My career and my marriage were never on perpendicular timelines, thank God. I had been building a self-publishing business for years before I even met Gabriel, so when I stopped writing after his death, I was just as shocked as everyone else—though, in an equally real sense, I wasn’t at all. Just because my job was there didn’t mean it wasn’t enhanced after Gabriel came into my life and pulled me out of my own ass. If not for him and his lectures about stream of consciousness and not obsessing over an unattainable perfection, I might have remained lost in the potential mire that is self-publishing. He helped me find myself professionally. He helped me blossom as an artist.

We met at a bookstore in 2009, and in hindsight, I suppose it was the kind of meeting people “ooh”ed and “awww”ed at when they read a romance novel or watched a romcom. I had gone into Barnes and Noble sneak a copy of my first novel Down, Down, Down, onto the shelves. I had oh-so-stealthily hidden them in my messenger bag and waited for the sales girl to leave the thriller section before swooping in.

In hindsight I had no idea what I expected would come of this hair-brained idea. If they tried to buy the book then the store would realize it wasn’t in their system and turn the purchase away. Maybe I hoped the business cards I slipped inside each one like bookmarks would drive traffic to what was, at the time, the only place to buy my work: Amazon.

At this point in time, KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing, in case you want to know. Even if you don’t) was only two years old and the real boom in self-publishing was still a few years off, so even if I could afford professional marketing (and at 19, I very much could not. Especially not while trying to pay off a college degree I never finished) there weren’t many options available. A girl makes due with what she’s got.

Or maybe, and probably more likely given my youthful wide-eyed optimism, I thought that if enough people tried buying the book and failed, then the chain would get curious about me. They would contact me through the info on the card and beg me to let them sell my books. Then I’d be given in-person events, the fans, the movie deal, and finally my inevitable marriage to Ryan Reynolds. I was hilariously starry-eyed.

As I lurked between the shelves, watching customers gloss over my book, a hand came down lightly on my shoulder. I jumped—and in the interest of total honesty, there is a distinct possibility I might have made an “eep!” noise—and whipped around. Behind me stood a tall, broad-shouldered guy with a golden tan and dusty yellow hair that looked like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be brown or blond. But it was those eyes that made me unsteady. They were the brightest, greenest eyes I’d ever seen.

He rained an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

At the time I had no idea what compelled me to do it. I bashfully told him my plan. Whatever it was.

Once the story concluded, the man who I would marry within the year made a face and told me all the things I now know that made it a dumb plan. I watched, shocked, as he went and collected all the books off the shelf. He took it on himself to open my bag and discreetly stuff them back in.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“The store will never let people leave with these, and I doubt a lot would try that hard. A better idea is to sell them in the parking lot and at a discounted price. Why come in here and pay twenty dollars when they can get a book for cheaper outside?”

In hindsight, his plan was only marginally better than mine, but after we went outside to try it I did move half my inventory and went home with a date for that Saturday.

Gabe was one of those guys with big ideas—the kind of spirit that always wanted to soar higher and higher. As a result, those around him were usually floating too. Before I met him, except for the occasional scheme like what I tried to play with the bookstore, I was very much on the ground. He gave me wings enough to fly too. But I think in that way we were perfect for each other. He got my feet off the earth, and I kept him from flying into the sun. I can’t think of any particular example of what I mean; it’s just how I felt with him.

It was no huge surprise, to us or our loved ones, that we got married eight months into dating. What little of my family I still talked to at the time (and a few friends, though always jokingly, but with a little glimmer of fear in their eyes, since I was just nineteen) kept asking if I was pregnant. Funny joke all right. Ha-ha. Though I had no way of knowing it then, that joke would quickly become so much less funny. And frankly, it was never that funny, to begin with. Especially from my family, whom I was estranged from for good but personal reasons. Mentioning it here would be an act of giving a shit, and that was something I hadn’t done in regards to them in a long, long time.

We started trying to have a baby around late 2011 or early 2012, right around when my novel Walter hit the Amazon Bestseller List. I was never number one, but I was high enough on the list to be able to say it happened. Reviews and purchases of my other works were starting to come in at a steady pace, and I’d begun to feel less like posting my work online was just me kidding myself.

Gabriel and I had always assumed it would come easily for us. Simply as people, we were so disgustingly in love that it was hard to do anything without wanting to touch. I don’t just mean it in a sexual way (though God knows there was plenty of that.) We held hands in public. He put his arm around me both when we went out to a movie or stayed in. I rubbed his neck on car rides—and of course, the sex was mind-blowing ninety-five percent of the time. I believed then as I do now that every couple has that five percent margin of error reserved for when things just don’t work the way they should. It happens. That’s life.

