After Marley left and I got sober, I decided I would take a scholarship from Northwestern. But through our lawyers and that paperwork, I found Marley living in Chicago. Because she’d gotten there before me, the whole city felt like hers. More to the point, maybe, I couldn’t stand to be near her.

So I went to Iowa. I didn’t like it there—I was enrolled for only three semesters before I moved to New York—but during my time in the dorms, I had a roommate I did like: a quiet, intense guy named Dave, who now works as a news reporter.

He had this quote that looked like it was cut from a newspaper taped to the wall above his desk. It was from the TV show The Sopranos. I saw it so many times, I still remember it, right down to the font:

Christopher Moltisanti: “You ever felt like nothin’ good was ever gonna happen to you?”

Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: “Yeah. And nothin’ did. So what?”

For years, I didn’t understand why he would tape it to the wall. Was there really anyone out there who didn’t care if anything good happened to them? I’d been wanting things to happen since I could remember. Mostly any things, but good things in particular. What was so noteworthy about this conversation that Dave wanted to see it every day?

Something about it stuck with me, and every now and then, I’ll think about the quote again and wonder what the fuck it means—and what it meant to him.

This morning when I wake up with it in my head, I sit up, pull my phone off the bedside table, and Google it.

I rub my eyes, yawning as I peer down at my phone.

Christopher Moltisanti: “You ever felt like nothin’ good was ever gonna happen to you?”

Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: “Yeah. And nothin’ did. So what?”

Christopher Moltisanti: “That’s it. I don’t wanna just survive. It says in these movie-writing books that every character has an arc. Understand?”

Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: [Shakes head]

Christopher Moltisanti: “Like everybody starts out somewhere. And they do something, something gets done to them, and it changes their life. That’s called an arc. Where’s my arc?”

I can’t stop laughing as I listen to Marley get ready for work. Fucking Dave. Why the hell did he cut the bit off where he did? What kind of nihilism from the son of lawyers, raised on a fucking farm in Kansas?

I chuckle all morning and think of emailing him. Instead, I end up thinking about the Sopranos, which prompts an idea…and suddenly I’ve got 6,000 words on something new. I work until I hear Mar getting home for lunch, and then I walk upstairs, bearing another jug of cider for her fridge. Marley answers naked, and I fuck her on the couch, pulling her ponytail, and then I walk her down to her car.

In the afternoon, I write some more, and go for a long run.

The next two days are much the same. I realized how to make her smile. I do that when I can, and other times, I try to keep things casual. In the evening of the second day, I bring her legal papers, which she signs.

I fuck her good and hard, and when she asks me to stay for a beer, I tell her that I’m writing. Mar seems happy for me.

When I go downstairs, though, I don’t write. I jerk off twice and wait for it to be morning, and then at lunch I fuck her, and then in the evening.

Being inside her is incredible. I start to get hard at the first whiff of cinnamon—because she has a cinnamon broom hanging near her front door.

One night, I tell her, “You’re getting me hard in the fucking grocery store with this.” (They have those brooms there, near the registers).

Marley thinks that’s really funny.

When I’m not with her, I’m either jerking off or listening to her walk around. If I can stay in Marley mode, I almost never feel the yawn of darkness. After a night of the A.I. dream on repeat, I gather all my pictures of Geneva and stash them in a drawer. Just for a few days. She wouldn’t mind that, would she? I tell myself “no.”

The next day, I decide she would, so I pull them back out. I only look at them when Marley’s home, though. It feels less lonely that way.

I don’t feel like running anymore, for some reason, so I stop that. I try to take Cora on a walk in the morning, and that feels like enough.

It’s so cold outside. So gray. That night, I can’t sleep, even when I leave my windows open and jerk off until my eyelids sag.

I start trying to avoid my thoughts of Gen, and even take her pictures down again. Still, my stomach aches, and I feel weird and weighted. Restless.

So I live for fucking Marley.

One, two, three more days of fucking Marley. On a Saturday night, after we finish, I lie there for a few minutes on my back, Mar lying beside me with her cheek propped in her hand.

