First Love and His Wife
Seven Yrs Later are stories on change, in dialogue with Seven Yrs Ago.
I thought Jason was so fucking weird when I met him. The words ran like ticker tape as I shook hands with him and thirty fellow freshmen. There was no disfigurement or bad joke, just something unfamiliar, uneasy. I left thinking I’ll never talk to that guy again, but I was going to run into the same 120 people for the next five years.
One rough day, one of many in architecture school, a friend coaxed me into a break at the bookstore where I trailed like a red-eyed pup. We bumped into Jason, made the necessary small talk before parting, when Jason looked at me and asked if I wanted a hug. I declined, as I do, and went home to hide/design. When I came back to studio, the architecture student’s second home, there was a trace paper flower on my desk that was hoping that my day got better. It did. One year later, I was splitting spaghetti with Jason in my living room and a few months later—same room, different place, no spaghetti, lights off, my roommate, elsewhere, door shut.
That’s how we were mainly, inside and in the dark. Architecture school was a tiny town and we didn’t want people to know if it didn’t work out; there were four years to go. He brought me to meet his high school buds, his family briefly, even to Disneyland for free. I told two people total as we were a secret, and I was very good at keeping those. For Christmas, Jason built me light-up earrings and I mailed him chocolate mint cookies and shoelaces. Galvanized by our making and giving, I made presents for all my friends that year, prepping them in a notebook, the first of 140. When I returned to California, the attachment was palpable, crystallizing closer until my birthday. I chose to work rather than celebrate, as I do, and in our public home of studio that day, we didn’t know how to recognize each other. Everyone thought of us as just friends and we didn’t correct them. There’s a cap to how much playacting two people can take, so we broke up at Chano’s, like a classic. He started it, but I ended it. There was a last kiss, then skipping and rolling home. We would obviously stay best friends since this felt right. I wore lipstick for myself that week.
Two and a half months dating was nothing, so nothing to mourn since he was still in my life. We were in a parking garage the night I said that with the next girl he meets, he should hold onto her like he didn’t with me. You know, like a friend says. Lunches went on, even a concert and a dance, but I was so busy with studio work, I couldn’t always go or stay long. When summer came, I moved in with my soon-to-be best friend, and we bond-bitched over boys, the ones who liked us when no one was watching. Weeks later, Jason changed his profile pic to him on a roller coaster, strapped next to a girl beaming at him.
Who. Was. That. That turned out to be Michelle, and I would see her, again, and again.
I was completely over it, but that didn’t mean trees didn’t need to be swatted, signs didn’t need to be smacked. Third year started and the dread from last semester seeped in, the drain of all-nighters for imaginary plans. I had to talk to Jason though, so we met up in the daylight in his new car. He quoted what I said in the garage back to me, then he said that he was thinking of marrying Michelle someday. In the same amount of time it took for Jason to doubt us, he now believed he would marry someone else. I got out of the car and made other plans.
I had to admit to myself that I kinda still liked him a little, but I was determined to not get in between them—my feelings were irrelevant. So irrelevant, that I should be friends with both of them already, for that would mean I was happy that they were happy. The daily reminders were on my feed: Jason and Michelle in a garden, Jason and Michelle at the dock, always euphoric and everyone could see. A twang began to strum in my chest. Michelle was one of those pretty people who had the gall to make themselves prettier; her selfies were proof that her life was satisfactory. Mine was not. I commiserated with my classmates over the same work, but I was getting buried by the knowledge that I had zero interest in becoming an architect, that this enveloping pain was a waste of my time. It didn’t help that Michelle would visit Jason in studio, their laughter bouncing off the concrete, while I double-downed to finish work that I scorned.
The most I tried to be their friend was at a party where I chatted with her and ignored him. We were going to be girlfriends regardless of why; he, I would deal with later. But after the mid-college crisis in which I left architecture and the diagnosis that I’d been depressed for seven years, it dawned on me that I was still in love with Jason. I was stunned. I didn’t know I was in love to begin with.
Love, seemed, so stupid and so small. Movies were idiotic—crushes, pathetic. Every dude I dated in high school was not something to talk about, so my friends and I gossiped about homework and mixtapes. My dad was grieving the divorce half a decade later, and my mom was dating her sweetheart from 20 years prior. Feelings needed to be finalized for the sake of everyone else, but I hadn’t considered that keeping quiet was a form of keeping them. Then twang.