It took us three years to get pregnant—and he never even knew.

My friends came around often to visit, though their unease around me was palpable. Despite my constant barrage of snapping at her to get out of my kitchen, Kelly tried to make me big batches of food so all I would have to do when she or the others weren’t there was put it in the oven or microwave. Danielle cleaned my house. Bethany took care of my bills and finances no matter how much I didn’t want her to see my money. Melissa tried to get me to talk about my writing since I hadn’t done so in several months and usually I was very vocal with them about my work. Melissa was always the more perceptive one of our little group. I guess she’d have to be since she worked as a social worker. In hindsight, Melissa was the first and only one to see the impact coming.

One weekend in June of that year, after Gabriel had been dead for nearly six months, Melissa and the others showed up at my doorstep dressed in their sluttiest and finest. Breasts spilling out over the tops of their dresses, bottom hems riding up when they walked so you always wondered how long it would be before someone flashed their business. I had to admit, as I watched them all walk in looking fabulous while I remained mired in my grief wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt full of holes, I was jealous of how sculptured their legs looked in those stiletto heels.

“We’re going out,” Melissa said.

“I don’t want to.”

“Too bad, because you are.”

Melissa and the other girls took me by the arm and dragged me up the stairs to my bedroom, where they promptly set to work making me look presentable. Bethany shoved me into the bathroom and told me to take a shower, and while I did that the other girls were busy putting together my outfit.

I showered slowly, if you can call standing under the water as it sprayed into my face “showering.” Since Gabriel’s death, I hardly had the energy or interest necessary to do much of anything, and the way I just stood there while the shower head dampened my hair was much the same as the way I did anything else. I filled my days with motions of life, but not really living. I watched television without really seeing what was happening in front of me. I read books without absorbing any of it. Really the only thing I did well anymore was sleep, and I did that quite a lot. Actually, most of those six months since his death were spent in a state of such utter exhaustion that I routinely slept for fourteen hours every day. I was always tired. It was as if the very act of living was exhausting.

Once out of the shower I allowed myself to be guided about in the process of getting ready. Kelly shoehorned me into my tightest dress. Melissa dried and styled my hair while Danielle did my make-up, and Bethany adorned me with accessories. I was their living doll. Though the “living” part was a very loose term.

Together we went to a club downtown called SPASM. I thought dully about how that was an awful name for a club. We stood in line for forty-five minutes outside the club before the bouncer waved us in.

From the moment we stepped into the club proper it was as if my senses were bombarded by every little thing: the lights flashing through the darkness burned my eyes. The music throbbing from the speakers made my ears feel like they were being shredded into ribbons. I wanted to wrench them off my head just to make the noise stop.

The girls guided me to the bar and ordered me the strongest drink they had. Danielle told the bartender that tonight we were there to cheer me up, but he didn’t care one bit. I’m not even convinced he heard her.

After we downed our drinks—me much slower than everyone else, then much quicker—I was shepherded to the dance floor.

Being around so many people, and all of them so close to me, was torture. I’d become too aware of everything. The stink of sweat from the strangers who encircled my group, the agonizingly loud music that disrupted my heartbeat. Even the feel of the fabric of my dress was heightened to the point that I would have torn it from my body just to have some relief.

I hated it here. I wanted to curl up and weep until they took me back home. I wanted to die.

“Hey!” Bethany shouted, touching my arms as we danced. She turned me to face my left. “That guy is totally checking you out!”

At first I didn’t see who she meant. There was just a sea of writhing bodies all around us. Faces blurred together into a great, indistinguishable mass.

But then I spotted him.

He wasn’t particularly attractive, actually. I like my men rugged and tough, but this guy took it too far. He looked almost like he could’ve played Gaston at Disneyland. He wouldn’t even need any stage make-up or anything.

I told my friends as much, determined not to give that guy a second glance.

Melissa took me by the arms. The look in her eye knocked me off kilter.

“Blaire, please. I want to help you feel better. I know no guy is going to hold a candle to Gabriel, but you have to move on. Gabe would want you to mope over him forever.”

Spoken like someone who still has the love of her life I thought, shocked by my own bitterness.

I nodded and went to talk to Wannabe Gaston. If nothing came of it at least no one could say I didn’t try.