“Tell me something,” she says softly.

I look over at her. “What?”

“I don’t know. Just anything. We’ve got the fuck, I guess I kinda want the buddy part.”

That makes me smile. Which makes her smile.

“You tell me something.”

“Okay,” she murmurs.

I shut my eyes, sifting through the dozens of questions I have for her. I pick one, then shift onto my side so I can see her when I ask.

“Do you still believe in the irony factor?”

I watch her face transform from blank to amused to rueful. “No,” she shakes her head. “What was that?”

“A blight on my mental health,” I laugh. “You used to say that the most ironic time for something to happen was the time it was most likely to happen. I’ve been scared of dying on my birthday ever since. I paid a car off once and didn’t drive it all that week.”

She laughs. “A wreck… Ha. I remember that, the irony factor.”

I jut my eyebrows up accusingly, and Marley giggles. “That’s not a real thing, obviously. It’s a news phenomenon.”

“What do you mean?”

She twirls a strand of her dark hair between her fingers. “Well, ironic things seem common because we hear about them. The story of the man who crashed his car on his birthday is going to make the news, where the story of the man who crashed his car on a boring Tuesday on his regular commute isn’t.”

I smile, shaking my head to needle her.

“Do you still spread the dirty plates and glasses all over the counter instead of piling them up in the sink?” She shoots me her own pointed look.

I smile at that, and shake my head.

“You thought if you put them in the sink, they’d get moldy.”

“I was a stupid kid.” I shrug the shoulder I’m not propped up on.

Marley’s face is bright and curious, as if we’re reminiscing good old times and not our failed marriage. “Do you still have to have the lights just right when you work?” she asks.

I nod. “That’s legit. Lighting effects the mood.”

She nods, her gaze warm on my face, and all at once I have to swallow and remind myself to breathe.

“Do you still write?” I ask.

Her face shutters as her lips press into a thin line. “No.” I watch her breasts heave as she inhales. “I took a class at Northwestern, and it screwed me up. Poetry,” she says, looking mournful. “I couldn’t hack it in a class, so I guess it threw me off. I didn’t write for years, and now I only rarely do.”

She looks unhappy, so I say, “I’m sorry.”

She shrugs. “I needed something I could be passionate about, so that’s actually how I got into pre-med.”

“You like it?”

She strokes a hair back through her hair. “It’s a calling more than a passion, I think. I’m not sure it’s really meant to be enjoyable, you know? But it’s fulfilling. Mostly. Seeing babies was a struggle for a while. Kind of still is.”

“I’m sorry.” Surely those are the two most inadequate words.

She looks down at the bedding. “Thanks.” She looks back up at me. “You never know what you’re getting into as a younger person, do you? Shit gets real…”

I chuckle at the truth of that, even though it’s not funny. As I get up to pull my clothes on, I feel more like eighty-three than thirty-three. It feels like it’s been a long, long time since I married young Marley on the Vegas Strip.

She sits up, watching me as I step into my pants. I notice I don’t feel a sense of awkwardness with her—ever, anymore.

“So hey,” she says, softly. I glance up. “I’m kinda out of that time period now. You know, like…it’s waiting time. To see if anything happened. It’s too late now to conceive if I didn’t already. For about a week, it’s useless. We don’t even need to do it once a day. Just every other day…or even not at all. Unless you want to.”

I blink. “How long is the waiting time?”

“About a week.”

I’m grateful for the moment I get, slipping on my shirt, before I need to look at her with a not-disappointed face. I shrug. “You want a break? To…let it take or whatever?”

She shrugs. “I guess that’s logical enough. If that’s okay with you.”

I shrug. “Sure.”

She tucks the sheet around herself and follows me into the den. “I’ll let you know when we can test. I won’t do it without you.”

I nod. “Cool. Thanks.”

She looks so strange there in the doorway between hall and kitchen, wide-eyed with a sheet around her chest, as if I’ve never seen what’s underneath.