Jason talked about his feelings, the wide range he had for people he held dear. He’d tell me and tell them, embracing his non-blood brothers and commending our classmates. He was always challenging himself to be better, which was bewildering because he was great already. His designs were phenomenal yet effortless; he had time for personal stuff, people, and sleep. At 19, he had a sense of the kind of family and career he wanted, and I’d listen to that perfect dream, though I wasn’t sure if I’d fit in. I had no vision for my life—probably a job, but I had to get through tomorrow. Now that I didn’t want to be an architect, the future seemed so blank. I signed up for screenwriting instead of studio. Jason and Michelle had their version of love, and I wanted my own.
* * * * *
A year and a half elapsed and it was suddenly graduation, and I was dating my actual best friend, someone I liked before Jason. We hung out daily, shared the L-word, and meant it. Nonetheless, Jason and Michelle kept a corner of my mind as I felt I had misled them, then ghosted after realizing it. I met up with Jason for the first time in a year, and surprisingly don’t remember much, other than that we were happy—he was still over the moon with Michelle and I was on cloud nine with someone else, so this was it. This was closure. It felt, in part, like breaking up again, this closeness to someone I said no to, because something else was right. At our school’s annual dance, Michelle jubilantly hugged me as if we had always done that, and Jason and my boyfriend chatted; it was us three who went to Disneyland before. Buzzed, we vowed that we’d all hang out, which never happened, of course.
Michelle and I lingered in each other’s orbits though. Lots of friend requests and follows, and I always followed back for there was no reason to not stay acquaintances. Her and Jason’s adventures progressed in my feed and it was clear they remained smitten. I’d put out bits of my boyfriend and I, from Pico-Robertson to Tokyo, and we’d occasionally comment through our two-way mirror. It was odd though seeing their engagement, then their wedding online. The photos resonated warmth, dulcet auburns and dusted pinks. They looked content, having reached what they wanted from the beginning. I felt the twang, for I didn’t know what that was like. Many months later, my partner and I would split after three years of living together, four years of loving. Another saga.
Around the fifth anniversary of the relationship I no longer had, I hypothesized that new relationships scared me as I had lost contact with everyone significant I dated. As usual, the solution was to restart being friends, so I reached out to Jason and my last partner. I replied to Jason’s story, he responded back, and we cobbled up a plan to hang with Michelle plus my forever friend from architecture. It was the holidays in a bar and Jason was as affable as ever; Michelle couldn’t make it that night. It was brief, nothing deep, but simply meeting was meaningful, especially when my second love didn’t come visit.
In the new year, I greeted the same friend at The Fonda when he asked if Jason was there, having spotted a head. Bemused that out of anyone, Jason would like the same electro-elf goddess that my other ex and I liked, I messaged him and Michelle and it was ridiculous: they were there. We shimmied over and hugged, and tried to talk despite the noise. Turns out Michelle was the original fan and Jason bought the tickets for her. The lights went down.
In front, Michelle and Jason kept turning around, asking if Jason’s mane was in the way and I reassured them it wasn’t. In the periphery of the stage, I saw them jiving, bopping together. Not a photo, the people, the couple who hit the first twang. It struck again, though I didn’t want him or really know him anymore. I just knew they were two people who claimed each other because they felt they were meant to be, and so they are. I wondered if I would have that again, my person to claim; after the multiple fractures I made, I wasn’t so sure. But love was around. I had seen it for years, and there it was in front of me, checking if I could see ahead. I can.
* * * * *
It’s strange to interrogate a myth, a magnified answer for all of history. I never tell myself I should’ve done things differently; I believe now I’ve always done the best I could. But sifting through the unfamiliar, uneasy, I look for specks of malice and influence, when constellations don’t care. Stars never stop moving and they rarely collide, but they can circle each other and come close. We thrived, them and I separately, and that might mean nothing, but I’m picking up momentum again just thinking about us. I don’t know where I’ll go, but the last seven years have been grand. We can wonder if I would’ve found this path without them, this line of folks who squish and smooth my impression of love. Anyone else could’ve jump started it.
Whatever. I met them.
When my dad passed away, I was surprised by the people who reached out, Jason and Michelle included. Separate threads, days apart, they both said that they’re there for whatever I need. They didn’t coordinate to care because they have enough love to pass around. I don’t need more than what they’ve already given. I want them to receive whatever they need for their universe. While no relationship is flawless, I hope they continue to celebrate because you don’t know what that can mean to people. I do.