Up close he looked more like Gaston rather than less, with his hard cleft chin and coiffed black hair that gleamed in the bar light from greasy hair product. He had the first four buttons undone on his purple silk shirt and wisps of salt-and-pepper hair spilled out, curling over the buttons. He asked my name, what I did for a living—all the things one would expect from a bar pick-up.

He turned out to not be nearly as repulsive as I first thought. He was funny and seemed genuinely nice. I expected him to be full of himself and only want to talk about things he was interesting in while I sat on the stool next to him atrophying. But no, we had more in common than I anticipated. He wouldn’t have been so bad to take home if we’d met at a different time—

The thought came out of nowhere and rocketed me back off the stool. I don’t know how graceful I looked or if I made a complete ass of myself, but all I knew for certain is that one minute I was sitting down and the next I was on my feet. I think I might have made some half-baked excuse, or maybe I didn’t, and was fighting through the crowd back to my friends within minutes. I didn’t even throw a tertiary glance back at him.

It was too hot—too loud—the tag on my dress like a knife continuously slicing itself into my back—and if I didn’t leave soon I would end up a mess on the floor.

Kelly and Melissa stood together off to the side. Bethany and Danielle were nowhere to be found, probably on the dance floor. Shaking, I sighed with tearful relief and went to Kelly and Melissa.

“ . . . I know, she’s impossible to deal with,” Kelly said, shouting to be heard over the music.

I froze.

I was still far enough away that they didn’t notice me, and thanks to them having to yell to be heard even between each other, eavesdropping was completely possible. I struggled through the swimming feeling in my skull long enough to remain still and hidden.

“I thought maybe bringing her out tonight would get her back to her old self,” Melissa said. “But I don’t know. We might be pushing her too soon, but . . .”

“No, I get it.” Kelly nodded in agreement with Melissa’s unstated point. “Look, I’m going to say something I know we’ve all been thinking and I know its awful. She’s just—she’s not fun to be around anymore. It wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t always yelling at us and trying to push us away, but she does and frankly, it’s hard to want to be around her. Jesus, I’m just glad we can finally talk about it.”

Melissa sighed. “You’re right. I feel like shit for it but—”

I couldn’t listen anymore. Rage had rooted deeply in my heart and propelled me forward. I felt separate from myself. Watching someone who wasn’t me do something I never would have done in a hundred years. I’d walked up to Melissa and smacked her.

The rest of the bar kept dancing and the music kept playing. We weren’t the first female confrontation that bar would see and we weren’t the last. Melissa blinked at me with wide eyes and her mouth hanging wide open.

“Try losing the person you love most in this whole fucking world,” I said. “And then tell me how much fun you are.” I started to leave, then turned back to them for one last word. “By the way, it’s only been six months—I’m sorry I couldn’t bounce back in a day.”

I left by myself, hailing a cab outside the club and having the nice hairy driver bring me home. By the time he pulled up to the curb outside, I had collapsed into hard tears in the backseat. He let the car sit for a minute before turning around so he could look directly at me, propping his arm against the back of the driver’s seat.

“Whatever he did, he’s not worth it.”

“He died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He paused. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but I had a girlfriend die when I was fifteen. Car accident. She thought it would be fun to drag race some asshole and she ended up wrapping her car around a tree.”

“Did . . . did you ever get over it?” I asked through the tears and the snot collecting on my lower lip. I tried to wipe it away on the back of my hand but felt like I was just making a bigger mess. The driver plucked a wrapped up travel packet of tissues and handed me the whole thing.

“I don’t think anyone really does. Grief comes and goes. Sometimes you have good days and sometimes you have bad days. You don’t ever get over it but, instead, you figure out how to live with it. My girlfriend has been with me ever since she died, I just can’t see her. Same with your boyfriend—”

“Husband.”

“Sorry. Your husband. He’s with you, always, even though you can’t see or hear him. I don’t know if that’s any consolation, but I thought I ought to say something.”

“No, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me since it happened. What do I owe you?”

The cab driver hesitated, drawing his fat hand over his thick mustache. At length, he shook his head.

“Nothin’. This one’s on me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thank you.”

The cab driver nodded at me as I slipped out of his cab and went upstairs.

I never called to try and patch things up with my friends. I didn’t see why I should.

They must have had the same thought, because they never called me either. That was the last I ever saw Kelly, Melissa, Danielle, and Bethany. I didn’t shed a single tear over it.