It wasn't until two weeks before my heart surgery that I told anyone I was having it. Even then, I wondered who really needed to know. Certainly not all my Facebook friends. My brothers, obviously, but one of them was in NYC, the other in Ohio. I called, and they were suitably concerned, but the action was offstage for them. My boss—of course I had to tell him I'd be using some sick leave. Just a minor scheduling glitch for him. Friends—a few from work, a few from college days, a few drinking buddies. But only a few.

Parents—long gone, unfortunately, my father from a heart attack in 2010, my mother from COVID at the very start of the pandemic. Wife, partner, girlfriend—not applicable. It was starting to seem a little pathetic how short the list was. I had to remind myself: Quality not quantity. I was still friendly with a few exes, and I hesitated before including them in the group email I sent. But it seemed like it could be awkward if they found out later from someone else, so in the end I typed their addresses in the CC field and hit Send.

Almost everyone answered right away—some worried, some upbeat, some just going through the motions. The day after I sent the email, I was listening to music after work—Dire Straits, fittingly enough—when my phone beeped with a text from Jessica, one of the exes. She lived in Texas then.

WTF, Liam. I'm booking a flight. I can be there when you get home from the hospital. LMK

I called and told her that she didn't have to come, that my doctor said I'd be able to take care of myself by the time they discharged me. That wasn't exactly what he'd said, but it was a close call between my fear of dying and my fear of Jessica.

She wasn't listening to any excuses, though—"If you can't stand having me there, I'll just fly back home—" and I gave in. Maybe I was more nervous about the surgery than I thought I was. It just seemed like it would be smart to have someone there in case I had a stroke, or a heart attack, or a hemorrhage, or one of the many other things they said I probably wouldn't have. And Jessica might not have been my first choice as a caregiver, but she was the one who offered.


Jessica: Fifteen years earlier, when we were in our twenties, we'd both worked at a Hertz location here in Santa Cruz. I was just paying my rent while I tried to get a teaching job at UCSC. She was the branch manager, trying to work her way up to corporate. The location was always understaffed, so we spent a lot of time together, and we had to depend on each other. She was a tough boss—smart, hard-working, efficient, but demanding. She was always pushing for more, always insisting that things had to be done her way, from the script for answering the phone to the shoes I wore.

Sometimes her forcefulness got her in trouble. She was not good at picking her battles, whether with employees, customers, or upper management. She admitted this—she claimed it was the Highland Scottish DNA on her mother's side. "Clan MacDonald," she told me once in a not terrible imitation of a Glasgow burr, "We're born fighting. We'll die on any hill whatsoever."

"That didn't work so well for your people at Glencoe or Culloden," I said. "What makes you think it's going to work with the regional manager?" She'd been arguing with headquarters for months that our fees for one-way rentals were too high.

She laughed. I wasn't sure whether she got the historical references, but I supposed the point was clear enough. "I don't think I'm going to win," she said. "I just think I'm right."

When did she not think she was right? Never. But I had the job under control, I didn't fight her on the small things, and she mostly trusted me. Possibly she saw the value of having someone on staff who was more easy-going than herself. Gradually we got close, in a co-worker kind of way. We started going out for drinks after work. She was fun when she relaxed, adventurous, cynically witty, not much of a reader but an expert on movies and television. Eventually I asked her out—dinner at Shadowbrook, a Wes Anderson film, a walk under the stars on the beach near the Boardwalk.

She was a Leo, born in the Year of the Tiger, and while I don't attach much significance to that kind of thing, she did. She had three cats, all of them like her, or vice versa—bold, friendly, occasionally cuddly, preternaturally willful and stubborn. She even resembled them physically—plump but supple, soft dark hair, a round face with a diminutive nose and large wide-set eyes.

