“I didn’t talk about that stuff to anyone except Jeff,” he said.
I nodded. The weight of our shared loss was immense.
After that, Billy and I retreated into our separate sorrow. I bought a dress for Jeff’s memorial service, then didn’t go. Ignoring Billy’s calls and messages offering to pick me up, I crawled into bed and slept until the next day.
“I couldn’t stand around and make chitchat with people,” I texted Billy a week later. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” I had abandoned Brooklyn for a Maryland beach, where I woke before dawn every morning and wept. My anguish would not be outrun.
Our communication cooled with the fall weather. We didn’t see each other again until New Year’s Day, when we headed to Coney Island for the Polar Bear Plunge. Jeff had always lobbied us to do it with him, and we had demurred. Now we ran into the ocean, shouting and laughing, dunking our heads and splashing until hypothermia threatened.
Afterward, Billy accompanied me to my neighbor’s open house, where we ate smoked fish and bagels. At some point, I lost track of him in the crowd, and when I spotted him across the room, chatting easily with my friends, a strange feeling came over me, like déjà vu, except flashing forward to a time when Billy and I would be more than friends.
I pushed the thought away. But when we hugged goodbye, I felt it again.
That winter, I ran away to Los Angeles, where a friend had offered her home in exchange for cat-sitting. Wildfires had ravaged the city since I had been there with Jeff, and the jacarandas were no longer in bloom. I took long walks alone, skirting the edges of places we had been together, when I had believed we had a future.
