The first beer is easy. You meet in your writing class one year before his wedding. After the first class of introductions and favorite authors, a few of your new classmates go to the local bar. He comes along, though he says very little, keeping a fresh cigarette always lit. You’ve heard your classmates’ gossip about him because he seems to fit the stereotype of a guy in your MFA, but you want to get to know him beyond that. When you casually ask how old he is, because you can’t quite pin it down, he looks amused by the question. How old do I look? He’s thirty-two to your twenty-four. At some point in the conversation, he casually mentions his fiancée, and that he’ll be married this time next year. He doesn’t seem to act or behave like someone who has a fiancée, but you also have no idea how someone with a fiancée acts, and what it even means to act like you have a fiancée. But at twenty-four, you have no idea what it’s like to hold onto anyone longer than three months, for anything past the fun stage.

***

He tells you, later that semester, that your last short story was haunting and that he wants to read more of your stuff. Can you send more to me? He lingers after class, too, when you are packing up your notes carefully, puts the question out there, is anyone going out for a beer? The more you get to know him, the more you are pleasantly surprised that he is not the moody label others have placed on him; he’s full of sharp wit and always happy to see you. The beers become weekly, the texts playful, thoughts intrusive and consistent. Why is it you that he seems so drawn to? Maybe it’s your fun personality, a perfect contrast/complement to his subdued exterior. And you are fun. You make him laugh. You seem to impress him, and his approval makes you feel validated.

***

When spring semester ends and there’s no more pretense to go out for a beer, he still texts you. Want to people watch at the bar with me? You sit in a booth next to a dance floor full of undergrads awkwardly dancing to electro indie pop and drink vodka cranberries fast because you are so nervous, because your knees are touching and you don’t even know what to say with him, and you think always about what he tells his fiancée when he hangs out with you all summer, especially on that one night in June when he says he’s too drunk to drive so he asks to sober up inside your apartment, so you watch American Dad! reruns in your bedroom because your roommate says you’re being too loud in the living room, and when you look at the clock to see it is five am, your eyes meet his, and then he is kissing you. You make out for forty-five minutes, nothing more, only stopping when the sunrise interrupts everything, breaks the spell.

***

The wedding is that December, and you get an invite in the mail. You check yes for a few reasons: because your other friends are attending, because you think your absence would seem suspicious, because you are insanely curious, because you want to see what it looks like for him to get married, because you want to get a look at her. And for other reasons harder to articulate (fear of missing out?). During the ceremony, the obvious questions come to mind: why are you torturing yourself? What does he think of me being here? Did I make us up in my head? It is easier to ignore those thoughts during dinner and cocktails, with the chatter of inconsequential things. It’s not until you’re under the twinkling lights on a brick patio watching his first dance with his bride that you feel the sting of jealously and emptiness, a hollowness that hits you sharply and demands tears from your eyes, mascara rolling fat down your cheeks. This part is not fun, not fun at all.

***

The wedding after party is in room 303 of the adjacent hotel. You stay; you cannot will yourself to leave yet. It’s mostly the bridal party scattered around the hotel room, passing around a bottle of red wine. The groom sits next to you on the couch while his wife sits in the corner, chatting with her bridesmaids. He asks if you’re okay. Always a fun girl, you nod; the generous open bar has numbed any other feeling. The groom slips you a key card to a room down the hall, asks you to sleep it off, warns you not to talk to his high school friend, who apparently is trying to sleep with you. You remove yourself from the room. But sometime fifteen or thirty minutes later, the high school friend knocks on your door. How did he know your room number? Did he give it away, help his high school friend with a good time, a sure thing? It doesn’t matter. You welcome the distraction. Though it is drunk and brief, it is still passionate and fun. You do not regret it.

***

In May, five months after the wedding, his new wife gets a new job up in New England, thousands of miles away. He is moving. His wife gives you a stack of antique saucers she cannot take with on the move. You politely accept them. His last weekend in town, he invites you out for one last night of people watching at the bar. This time, when you sit next to him in the booth, you are full of nervous energy, of expectations. He peels the label from his beer and talks about the long drive, how the change of scenery will be good, how he looks better in winter clothes, anyway. When he drops you off that night, he comes inside to use the restroom, and you know this moment can go one of two ways. You open a fresh beer to shut off the decision part of your brain. This is the last time you’ll see him, right? Isn’t he expecting this? When he comes out of the restroom, he looks at you, asks how drunk you are, and you lie.