It wasn't long before I realized I'd have even less say as a boyfriend than I did as an employee. She was going to decide where we ate dinner, how long my hair would be, which female friends I would have, which car I would buy, which clothes I would wear, when and where and how we'd have sex. The more I resisted, the more she dug in. It was painful to be on the receiving end, but almost more painful to see how it hurt her not to be in control. As strong as she came across, she was fragile somewhere down deep. She'd had a rough childhood—bankrupt, alcoholic father; controlling born-again mother. The father was dead now, and Jessica hadn't spoken to the mother in years. I figured that background explained a lot, but the explanation didn't make it any easier to deal with her.

We were together for a year. It was pretty good when it was good—Sunday brunches on the Pacific Garden Mall after a long morning of lovemaking; cuddling with her and the cats while we binge-watched Deadwood; road trips up and down Route One in luxury cars from the rental company. But it was awful when it was bad. There were fights, there were week-long silences, there was delusional jealousy. Once, we were in an expensive restaurant in San Francisco, a place she'd been dying to go, and she got the idea the waitress was coming on to me. She stormed out of the restaurant and drove home to Santa Cruz by herself, leaving me with a 75-mile Uber ride. Another time she threw my phone into the ocean at Steamer Lane because I wouldn't let her put a tracking app on it.

I don't like conflict. I'll put up with a lot to keep the peace, but there's a limit. She had long-term plans for us, which was flattering in a way, but mostly terrifying. We never even got as far as moving in together. To this day, I'm not sure how she'd describe the breakup. It started with her wanting me to get a tiger's head tattoo over my heart to match the one she had over hers. I wasn't dead set against it, but I didn't love the idea. I said I'd think about it. That wasn't good enough for her. I tried to put off the decision; she went pale with anger and started listing the things about me that disappointed her. There were quite a few. That made me sad, but somehow it didn't make me want to give in. In the end, she was definitely the one who said, Fuck you, it's over, or words to that effect. But did she know how ready I was to hear that, how glad I was that I didn't have to be the one to say it?

I left the rental job, and we lost track of each other. She moved to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, to Chicago. Five years later, we ran into each other by chance in the airport in Denver. Both our flights were cancelled because of a blizzard; we got drunk on margaritas at a Cuban restaurant and had sex in my hotel room. I couldn't tell you whose idea it was. There was a moment when the tequila kicked in where we looked at each other in the orange glow of a tabletop candle, and we both knew it was going to happen. Our feet met under the table.

"Well, this was a dumb idea," she said in the morning when we had a fight over where to go for breakfast.

"Yep. Never again." I tried to get away with just a fist-bump, but instead she gave me a token kiss and slammed the door on her way out of the room.

But a few months later I started getting emails from her—never calls, never texts, never letters, always emails—mostly when something went wrong for her. That seemed to be happening a lot. Since our time together in Santa Cruz, she'd gotten promoted and transferred, then demoted and transferred, finally fired. She followed the same trajectory everywhere—promoted, maybe more than once, eventually fired. She spent some time on unemployment and some time in rehab for a cocaine habit. She went through a bunch of useless boyfriends, or maybe vice versa. Girlfriends, too, seemed to come and go. She was quick to bond with new people, but it rarely lasted. One by one, her cats died. New cats replaced them, and they died too.

Not saying my life was a rousing success either—plenty of failed relationships and career struggles. The teaching job at UCSC never happened. But I had a steady job in the admin office of the university, and I made some good money on the side tutoring history grad students. I liked the little apartment I rented near the beach in Capitola. I surfed, I rode my gravel bike, I read poetry, history, and cyberpunk. I was working on a book about Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation in the Golden Hinde. I drank a lot of craft beer at The Catalyst, and I scoured the internet for the perfect woman. (She'd love the outdoors, she'd be beautiful or at least elegant, kind-hearted but a little sarcastic, smarter than me but not by too much… and of course, not bossy.)

Was this life everything I'd ever dreamed of? No, but I was okay with that, as long as I wasn't going to die anytime soon. There was still time for things to get better. That teaching job could still materialize; a publisher could show interest in the Drake book; that perfect woman could walk into my life.

