Love Has a Time Difference

Chapter 3 The Pattern

Three weeks after the storm, I started keeping a list. I did not mean to. It began as a way to calm myself down, a rational accounting of all the times Marcus had been present and all the times he had not. I wrote it in the back of a notebook I used for work, and I only wrote in pencil, because pencils can be erased.

He had missed my birthday dinner because of a client emergency. He had forgotten our anniversary and apologized with flowers that arrived two days late. He had fallen asleep during a movie we had planned to see for a month. He had not asked about my promotion. He had not asked about my mother's surgery. He had not asked about the surgery's follow-up, or the results, or how I was sleeping.

The list grew. It grew so slowly that I did not notice it becoming a record. It grew so quietly that I could pretend it was not evidence.

Lena noticed before I did. She came over on a Saturday and saw the notebook on my kitchen counter and flipped to the back before I could stop her.

She read it in silence. Then she closed the notebook and set it down and looked at me.

"How long have you been writing this?"

"A while."

"Define a while."

"A few weeks."

"Lena." She said my name the way she said things she meant. "You're documenting a relationship like a case file."

"I'm just trying to figure out if I'm imagining it."

"You're not imagining it."

"I might be. He works hard. He has a lot on his plate. His boss is impossible and his team is understaffed and he-"

"He didn't come get you in the rain."

The room went quiet. I had not told her the details. I had told her I got home fine. I had told her the storm was worse than expected and I waited it out, and she had accepted this because Lena knew when to push and when to wait. But she had seen the photo of my ruined coat in the trash, and she had done the math.

"How did you know?"

"You walked in the door at seven-forty and your hair was still wet and you had the look. The look you get when you've been waiting for something that isn't coming."

I sat down at the kitchen counter. Lena sat across from me. She did not reach for my hand, because she was not that kind of friend, but she moved her chair closer until our knees almost touched.

"I'm not saying he's a villain," she said. "I'm saying he's not choosing you. And I think you know the difference."

I did know the difference. I had known it for a long time. But knowing a thing and acting on it are two different skills, and I had only ever practiced one of them.

That night, Marcus called. He was in a good mood. He had closed a deal and his boss had said something complimentary and he wanted to take me somewhere nice on Friday. I said yes because I wanted to say yes, because I wanted the list to be wrong, because I wanted to believe that a man who made a reservation could also be a man who showed up.

Friday came. He chose a restaurant near his office, which meant he would not have to travel far. He arrived twenty minutes late and apologized with a kiss on my cheek and an explanation about a call that had run long. He ordered us a bottle of wine and he told me about the deal and he did not ask about my week.

I watched him talk. He was handsome and tired and animated and entirely unaware of the expression on my face. I thought about the list. I thought about the storm. I thought about the message that said Take a cab home and the way it had felt to read those four words while the rain ran down my neck.

"Marcus," I said, when he paused to drink his wine. "Do you remember the storm? Two weeks ago?"

He frowned. "The one downtown?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

"Nothing. I just wondered if you remembered."

He did not remember. I could see it in his face. The storm had not registered, because the storm had not happened to him. It had happened to me, alone, under an awning, and he had been elsewhere, and the elsewhere had not left a mark.

That was the moment I stopped being able to pretend. I did not break up with him that night. I finished my dinner and I drove home and I lay awake, and in the morning I opened the notebook and I did not erase anything.