“Do you really want to hear about my former relationship?” he asked me back.
“Well, what should we talk about instead?”
“Funny that you should ask,” he told me. “Ava just sent over a list of conversational guidelines.” He opened his phone and scrolled. “Ok, here we are. For starters, I’m not supposed to say anything that I think is funny, because she reminds me that I’m not a comedian and no one else is laughing. She suggests that I ask you more about your childhood. Go for it,” he offered.
“I think I already told you everything.”
“Up north, ski team,” he said, nodding. “I guess we covered you, then. Next is your job but I’m supposed to be careful that Idon’t spend too much time talking about how I don’t have one, myself.”
“I already told you about that, too. I work from home.”
“As a bookkeeper,” he recalled.
“There’s not a lot more to say.”
“Then we’ll move on,” he replied. “Next is your family.”
“I don’t have any,” I answered.
“Like, you sprung from your father’s head? Zeus,” he explained, when I must have looked puzzled.
“No, I used to have a mother but she died when I was in college. I have a father, too, but he lives in Oregon with his second family.” They were really his first family, because he and my mother hadn’t been married or had a real relationship. He had impregnated her and moved on, and after dealing with me, she knew that she didn’t want any other children. “I have some half-siblings out there but I’ve never met them.”
“Ok, now I can respond that my parents are still married and I have two sisters. I’m in the middle of Ava and Liv.”
I already knew that, but I felt like we were on a roll so I kept it to myself.
“Liv got married and mostly stays up north with her husband. They have a kid, so I’m an uncle four times over,” Levi continued. To my surprise, he scrolled on his phone again and then held it up so I could see pictures of several kids and babies. “You don’t actually have to look.” He quickly clicked it closed before I could say that I wouldn’t have minded.
“Does Ava think that if you go out with someone, you’ll get your life back on track?” I asked.
“You don’t really beat around the bush, do you?” But again, that didn’t seem to make him angry. “I think Ava wants me to do something normal, and going out with a woman is a good start. I hadn’t realized that she was trolling around medical offices to find someone for me, but I appreciate her effort on my behalf. Also, she always thinks that she knows better than the rest of us, and she’s probably looking forward to giving herself another pat on the back if I end up with the person that she had picked out.”
“She said that she didn’t like Mary Evelyn.”
“We’re back to prior relationships? No, no one in my family was too fond of my ex. I liked her, though. She had her shit together and she didn’t mind that I didn’t.”
“Then why did you break up with her?”
He spun his cup, and watched the milky-brown liquid as it as it swirled around. “She wanted more for her future. She wanted what my sisters have and I wasn’t going to be able to change enough, fast enough, to make it happen. Plus…” His mouth twisted. “I also knew that she wanted someone else. The other explanation makes me sound very noble and mature, but the truth is that she wasn’t in love with me anymore. She was sticking around because she felt sorry for me.”
“That’s very demoralizing.”
“Why did your boyfriend dump you?” he asked.
“He didn’t want to deal with me, how I needed care. He doesn’t like stuff like that. Also, we were heading for it, anyway. Just before the accident…” I remembered that moment of brilliant clarity, when I’d known exactly what I had to do. I’d seen that I needed to be on my own, that I needed to get back to the woman I’d been before.
And then we’d hit the barrier.
“It’s better that we’re apart,” I concluded.
“It’s pretty shitty to leave someone who needs your help,” he pointed out. “That doesn’t say a lot about him as a person.”
“You’re right.”
“Did you talk to the therapist from your app about that?”
“No, because she quit and I got a new guy and I had to start over, then he quit, too, and I got tired of rehashing my problems. I was also past the reduced-price introductory period and I couldn’t pay so much. Did you ever talk to a professional about why you need the kickstart, or do you just ask your sisters for advice?”