I can't say that Jessica figured in these hopeful visions. Sometimes I'd recall a good day we'd had, or even a few good hours—a walk in the woods to the epicenter of the Loma Prieta quake; making love in a huge bed at the Dream Inn overlooking Monterey Bay—and wonder why it couldn't have been like that all the time. But I knew. She'd always had some idea of how I should be, and she'd kept hammering at it until one of us, usually me, angrily gave in.

Still, I cared about her, and her emails worried me. She was so up and down that I sometimes seriously thought she might try to kill herself. In one email she'd be on the verge of landing a job with a six-figure salary; I'd no sooner have congratulated her than the next email would arrive with some horrible saga of disillusionment, humiliation, and paranoia.

Did I keep responding to this craziness? Yes. Hard to say why; I think of myself as a no-nonsense person. (Okay, maybe a no-nonsense-up-to-a-point person, or a not-too-much-nonsense person.) Partly it was that I still remembered her as the pretty, energetic, often charming young woman she'd been when we were first together; partly it was that she was far away, and the overbearing bully she could also be was no threat via email. Partly too, I was sorry that things weren't working out for her, and I admired her for the way she kept on trying, insisting that they could.

And it's not like our friendship was a one-way street, though some of my other friends thought so. Yes, I had to ignore some of her more off-kilter beliefs—astrology, of course; various conspiracy theories about COVID, left-wing and right-wing both; an intense hatred of dogs. I wrote more than a few work references for her that weren't completely accurate. A few times I even gave her money when she was out of work and couldn't pay her rent. But she was a generous friend in her own way—she always sent presents at Christmas and on my birthday, and despite her self-absorption, she had an eerie talent for knowing what I needed before I realized it myself—a wool jersey for cold-weather rides, a new book about Christopher Marlowe's career as a spy, a gift card from O'Neill's Surf Shop.

She sometimes called me her best friend, which was a compliment, I knew, but a little alarming for both our sakes.


As for the surgery—didn't want to dwell on it then, still don't. A heart valve problem—I'd had it for years, apparently, but when I hit forty the doctors suddenly decided I could croak at any minute if they didn't fix it. I was out of the hospital after four days. The timing was awkward, a Monday morning, and I had trouble finding someone to take me home on short notice. In the end it was my boss who did it. He set up my desktop computer so I could work remotely—"Whenever you're ready, no rush—" and then, of course, he had to get back to the office.

Jessica arrived an hour later. She was dressed to kill—heels, a short blue dress that matched her eyes, a pale blue cardigan. I didn't think it was for my benefit—she always treated flying as a big occasion, like maybe she'd end up sitting next to a Silicon Valley venture capital guy who was on the rebound.

"You look great," I said truthfully.

"Thanks. You look terrible."

Also true. I had a surgical drain poking out through my clothes, which were the same ones I'd worn to the hospital. I hadn't shaved since the day before the surgery, and I was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. Any change in position hurt like hell. My ribs and my sternum made scary little creaking noises as they tried to heal.

She leaned over the couch to hug me. We both winced.

"Are you in a lot of pain?" she asked.

"Some."

"Too much to take a shower? Because you need one."

"I'm not supposed to, not yet."

She frowned. It was the expression that had launched a thousand fights. I'd hoped not to see it quite so early in her visit. But it only lasted a second—she squinched up her cheeks and turned away. After my next nap, I woke up to find a sponge, a towel, and a basin full of warm soapy water on the table next to me.

All right, I thought, fair enough. And I did feel better when I'd wiped the hospital grime off the body parts I could reach without tearing open my incision.

Jessica stayed in the kitchen while I cleaned up. I heard cupboard doors opening and closing, water running, the garbage disposal grinding. When I was done, she came out and took the basin away, smiling just a little.

"Not much food in the place," she said.

"I guess I was thinking takeout." An improvisation. I hadn't really thought about it at all.

"Maybe I'll do a little shopping. I can cook a few things and freeze the leftovers for you."

