I read all two hundred pages of my homework assignment in one shot yesterday.

It was a great way to spend my Saturday morning. I don’t have much else to do now that Joel’s gone, so I attacked the book with a focus I haven’t known in a long time. I got so into the story that I hit page three hundred and forty-seven before I finally tapped out. It’s Sunday afternoon now, and the only other task I’ve given myself this weekend is to de-Joel the apartment a little. He said he’d be coming back for his stuff in a few days, and I decided to make it easier for him by consolidating everything of his into a few boxes. If I’m being honest it also makes it easier for me to not have reminders of him everywhere. The pictures are the hardest part. I don’t feel like messing with taking them out of the frames, so I just take all of the framed pictures and sweep them into an old shoe box and then shove them in my hallway closet.

The hardest part about those pictures isn’t seeing what I lost with Joel, it’s seeing what I’ve lost with myself. Most of them were taken during the first few months of our relationship—the honeymoon phase—and I look so damn happy that it makes me sick to look at them now. That happiness is just a memory, and so is Joel, but Brandon is very much a reality.

He’s so beautiful and he didn’t even seem to realize it. When I start to think about seeing him again this week I get excited, and I’m surprised by my body’s reaction to him. Just thinking about him is like taking the deepest breath, and it fills me with an energy that does more for me than those pills I have in my bag. He does something else to my body, something that a man hasn’t done in a long time.

It’s been months since I’ve had sex. That sounds like something a single person might say, not a woman who was in a committed relationship for the last year with a guy who always wanted her. But that’s what I did to Joel, and a few guys before him. It isn’t that I don’t like sex—I love it—but if my mind isn’t right then my body won’t respond, and then sex just becomes an act, a thing I’m supposed to do as part of my role as girlfriend—a task to check off the list, along with making sure my bills aren’t late and taking my clothes to the dry cleaner.

Once I’m in that mental state I become the master of excuses. My only guilt about how things turned out with Joel isn’t that I didn’t have sex with him for the last few months of our relationship, it’s that I took advantage of him. I knew how much he loved me, and because of that fact my bullshit could bend the parameters of our relationship without breaking them. They all break eventually, but I knew that I could still have the parts I enjoyed—the companionship, the time spent in bed together, the dinners—without the part I didn’t want, the sex.

But when I was speaking to Brandon at the bookstore I had a crazy urge to kiss him—to pull him down and press his lips against mine, to have him throw me down on that table of books and. . . My phone buzzes. It’s Abby.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning,” I tell her. “Getting all things Joel out of sight and hopefully out of mind.”

“I’m not the kind of best friend to remind you that I never liked the guy.”

“Except that you just did. You never really told me why, though.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, and I can practically hear her thinking of just the right reasons why she was never on team Joel. She doesn’t have to, it’s over. “It’s hard to put my finger on one thing, it’s a combination of factors.”

“Like what?” I ask, curious now as to what she’s referring to.

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m as single as they come, and my past few relationships have been a who’s who of human garbage, so who am I to dispense opinions?”

“You don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “You don’t have to degrade yourself to tell me the truth. And you’re my best friend, Abby, that’s who. There’s no way we’re ever getting back together, so take the free shot I’m giving you here.”

After three seconds of silence she opens the flood gates. “He never got you, okay?” She blurts it out, and it hits me right in the heart. That pause I heard wasn’t her thinking of what to say, it was her thinking about how honest to be. “He thought you were hot, which you are.”

“Thank you.”

“You know it’s true,” she jokes. “But I feel like he always just wanted a trophy. He never understood your depression. He wanted your issues to go away instead of finding a way to help you navigate them. Basically, he wanted a move-in-ready woman. You’re more of a fixer-upper.”

I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted by what she just said, but I love the analogy. And she’s right. Joel never understood my problems. He came from a family that looked like an episode of Leave It to Beaver—his parents are the nicest people in the world, married for forty years, his brother was a Harvard trained surgical resident, and I never saw Joel have even a moment of family drama when I was with him. He didn’t know how to handle me.

“So you’re saying, like, I need a new coat of paint? Maybe some new cabinets?”

“No,” she says, both of us giggling while we talk. “I’m saying you need a man who appreciates a work in progress, not someone who wants you for who you might be, or who you used to be. For good or for bad, your depression is a part of you, and you need a man who accepts that and can help you through the hard times.”

I know she’s right, but I’m not sure that guy exists. At least I haven’t met him yet. “That sounds great. If you meet anyone like that let me know. Oh, and if he’s tall, dark and handsome, even better!”

“It seems like you took care of that all on your own Friday night, at least from my vantage point across the store.”

“Who, Brandon?” I know she’s talking about him, of course, but besides being a really good-looking guy who I’m admittedly intrigued by, I don’t know about his ability to deal with someone like me. I might be way too much for him.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Yet to be determined,” I tell her. “Anyway, nothing happened between us. He didn’t ask me out, he asked me to read a really long book and join a club.”

