If you thought I was ruthless then—

With kindness I could say you didn’t know what you were doing. Not with me, at least.

And maybe you didn’t know what you were doing with Jenny, with Eloise, with Rebecca. With your Natashas and your Sashas. Maybe not even with your wife.

You knew how to be a writer and a husband, but not both. You were careful to never to mention your wife’s name and for a long time I was careful, too.

You knew the way you held my hand in the Novotel, its air conditioning a welcome reprieve from Baltic humidity. Maybe you told yourself it was because of the drugs we both knew you were on, even though you wouldn’t admit it. The drugs would keep you up all night while I was high on nothing more than possibility. I was worried your love for me would fade with the drugs or morning light but, instead, you doubled down.

By noon you’d already emailed me: a song and a suggestion we meet for lunch.

We laughed at my almost good jokes in the aisles of a Lithuanian grocery store when one of us needed shampoo. Surrounded by bad lighting and pastel containers in the toiletry aisle we could still pretend to be less than intimate. I confused paraben with paraffin and you wouldn’t let it go. Then, over a pepperoni pizza, you told me you were vegan. It was the second reason you gave me not to trust you.

Back home you knew to keep sending me songs and to take me to the darkest corners of Chicago bars. You knew how to talk about my jeans and my breasts and the books on my nightstands. You knew how to think of me when you went home to your wife.

Afternoon museum walks or lingering over dinner at the places you suggested. Our requirements were simple: dimly lit and food forward, added value for record player nooks and late hours. Anything that offered the illusion of anonymity. Our hearts beat a little faster when we locked eyes, but our awkward embrace was always followed by a potential exit strategy: you weren’t feeling well, there was a work project that required your attention, or a literary thing uptown. You were careful to never mention the details, and fabricated or not you rarely took the off ramps you threatened. We closed places down and needing more of each other walked east towards the lake.

You knew who you could invite me out with. The Richards and the Patricks we’d meet in neighborhood dives that were mine before they were yours. The safety of a long bar tucked under the L tracks was familiar to me and you were kept safe among friends whose transgressions were as bad as your own.

You knew the reasons you agreed to have a child. They aren’t the ones you told me or the ones you tell yourself now. You always had a flair for fiction.

You create distance—imagine me on the 32^nd floor of a hotel in Thailand. It’s a sexier version of me than the one walking the streets of Chicago because it’s something you haven’t seen. You loved Bangkok the same way you loved me—exotic and impossible to get to.

I write to you from the rooftop bar, knowing you’ll find it almost as good as when I write to you from a plane. How romantic it is to read each other in motion. You hope to read my final draft on your flight to Los Angeles, and I remind you, again, that you are just a piece of a bigger thing. We’re so far outside of who we were all those years ago.

When you stop speaking to me for the second time I won’t have to wonder why. You asked to read my work because you were looking for a reason to leave. The period on a conversation you were too scared to have because ending a relationship acknowledges the relationship.

With you gone there’s no need for me to be careful. I’ll start writing about your wife with same kindness you showed me: change three letters of her name and call it fiction. Becca. And one day I’ll call her, ask about your son. I’ll tell her everything and won’t be surprised to find she already knows.

You’ll remember the hold of my hand and the heat of my legs wrapped around your waist; the wetness of the city and the wetness between my legs.

I’ll remember the way you looked at me across the room when Eileen Myles was reading. It was the way I wanted her to look at me.