"Um, okay." This was uncharted territory. I couldn't remember her ever cooking for me. Certainly I'd never cooked for her. That would have seemed like a step toward living together, which had never gotten out of "maybe someday" limbo for us. And yet here we were. "Take my Visa. Wallet's on the nightstand in the bedroom."

"I saw."

"Just don't go crazy," I said. I'd paid her airfare; she hadn't done a lot of shopping around for cheap fares.

"Don't worry, I won't buy any vegetables." She smirked.

When she got back, she had five bags of groceries. I staggered into the kitchen to help her put them away. A whole chicken, a massive slab of ground beef, two dozen eggs, French bread, wheat bread, frozen shrimp, a bag of apples, a gallon of milk, a five-pound sack of flour, little bottles of spices I'd never heard of, pasta in various forms, butter, baking soda, onions, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes; toilet paper, paper towels, dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, sponges, a glass baking dish, a mop, dish towels, a toaster because apparently the one I already had was too grungy…

"Okay," I said, "Clearly I'm not going to starve. But are you sure you didn't forget anything?"

It was just a gentle tease, but I should have known better. Questioning Jessica's competence seldom ended well.

"I did the best I could." She stared at me. The Frown started to form. "You'll thank me later. That, or you'll throw out everything with any nutrition in it and go out to Jack in the Box."

Jack in the Box—a classic Jessica touchstone, a reference to the first big fight we'd had as a couple. We'd made a date to watch the Academy Awards together at her apartment—the plan was for me to pick up Thai take-out on my way there. But when I got to the restaurant, the food wasn't there. They'd lost my order. I was already running late, and Jess had made a point of telling me to be on time to see all the celebrities walk down the red carpet. Long story short, I panicked and showed up at her place with two grease-sodden bags from Jack in the Box.

"Are you kidding me?" she said, laughing and frowning at the same time.

I tried to explain, but she wouldn't hear it. I might as well have been a customer returning a car late and trying to wriggle out of paying the extra charges.

"You really expect me to eat that crap?" She rolled her eyes. "That is so insulting."

"Come on, Jess. You're too high class for burgers and fries?"

"I'm high class enough for you to call me and ask me what I'd like to eat."

"Okay, fine. What would you like to eat? We'll order in."

"Too late. Too fucking late." She flicked her remote, and the television went black just as Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin appeared on the screen. "Take your burgers and go."

So the mention of Jack in the Box now was a big red flag.

"It's fine," I said. "What's for dinner?"

She squinted at me, clearly suspecting mockery, but finally nodded. "Not sure, I'm still working on the menu plan. I was thinking Chicken Marengo… or maybe cacciatore?"

"Those are options?"

"Yes." Steely pressure from her blue eyes.

"Great," I said. "Honestly, I had no idea you could cook."

"I've learned a few things over the years. You might be surprised."

And I was surprised at how good the Chicken Marengo was—not just better than hospital food, but the best meal I'd had for a long time. I told her so, and she blushed.

"I can do the housewife thing when I feel like it," she said.


Later, after she'd washed the dishes and finalized the next day's menu, she changed the blue dress for leggings and an oversized Chicago Bears jersey.

"Where am I sleeping?" she asked after a couple of yawns.

There was a queen-sized bed in the apartment's lone bedroom, but in the few hours I'd been home from the hospital I'd mostly been on the living room couch. I'd collected and carefully arranged everything I needed by way of pillows, blankets, medications, reading material, and remote controls.

"You take the bedroom," I said. "I'm good on the couch."

"Seriously?" A frown—not the one that started fights, this was an expression I couldn't identify—dented her forehead.

Did it cross my mind that I might be comfortable in that bed with her? Of course. Not that I could do anything while I was there, but just her warmth and softness would have been good medicine. And maybe she was inclined the same way—who knew? But I remembered what had happened in that hotel room in Denver, and the verdict we'd mutually arrived at.

"Seriously," I said.

"Okay." The unidentifiable frown disappeared. "Night night."

"Night night."