“And why do you suppose that is? You think he trolls the Barnes & Noble every Friday looking for hot girls to join his reader group?”

“Alright, point taken.” Our meeting was accidental, but I know that he was vibing with me even though I wasn’t trying too hard to be flirtatious. “On a different subject, I’m hungry, you wanna get lunch?”

“Can’t today, I’m sorry. Meeting with my parents.”

“Fun.”

“Don’t be a hater. We don’t all have drama with those who birthed us, you know.”

“I guess. Just you healthy people make me sick sometimes.”

“I’m sorry,” she jokes. “Guilty as charged. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Call me later, and good luck de-Joel’ing your place.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

No sooner do I place my phone down next to me on the couch than it vibrates again, only this time it’s a text and not a call. I don’t recognize the number, but it’s local. When I open the phone, all I see is:

Hey

I write back, hey to you, strange number—who is this? I see the bubbles appear at the bottom immediately and wait for the response.

It’s Brandon.

Brandon! He was the last person I was expecting to hear from, and how he’d get my number? Hey, I text, call me. Five seconds later I pick up the phone to hear Brandon’s deep voice on the other end. Just hearing it gets my heart going, but then I get back to wondering how he got my number. “Didn’t expect to hear your voice outside of the book store.”

“Is it a bad thing?” he asks.

“Not a bad thing at all. A really good thing, in fact. It’s nice hearing from you, even though I’m not sure how you got my number.”

“Well that’s a relief,” he says, dodging my question.

“So, what’s going on?”

“Nothing much. I just got back from the gym and showered about an hour ago. Now I need a recovery meal. Something good. Sushi maybe.”

“Eww.” I know sushi is what all the cool kids are eating these days, but its always grossed me out. Abby tried to take me for it a few different times, and my sister, Carla, practically lives off the stuff, but it’s never really been appealing to me.

“Eww?” he asks, laughing. “I’ve never heard that reaction before just by mentioning sushi.”

“That’s because you never met me. It’s gross.”

“You’ve had?”

“Umm, no. I’m not eating raw fish. Sorry.”

“So, you don’t like to try new things? Okay. I get it.”

I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. Either he’s a total dick or he’s trying reverse psychology on me. “Woah, I didn’t say that. I’m usually pretty adventurous, for your information.”

“Just not adventurous enough to eat something most people eat at least once a week. I get it. I’ll go to my favorite sushi place alone, then.”

That was clever. Well played, sir. “Fine, challenge accepted. I’ll go eat disgusting uncooked seafood if you tell me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“How’d you get my number?”

“I’ll tell you at lunch, while I’m enjoying my disgusting uncooked seafood. I’ll text you the address. Meet you there in forty-five minutes.”

“How will I know who you are?” I joke.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m the tall guy who’ll most likely be staring at you and smiling uncontrollably.”

I’ll be staring right back, Brandon, don’t you worry. “Ah, okay. So, I’ll look for a tall creep. Got it.”

“Yup, that’s me. See you in forty-five.”

We hang up and I realize that it’s only been a few days since things ended with Joel, and I’m about to go on a date with another man. I know there are unwritten rules for this kind of thing— like how long you’re supposed to wait when one relationship ends before pursuing another, but I’ve never been so good at following the rules. If I was normal I’d be pining away, mourning the loss of what I had with Joel. But I’m not, and I’m not.

I get ready, feeling a twinge of anxiety at the idea of seeing Brandon, or maybe just at going on a date with someone new, I’m not sure which. I get dressed, but nothing too fancy. It’s only lunch, and I don’t have it in me to go all out right now. I call an Uber and go to the address he texted me. A few minutes later I see a place called ‘Yiro’s Sushi’ on the corner and my stomach does a 180 just thinking about that awful food. I wasn’t joking—the thought of sushi really grosses me out, but I’ll try to be open minded. If nasty food is the price of hanging out with this gorgeous man, then so be it.

I see Brandon before he sees me. He’s sitting at one of the outdoor tables for two, sitting across from an empty seat that’s soon to have my butt on it, surrounded by a lunch rush of people. I’m still in the Uber when I catch him looking around, scanning the crowd of people, looking for me. I hop out and wave so that he’ll see me, and when he catches my frantic hand gestures his whole face lights up in a smile. I’ve been looked at like I’m beautiful before, but when Brandon looks at me it’s like he’s looking at me in spite of everything else around him, as though he’s making a conscious choice to disregard the rest of the world—all the noise, the other people, the cars going by, all of it—in order to focus those beautiful eyes on only me. It makes me feel special, like I’m the only person in his world.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says.

“Well, I do love sushi,” I joke. “Can’t keep me away.”

“Shall we?”

We shall Brandon. We definitely shall.