make?
“I’m saying every relationship needs both kinds of love to go the distance,” Amos said, trying to catch my eye. “A galvanizing agent.”
“Like acid to the face.”
“What will you remember when you and this dude are seventy?”
“And by ‘this dude,’ you mean my fiancé?”
“You have to remember the passion. You’ll have decades to go back and forth and swim all the laps you want, but everyone needs to start by pushing off the side of the pool. Really shoving off.”
I slugged the rest of my beer.
“Love is not a race, Amos. Or a competition. This is your problem. It’s why you refuse to ‘swim laps’ with one woman.”