She stayed for a week, until I'd had my first post-op appointment and gotten a passing grade. It was an odd time. I was glad to have her there, no doubt, but I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for us to go back to our old head-butting ways. We never did, and I couldn't decide if she'd somehow mellowed over time, or if the change was in me, or if it was just a one-off interlude because of the situation.

And while we spent a lot of time together, it wasn't really shared time. I slept a lot, read a lot, answered some emails for work. She did a lot of cooking, obviously, a lot of cleaning, and a lot of work on her laptop for her job. She had a few stories to tell about that—she was a loan officer for a bank in Amarillo; she hated it but at least she hadn't been fired. We did some catching up about people we'd worked with at Hertz, and we watched a few movies together, mostly her obscure favorites. But even then she was always on her phone or hovering over one of her kitchen projects. There were a couple of moments, sitting next to each other on the couch, when we smiled at each other and it felt almost like it had when we first started dating. Mostly, though, you could have taken us for two people who weren't that interested in each other. Whether that was actually true or not—hard to say.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was a win—that I'd been worried she would turn my recuperation into a cozy captivity, simply take my life over and refuse to go away.

At the end of the week, she took a red-eye flight back to Texas, and as I walked out with her in the dark to meet her Uber, we were both tongue-tied. I was feeling almost normal now, and I was a little embarrassed that I hadn't in fact had any medical emergencies. With hindsight, I hadn't really needed her to be there—but she had been, at no small inconvenience to herself. I knew that was something I shouldn't take for granted.

"Can't thank you enough," I said finally, and we hugged.

"Any time." She nodded, looking up at me and blinking. "Love you, Liam."

"Love you too, Jess," I said, but she was turning away and I'm not sure she even heard me.

The driver stepped between us to open the door for her, and she was gone.


A month after she left, I got a phone call from her. A phone call—unusual.

"Liam," she said, "I met someone."

"Of course you did." Needless to say, I'd heard this before. "Are you in a bar?" I could hear glassware clinking, people shouting, the background thump of a Rolling Stones song.

"Yes!" she shouted. "He went to get our drinks. Liam, I think this is the real thing."

"That's great," I said. "What's his name?"

"Thad. I met him on Tinder."

"Sounds promising," I said, thinking the opposite.

"Gotta go," she blurted. "I'll email you!"

The email, two weeks later:

I AM ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED. Will be moving from this redneck hellhole to NYC!!!

And Liam, I have you to thank. I know you don't believe in fate or karma or anything but the theory of evolution and the law of averages. But how is it a coincidence that for once in my hitherto miserable life I do a seriously good deed (taking care of you after your operation) and then almost immediately afterward, the internet washes the love of my life onto my desert island here in fucking West Texas? Riddle me that, Batman.

I couldn't help but laugh. Karma? It needed a long scholarly reply with footnotes, or else a very short enthusiastic one with a heart emoji. I knew Jessica well enough to choose the latter.


So here I am at her wedding, standing at the church door, waiting to walk her down the aisle and hand her over to Thad. I met him last night, had a beer with him at the hotel bar. Nice guy, not very articulate; tall, thin, with a scruffy beard. But he has a trust fund, so she should be okay for money even if it doesn't work out.

I don't know if he understands what he's getting into, but if he has any qualms he didn't admit it. He seems to really care about her, though he mentioned that she could be a little bossy. I just nodded. Not my place to tell him the stories I could. And again, like I saw when she was taking care of me, maybe she's mellowed and she's not the Tiger Girlfriend she used to be. If that's true, I'm a little wistful for what could have been with her and me. Maybe I got things all wrong, and inarticulate Thad's stolen a perfect woman who was meant for me.

Still, I'm skeptical. I wish them luck, but I wonder how long this marriage will last. Even if I buy into her idea that finding true love with Thad was her karmic reward for taking care of me when I needed it, who's to say just how much karma she earned? Maybe enough for happily ever after; maybe just enough for a wedding, a honeymoon on Kauai, and a competent divorce lawyer.

But as she steps out of the limo in her pastel blue wedding dress, the smile on her face tells me that she likes her chances. And who am I to argue?