Ricky

A life.

A job.

A girlfriend.

As I stare at the bedroom ceiling through the dark, I go through that list. Life—postponed. Job—gone. Girlfriend—gone. Rolling for the hundredth time, I punch the pillow into submission and groan.

It isn’t that Marilyn and I had been a couple for long, but from the first dinner, we had a familiarity that made things seem comfortable. In a Venn diagram, our overlapping knowledge and ...