My mother has allowed me to go into the city to see my boyfriend as long as I am home by 7 pm, NO EXCEPTIONS, NO MISSING THE TRAIN YOUNG LADY. My boyfriend is attending college in Manhattan and my mother has reigned me in tighter and tighter because I’m only in high school and because she knows I have morals but BOYS WHO HAVE SINGLE COLLEGE DORM ROOMS DON’T.

It is a perfect New York City spring day and we have nothing planned so we wander. We stop at Veselka for grilled cheese sandwiches on challah bread, we peek into a courtyard and I take a picture of flowers blooming, we walk for blocks and blocks and never stop holding hands. At one point, we duck into a Crate & Barrel and I snap a picture of my boyfriend sitting on one of the display beds so we can show my mom just how immoral we really were. When I show her the picture a few days later, she gets quite a kick out of it.

“That boy,” she says. “What a sense of humor.”

And it’s true. He is the King of Goofy Dances and Funny Faces, Amusing Anecdotes, Hilarious Stories. He is constantly riding subways with celebrities and calling me to let me know, laughing when I get angry at the unfairness of it all, I never get to see ANYBODY. He is reading Ethan Frome over the phone. He is singing me to sleep with a Christmas lullaby. He is particular about his hair products. And mixtapes. He is Rachmaninoff and summertime, Abercrombie cologne and eggnog lattes.

On this particular day, I am wearing brand new shoes and after a few hours of wandering, I am limping from a blister.

I WANT TO DIE, I tell him.

You need a pair of socks, he says.

WHERE ON EARTH WILL WE FIND A PAIR OF SOCKS? I ask, whimpering.

We are on Astor Place.

There is an expensive shoe store in front of us. He drags me inside. I protest.

I CANNOT AFFORD SOCKS IN HERE, I say.

Laura, it’s fine.

NO, IT IS NOT FINE! These socks are like THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS.

You are being hyperbolic.

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS.

He grabs a pair of socks, plops them down on the counter and hands over $12.

Once we get onto the street, before I can do anything, he kneels down on the sidewalk and helps me put them on.

Better? he asks me, mocha eyes twinkling up at me, hands giving my foot a squeeze.

Yes, I say.

I have never felt more in love in my entire life.

…

Years later. Different boy.

My uterus has begun to contract on our way home from the movie theater. It’s a rainy day and the windshield wipers are going at full speed. His apartment feels miles away and I need a hot shower and an Aleve or five. Instead, we are bickering. Something stupid. About dinner. Or the movie. Or the rain.

As soon as I walk through the door, I head for the bathroom, shedding my clothes as I move from room to room. I turn up the water as hot as it will go and sit down on the floor of the shower. The pain is overwhelming and I am willing myself not to cry. It’s a cruel cruel world on a rainy day with a snippy boyfriend and an angry uterus.

After toweling myself dry, I walk into the kitchen in sweatpants, my wet hair pulled into a messy bun on the top of my head. My boyfriend is leaning over a cutting board, chopping up vegetables into perfectly identical pieces. Instead of helping, I promptly sit down on the tile of the kitchen floor and hug his leg like a toddler.

He laughs.

“I am sorry for being a bitch,” I say.

And then I begin to cry, wetting his jeans with my tears, clinging desperately to his calf.

I hear the knife drop onto the counter, his hands wiping on a towel and then he is there beside me.

“I don’t understand,” he says, exasperated. “I don’t understand what you need me to do.”

“Just this,” I croak, unable to say anything more, curling my head under his arm.

“Oh,” he says gently, resting his chin on the top of my head. “I see.”

I sob into his chest and he rocks me back and forth slowly on the kitchen floor. The rain falls steadily on the windowsill, the vegetables lay abandoned on the cutting board and me and my hormones are, for the time being, comforted.

…

His roommate and I used to be close friends, spending lazy afternoons at the beach, briefly sharing an apartment in New York City, a spunky Irish girl who could send me into a high-pitched laughing fit with little to no effort at all. That is how I met him. And I believe there was some correlation that I was not aware of, some issue I was not privy to, that caused her to stop being my friend soon after I started dating him.

I believed that he was worth it but it didn’t make it easy to be around his apartment. She was constantly there, talking to someone on her cell phone, cooking dinner, doing grad school homework at her laptop. And for reasons I still don’t know, she refused to even acknowledge my presence, treating me like I wasn’t even a person, ignoring me when I was around, looking past me, not even returning the ‘hello’s’ I politely tossed her way every time I came over. I’d like to say that it got easier with time. But it never, ever did.

I had been looking forward to going out to dinner with him all week. Work had been stressful, auditions had sucked, I was having money problems and roommate problems and every other kind of problem. I felt like it would all be worth it if I could just see him and maybe sneak up and smell his armpit for awhile. Maybe tonguekiss for a bit.

Her and her boyfriend were there when I arrived.

“Hi!” I said brightly to both of them.

Silence.

She turned to my boyfriend instead and asked a question about the rent. Or about parking her car. Or about utility bills. I can’t really remember because my eyes were burning with tears.

Why doesn’t she just say hi back?

I get the message that we aren’t friends anymore but surely we can be friendly acquaintances?

And I guess she sent her boyfriend the memo to ignore me too?

Am I in fucking junior high all over again? What the !?

After a few minutes of standing there like a social pariah, I followed my boyfriend out of the apartment and into his car, where I promptly dissolved into tears.

He was completely flabbergasted and clearly uncomfortable.

“Why!?” I said, crying into my lap. “Why can’t she at least say hello!? We were friends for five years!”

“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing my shoulder. “I honestly don’t know. And I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize it bothered you this much.”

“WHY WOULDN’T IT BOTHER ME?!” I snapped. “Her! Her boyfriend! Why can’t they be cordial! Make eye contact! Say hello! WHAT IS WITH THE IGNORING!?”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I’m so sorry.”

I was furious. And sad. I had been so eager to see him. So happy to spend the evening together. And now, it was ruined. She ruined it. And I had let her.

I wiped my eyes.

Silence.

“Do you want to go on some swings?”

“What?”

“Swings. Do you want to go?”

“Yes.”

And we drive to the park.

And we swing on the swings.

My Converse sneakers toe marks in the dirt.

I watch a little girl run around, unsteady on her chubby little legs.

I twist my body around and around like I used to do when I was seven.

Then I let go.

And I spin around and around and around.

And when I’m done, I look over at him. And he flashes me a huge smile.

“Better?” he asks me.

“Yes,” I say.

And I’ve never been more honest.