Liyuan looked to be my height, which was five two.
I grinned.
He really liked them pocket-sized.
And so, it became a tradition of ours to email each other every summer and see if we were both home at the same time, to maybe try to meet up. Alex and I wanted Patrick and Liyuan to tag along, too, of course. It just seemed wild. The concept that people could love each other so much and then let go and find other people who made them just as happy, if not more.
I think both Alex and I wanted to pinch ourselves.
The first three years of my marriage to Patrick, seeing Alex just wasn’t in the cards. Whenever I was home, he was away, and when he was away, I was home.
On the fourth year of my marriage, Alex was actually in London. Liyuan had a family reunion and he was tagging along. We made plans to see each other, but on the day of, Patrick was sick and miserable, and bailing to meet my ex-boyfriend for drinks just didn’t seem like a human thing to do, so I canceled.
On the fifth year of my marriage to Patrick…well, it was also the year we got divorced.
To sum it up: we grew apart. We knew we were growing apart. We watched it happen, from a front-row seat. And it saddened both of us. Luckily, we were both too practical, too wise to let it turn ugly.
After five years of marriage (and one citizenship I’d gained in the process, along with about twelve pounds), Patrick and I split.
The devastation was different this time.
This wasn’t puppy love. We had a household. An apartment. A cat. We went on vacations and paid bills together. We talked babies. We were, in a lot of ways, one unit. Something whole and complete.
I wasn’t just sad, I was hysterical.
I knew in my bones that a love like ours wouldn’t happen again.
In a lot of ways, I was right, because my love for my husband is completely different in a lot of ways. Not less, just different. Good different, but still different.
Patrick and I were soulmates.
I didn’t know if marrying your best friend was better than marrying your soulmate.
I just knew that timing was everything in life, and for Patrick and me, the timing was off. We’d met when we were on the cusp of becoming who we were today, and it had gotten to be too much, too soon.
After five years of marriage, I packed a bag and went back home to my parents.
I took the cat, too, because even though I’d fallen on and off the vegetarianism wagon, I was still obsessed with animals and loved the cat like crazy.
For the first few weeks after my breakup with Patrick, I couldn’t stomach talking to another person, let alone another man (I may or may not have held a general grudge).
But then, afterwards, I began answering emails and phone calls, albeit slowly.
I had one email from Alex asking if I was doing okay. I didn’t know why he’d ask that. I hadn’t told Jadie about my split with Patrick, and Alex had no other way of knowing this.
I shot him a quick email:
Lara: Hey, Alex. Good. Back home now. Patrick and I broke up. How are you?
Alex: I’m home, too. I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes for beer. Same address?
Five years after we stood on the shoulder of the road crying and screaming at each other, Alex and I met again.
He was no longer driving a Volvo, which made me laugh. He picked me up in a brand new Toyota. His parents’, he explained. We went to a bar on the beach. I ordered a cocktail. He ordered a beer.
Alex had filled out completely in the five years we’d spent apart.
He was a man now.
A man with a Mohawk, but a man.
And me? I looked completely different, yet again. This time with newly dyed brown hair, after years of abusing my brunette locks by bleaching them, and a healthy weight.
He was still wearing black jeans—only not ripped this time—and black shirts.
I moved on to polka dot dresses and hipster jackets.
I’d come to terms with the fact I was never going to have a certain style. I was forever going to jump between hipster to punk to romantic to casual. I just wasn’t ready to commit.
It was almost a decade since our first kiss, when Alex peeled the sticker on his beer bottle and told me, “You know, I had an epiphany on my way here.”
“Yeah?” I mumbled into my Cosmo, eyeing the tattoo peeking from the sleeve of his shirt. The tattoo he inked on his body in tribute to me now had neighbors in geometrical tats sprawled on the rest of his arm. “What’s that?”
“You always go for people who remind you of yourself. I’ll explain. Both this Patrick guy and me, we share a lot of traits with you. We love hard, but we’re closed off when we feel attacked, we’re loyal but have trash temperament, sarcastic but oddly sensitive, and we are thinkers, but we hate it when shit gets complicated. Maybe you need something completely different. Someone who is the opposite of who you are.”