Love... Go for it

“I love love,” our boss
said to Sam and me. “But
you have to keep it out of
the office, O.K.?”
I looked at the floor and
nodded vigorously, my cheeks growing
hot. What could have made him say
that? All we’d done was giggle a few
times during an intern meeting.
I tried to laugh it off, but inside I was
fuming. How dare he use the word
“love” with us? What surer way to kill
a summer fling, or whatever this was,
than to call it love?
Love was the furthest thing from my
mind. After my first year at Yale, I had
landed this summer internship at a
lobbying organization in Washington,
not far from where I had grown up,
thinking I would live at home.
But soon I was spending nights at
Sam’s and telling my parents I was
staying with friends. A fellow intern, he
had just finished his junior year at the
University of Iowa.
After a few weeks, I asked him, “Are
you going to hook up with other
people?”
“Why, do you not want me to?”
“Not if you want to hook up with me.”
He seemed to consider that for a
moment. “O.K. then, I won’t.”
And the matter was settled in what I
considered a personal triumph, as I had
been long on angst and short on
assertiveness during my first year of
college. When Sam took me to dinner
at a fancy restaurant in Georgetown, I
realized it was my first real date, ever.
I liked it. And I liked him, probably too
much. We had instant physical
chemistry, and his old-fashioned values
combined with just enough frat-guy
attitude to keep me interested.
Our almost diametrically opposed
political views made for intense
arguments. He opened up to me in the
mornings, over egg and cheese
sandwiches, about the girls who had
messed with his head, and I told him
about my past year of partying and bad
judgment with men, even if I didn’t
really regret any of it.
With Sam I wanted to be the fun girl,
the one who didn’t care if a guy ever
spoke to her again after one night. I
tried not to care that he would be
leaving at summer’s end to return to
college, and that I still had three years
of school left. I didn’t ask if he thought
we could make it long distance because
I didn’t want to ruin what little time
we had left.
He took care of that worry when he
stopped calling or asking me to sleep
over. And I said nothing. After all, he
didn’t owe me anything. He said he
wouldn’t be with anyone else while he
was with me, but that didn’t mean he
wouldn’t stop being with me.
One night I went out dancing in the
Adams Morgan neighborhood of
Washington, had one too many tequila
shots and kissed a stranger on the
dance floor. Afterward, I went to Sam’s
apartment and pounded on the door,
waking him.
He stood there in his boxers with cold
eyes, as if he couldn’t remember who I
was.
“I kissed another guy at the club,” I
said, sobbing. “Don’t be mad.” What I
really meant was: Please be mad.
His mouth twisted. “I don’t care. Just
come to bed.”
And we lay there in the dark, on the
rickety futon in the living room, facing
away from each other, trying not to
touch.
The next time I saw him outside of the
office was to get a bottle of shampoo
back from his apartment. I didn’t really
need the shampoo, but I needed
something. So I offered him a ride to
the airport for his flight home in a few
days, which he surprisingly accepted.
That morning we loaded his suitcase
into the trunk of my car and I silently
drove over the bridge to Virginia, my
heart racing. There was so much I
wanted to say, and I was running out of
time.
Just before we pulled up to the
departure area, I choked out, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you want to be with me
these last few weeks?”
I don’t know if he turned to look at me;
I was gripping the wheel, my eyes
focused ahead.
He sighed. “I guess I just figured, what
was the point?” he said. “I knew I was
leaving.”
I had no response. And with that, he
got out of the car, walked away and
boarded his flight.
I tried to forget. All through a cruise to
Alaska with my family, the start of my
sophomore year and the parties and
guys that came along with it, I tried to
forget. But I couldn’t.
At the end of September, I was in a car
accident on the way back to school
from a trip home. My car crossed five
lanes of traffic, bounced off the
guardrail and crossed the same five
lanes back to the other side, where it
finally came to rest. Somehow,
miraculously, not a single car hit me.
When I got back to campus, I crawled
into bed and stayed there, shaking, for
hours, refusing visitors. Instead, I
opened my laptop and gave in to the
urge to contact Sam. I instant-messaged
him to say I had been in a car accident,
knowing he’d have to respond.
And he did. And we talked, first about
the accident, then over the next few
days about other things. And soon,
before I knew it, we were what I
suppose you would call friends.
He was different from how he had
been in Washington — lighter, warmer,
funnier. Happier. And with half a
country between us, I was able to get
beyond my fake fun-girl persona.
When I couldn’t sleep, I spun out long
fantasies of us getting back together
and having a long-distance relationship,
fantasies I told to no one. But my
friends knew about us, and they were
concerned that I stayed home to talk to
him instead of going out.
In November I discovered we were
both attending the same one-day
conference in Boston, and I began to
obsess over seeing him there. My friend
who drove me up from Yale asked
what I wanted from Sam, and I couldn’t
answer.
For most of the day, Sam and I just
glanced at each other across crowded
rooms, and we only had time for a brief
hello. The 10 hours passed quickly, and
it was almost time to leave. But I was
panicking. It was too anticlimactic.
There was no way this was how the day
would end — it just couldn’t, not this
time.
I told Sam I needed to talk to him, and
he followed me into an empty hallway.
He stood there patiently for what he
must have thought would be some kind
of dramatic speech. But once again I
couldn’t find the words for what I
wanted, so instead I stood on my toes,
looked up and kissed him hard on the
mouth. And he kissed me back.
I broke away, out of breath, not able to
hide my smile. He looked surprised and
smiled, too.
“I have to go,” I said. I don’t remember
what he said because I was running to
catch my bus, and then I was sitting
and staring out the window in a daze
the whole way home.
The next time we spoke, I gave him an
ultimatum: “Tell me how you feel
about me, or I’m moving on.” And he
said, “There’s a letter on the way.”
I checked my mailbox three, four times
a day during final exams until, on the
last day before break, when it still
hadn’t arrived, I begged him to email
it. He initially refused but relented
when I reminded him that I was about
to leave the country for several weeks.
When it came, it was an old-fashioned
love letter of the most glorious kind.
All the things I had hoped he would say
were there on the page. How he loved
me and didn’t want me to be with
anyone else. But wrapped around those
beautiful new words was the familiar
refrain: “I’m far away” and “I don’t
know if I want a long-distance
relationship.”
I didn’t know whether to be elated or
devastated.
This time I was not going to let it stand.
The girl who kissed him in that hallway
wasn’t going to give up. I called him
and said: “No, it doesn’t work that way.
You get to have me, or you have to give
me up.”
And yet he still would not commit. He
said he wouldn’t be the one to define
us and that he was ambivalent about a
relationship.
But I wasn’t. So I took the leap for both
of us. “Let’s do it,” I said. “We can do
it.”
“O.K.,” he said, uncertainly.
We called and chatted online. We
boarded planes. We did whatever it
took to make it work, until the distance
between us closed.
And here we are, still doing it, 10 years,
one wedding and one child later.