April 26th, 2016 - Annalise VanHouten

On April 26, 2016, I am in my Seattle apartment. Soon I will go into work, but for now, I am scrolling through his texts. I like you for so many reasons, he’s said. Like, not love. He and I are almost four months into our relationship, and I am thinking about how it started, and where it will go.

A normal nice guy looking for a normal nice girl, his dating profile claimed. Almost four months ago, after texting nonstop, we went on our first date on January 2. It lasted seven hours. At hour six, he leaned across the table, both of us loopy from bourbon, and said, Can I kiss you right now?

It felt like a goddamned movie. The way he looked at me. Like I was a dream, like he couldn’t quite believe I was real. We closed down the bar. After we said goodbye, he texted me. Goodnight pretty and beautiful Annalise.

It was the first time a guy had ever called me those things.

Pretty and beautiful are intoxicating words. They drew me in. You deserve compliments, he texted. I want you to get used to it. I want to see you. I wish you were in my bed right now.

We went out again. And again.

He was amazing in person. His texts were even better. My phone became a wand, poised to spout magic. Every time a message arrived, I was flooded with serotonin. I saved the best notes as screenshots.

Then, reality hit. A month in, as we were snuggled on his couch, he told me the ideal characteristics he was looking for in a partner. These attributes were based on how his ex-girlfriend reacted after they broke up. She had been a little too invested, he said, wanted a little too much. She was really upset when he ended things, and that volatility was just not what he was looking for. He wanted someone who matched his vibe: a girl who was easy, chill, low-maintenance. He followed this admissive with a question. Will you be my girlfriend?

We had just made out for an hour. My lips were chapped. My body buzzed. I didn’t need to think about it. Low maintenance, easy, chill. That described me pretty well already, but I decided to dial my coolness up by ten. I wanted him, whatever it took.

I will be your girlfriend, I said. Yes.

We spent Valentine’s Day at his apartment, because although he wanted to make it special, he didn’t want to go out. He made tuna noodle casserole, his favorite, and although I had told him about my gluten allergy he didn’t seem to remember, and I didn’t want to remind him. I ate it. I felt sick, in more ways than one.

When he made excuses for why he didn’t meet my friends, I told him it was no big deal.

When he went to visit his baby niece and didn’t ask me to join, I shook it off.

When he told me he hadn’t voted in the last election, I pretended that was okay.

When he never wanted to go anywhere, do anything outside of his shag-carpet, mattress-on-the-floor apartment, I didn’t complain.

When he told me that smoking weed every day was important to him, and it would mean a lot if I tried, I did.

I lived in two worlds that did not meet. One existed with my friends, my roommate, my job, my softball team, my neighborhood twenty-five minutes from his. The other: was him.

The months went on. So did the texts. February rolled into March, and the normally dark winter days were turned brighter by his messages. You’re so positive, Annalise. It’s a big part of you I really like and like being around.

But now, at the end of April and almost four months into our relationship, I’m re-reading his messages in my apartment in Seattle, and something doesn’t feel right.

I like you for so many reasons. My friends really like you. And I do too.

As a late bloomer, this is the most serious relationship I’ve had. And I so badly want to be pretty and beautiful and easy. It feels good to be wanted. It feels so close to love.

I put my phone down. I go to work. I don’t do anything differently until late summer, at the end of almost seven months together, when he breaks up with me (suddenly, through text) and I blame myself for not being perfect enough, chill enough, secure enough. I am angry for not standing up for myself, for not pushing to bring my disparate worlds together. I wonder why he left me when I became exactly who he wanted. If, by making myself into that person, I became someone he didn’t want at all.

Six months after our break up, I meet someone else. Someone who lifts me up not with platitudes, but actions. Someone who doesn’t hide behind words. Someone who cherishes even the messy, needy, unattractive parts that make me who I am. Three years later, I marry that man. I know he loves me. And now, ten years later, I don’t need a text to prove it.

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Originally from the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, Annalise VanHouten is a higher education development professional living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her writing explores grief, family, and the concept of home. When she isn’t reading, traveling, or practicing her golf swing, she is at work on an upmarket fiction novel.