My cousin told me Matt was married.
Or maybe it was my auntsome family member who still followed him on Instagram, even though I didnt.
Oh, I replied in between bites of a hot dog grilled minutes earlier by my dad.
That night, as I lay in my childhood bedroom, I thought about searching his name.
I rolled over and went to sleep instead.
I cant tell you the exact moment we met.
The newspaper was the only thing I liked about the large East Coast college where Id ended up.
Id made a mistake choosing to go there.
What if I got there and everyone was better than me?
So far, I hated it.
The newspaper, though, was the one bright spot.
My assignments took me from museums to professors offices to the local police precinct.
I applied for an editor position.
When I found out, alone in my dorm room, that Id gotten it, I finally smiled.
Nothing happened that summer, either, when I returned to Connecticut and he went back to Long Island.
Yet, it always felt like we were drawn to each other.
A photo he took during the 2012 marathon bombing inspired an essay on the website of a national magazine.
Boston, though, was never our plan.
The summer before my senior year, I landed an internship atVanity Fair.
It felt like a seismic shift forward for both of us.
Matt had enough professional connections at that point that finding a job in New York would be easy.
Maybe we could both make it there?
Everyone stared as I walked by.
(At the time, only the senior women wore heels.
That night, Matt grabbed my hands and looked me straight in the eye: you might do this.
He took me out to dinner to celebrate at one of the nicest restaurants in town.
We shared a bowl of lobster rigatoni and drank rose as the sun set over the water.
I remember being happy.
But I also remember not being the least bit content.
I had so much work left to turn my small life into a big one.
I split a studio in the financial district with a friend also working in a low-paying creative field.
She got the living room and a window.
I got the home office and a door.
How gorgeous those grunt years were.
Garneris a terrible word.
(They had a list of terrible words: chortled, glitz, plethora, opine, sleaze.
I printed out a copy and hung it on the corkboard behind my desk.)
Id often get to work as early as 7 a.m. and leave 14 hours later.
Sometimes, yes, I had work to do.
Other times, I just didnt want to leave.
Matt and I had settled into a routine: Regular movie nights.
Dinner at the sushi restaurant near his Midtown apartment.
Sleepovers two or three times a week.
(Unlike me, he had a window.)
Plus, everyone loved him.
My ailing 98-year-old grandmother told me it was her dying wish to see us married.
Our biggest problem was that I was more in love with my future than with him.
But cracks had also started to show.
He mentioned wanting to eventually move to the suburbs, but I felt like wed just escaped them.
He enjoyed the preppy lifestyle I was so desperate to ditch.
But our biggest problem was that I was more in love with my future than with him.
One day, he suggested we go to watch hockey at a nearby bar with his friends.
I have absolutely zero fucking interest in doing that, I thought while reading my work email.
The partying didnt help.
Socializing was now part of my job.
The more I drank, the more mercurial Id become.
But at some point, if you draw enough blood, it wont scab over.
Matt was having his own professional success.
One of his pictures landed on the cover of a national magazine.
Theres a picture of me celebrating that night.
Im taking a jello shot on a rooftop bar in SoHo, eyes closed and head thrown back.
AnotherVanity Fairassistant is in the background, egging me on.
Maybe he was traveling for an assignment.
Or maybe I just didnt invite him.
We clung to each other a little longer.
It was hard to let go.
(One time I asked him how many groomsmen hed have at his wedding.
Fourteen, he answered back.)
Then there was all the time invested: We were each others first big relationships, first big loves.
My lease was up soon.
But secretly I was planning a rupture.
A classmate from high school had posted she was subletting her studio apartment in Yorkville.
The next day I rode the Q train up to see it.
He hid his surprise at first, which allowed me to pretend I didnt just do something extremely shitty.
Yet it all came out a few nights later: You signed a lease without telling me.
The hurt was so apparent in his eyes.
I dont remember all the details, but I also know that I dontwantto remember them.
Id become someone who moved fast and broke people yet was too cowardly to let them go.
Cognitive dissonance clouded my mind:The protagonist cant be the villain.
A table was waiting for me, and after enough tequila shots, I started dancing on it.
The next morning I woke up to a man who wasnt him.
We broke up for good when Matt returned.
He uttered the final blow as we sat among unopened boxes in my new apartment.
When he walked out the door, I went to lie on my couch.
For hours, I waited for the tears to come.
Several months after our breakup, I was on a plane flying back from Las Vegas.
Id been there for 48 hours writing a story on couples getting quickie weddings on Valentines Day.
I stayed up the entire night, scribbling in a notebook, observing everything I could.
My mind was still swirling with it all, but exhaustion made me foggy.
I turned onThe Devil Wears Prada.
An hour and a half in, Andy Sachs was in Paris in head-to-toe designer clothes.
She realizes that shes done the work, that this life is hers now if she wants it.
Turn around, I whispered.
Where was I telling her to go?