***

When you are at your lowest, ask yourself: are you yet becoming the person you want to be? Was all of this supposed to be part of it? Or is this all you know how to do: offer men a brief escape and fantasy from their lives? Why can’t you go home, say no, turn them away? Why are you so determined to ruin yourself? Answer: because you are a fun girl, and a fun girl doesn’t say no. A fun girl stays until the party ends, flirts back, makes them feel important. But she is not worth anything more than that.

***

For months after, he texts you off and on, mostly late at night, mostly after he’s been drinking: Why couldn’t I have met you years ago? Sometimes I think about how I can make it to be with you. If I told you my marriage was ending, what would you say? You don’t answer them. What would you say, anyway? This was just supposed to be a fun time, something without consequences. This is too complicated now.

***

When you finally see him again, it’s been a full year since he’s moved away. You’re twenty-six now, finished with those classes and working a demanding job that makes you sad and has nothing to do with writing. You’re in his city for a conference, there to network and make yourself feel important in a new way. But when he asks if he can see you, you say yes. Of course you were going to say yes – why did you tell yourself otherwise? You invite him into your hotel room to you play rounds of poker and make craft cocktails with homemade bitters provided by his wife. Later in the night, you read each other’s latest fiction stories and talk about everyone you went to school with, and when it’s late and you’re drunk, you turn off the lights and fall asleep next to him, and he doesn’t even do so much as kiss you but instead he holds you, nuzzles your neck, and you realize this is the most intimate you’ve ever felt with anyone in your life, but you can’t have it. What would have happened if you told him to leave his wife, to be with you? Does this even work outside of this pretense, these hidden moments? Eventually, morning comes, sobriety hits, fun fades.

When you get home from the trip, you decide to stop everything. You need to save yourself. You quit your nothing job, quit partying with undergrads, quit casually dating men. You have a two year stretch of celibacy and it makes you feel stronger, stronger than the fleeting power of being fun. You don’t miss the fun as much as you thought you would. Then, when you are closer to twenty-eight than twenty-four, you meet Nick. It’s a balmy night in April, three years after the wedding, two since you’ve seen him, and over a year since he’s even texted you. Nick is in town for the weekend, visiting your mutual friends. You drink six vodka sodas and he kisses you first. Your car is parked at his hotel, anyway. So you give in for the night, reminding yourself of the fun, of the power. You consider it a slip-up, a relapse, but then something else happens. When you are ready to leave the next morning, shower and sleep off the hangover, Nick holds you close, all big grins, and whispers how he’s never met anyone like you. He is confused when you pay for your own breakfast at the hotel – he wanted to buy it for you. Nick, after he flies home, wants to keep talking to you. Nick, you will learn later, admits he can’t stop thinking about you, of how lucky he is to have met you. Four months later, at a diner after one of his many flights down to see you, he will whisper that he loves you.

***

Back to that morning after you meet Nick, when you lounge by his hotel pool and feel everything inside of you awaken, the married man texts you. It’s like you were emitting radio waves, your station coming back in through the static, the married man picking up on your frequency. He’s having a baby. Congratulations. You try not to think about what you still very rarely think about in passing – what would have happened if you took his offer. If his baby would now be in your belly instead. But after two years alone, understanding the power in saying no, the fantasy is no longer appetizing. There’s no fun in chasing something that has no life outside of a dark bedroom or bar corner. 

***

You see the married man one more time. It has been six years since that summer night when you made out until five am, since you cried while watching him dance under the twinkling lights. He’s in town for the holidays, and like every other time, you say yes to his offer for a drink, unable to resist your curiosity. He’s different, slower, tired from being a father. What doesn’t change: the amount of alcohol you drink at the bar, the way you sit side by side, thighs almost touching. You talk about your writing, his wedding. Naturally, you tell the married man about Nick, about the new life you’ve created with him, knowing the intimacy the married man showed you was empty and desperate, and not at all cozy and content like it is with Nick, in a way that you don’t have to work for. Around midnight, you close your tab first. His goodbye hug has a finality to it; it doesn’t ache, and you don’t wish for more. Perhaps you’ll see him again, and you two will talk about kids and work and those summer nights will become even hazier, the longing just a memory. Or maybe this is it, and you’ll move on and start a life with someone who sees you as more than a fun secret, someone to brush up against in the dark. You’re perfectly fine with that, too.

-Rachel Kolman

Rachel Kolman is a writer, editor, and instructor based in Philadelphia. She has an MFA in creative writing and teaches English at Drexel University. Her nonfiction can be seen in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Bustle, and more.