“That guy who needs proof that everyone in the room isattracted to him. You’re objectively beautiful, and I haven’t felt the touch of a man since 2023.” I put on a jokey, bawdy tone that I pray undercuts just how naked I feel at this admission. “It’s not exactly an insurmountable bar to clear.”
His face scrunches. “Twenty twenty-three?” Somehow, I’ve shocked him enough that he skates right past mybeautifulcomment. “That’s not possible. You were still married in 2024.”
“I was still marriedyesterday.”
“But in 2024 you were, like,reallymarried. You were…unavailable. You couldn’t have…” He gestures all around us as though that clears up anything at all.
“Couldn’t have what?” I goad.
He ignores my question. “Was it really that bad for that long?” he asks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
How do I begin to explain that I thought I had nothing to tell? I didn’t even realize something was wrong until it was over. Sure, our sex life had been nonexistent near the end, but Rich and I were hardly sexual dynamos when we were at our best. A week would go by. Then two. And the longer we went, the more it started to feel like an email I should’ve replied to ages ago. Then, in a blink, it had been months, and I was too overwhelmed to press send.
I never felt bowled over by my feelings for Rich, but, to be fair, I’ve never been that way with any of my relationships. I wasn’t built for love like that.
And how was I supposed to admit thisto Ethan—a man who possesses so much excess passion he has no choice but to channel it into song? Even if Ihadrealized something was off in my marriage, I couldn’t have told him. A wall we don’t talkabout went up the day he missed my wedding. We were never going to have casual phone calls about the state of my relationship. He’d made sure of that. He lost that privilege when he picked a fight at my bachelorette party and abandoned me at the altar.
But as I’m not about to unearth long-buried arguments, I respond to his question with a simple yet meaningless “It is what it is” and scoop another perfect bite of risotto into my mouth.
“And no one else since?” he asks, incredulous. “The uncles?”
“Uncle, singular. Just one. I don’t have some sort of uncle kink.” I cover myself with a hot, sweaty palm as the mortification paints my face a deep shade of red. “Why am I saying all of this? I’m not even drunk.”
“I’m surprised you’re drinking at all after this morning,” he observes. Unhelpfully.
I rub my forehead. “I was hoping the wine would help.”
“What was wrong with the uncle, then? Singular.” He’s a dog with a bone.
I sigh into my camping chair. “I don’t know. He lived in one of those apartments with vertical blinds and a balcony over a shared pool. In the parking lot, I saw not one buttwomiddle-aged men installing car seats into Cybertrucks. I couldn’t picture who we’d be together there.”
“You didn’t need to move into his Divorced Dad apartment to have sex with him.”
To his credit, he doesn’t roll his eyes, but he doesn’t have to. The way I approach dating has always been Ethan’s number one “Could never be me.”
Back in college, I didn’t have crushes on boys so much as rich fantasies of imagined futures with accounting majors in neighboring study carrels. I’d learn their likes and dislikes, all the while curating our every stage of life on my mental Pinterest board and presenting them with a pretty cipher: a girl who could reflect back the exact person they thought they wanted. A girl who seemedrare. Someone they couldn’t afford to lose.
It wasn’t something I was doing intentionally. I was addicted to feeling wrapped in the all-encompassing glow of someone’s adoration. It was never real—they hardly knew me—but walking into a room and seeing someone’s eyes spark as they identified me as someone worth claiming was too much to resist. I longed for someone to dream about a life with me the way I dreamed about a life with them. If I stayed distant, unknowable, they kind of did, and it was nothing short of magic.
By the time the clouds of early dating parted and the approval-seeking psychosis lifted, I’d usually decide that it probably wasn’t in my best interest to cosign a car loan with a man who operated his television with an Xbox controller and had a pile of unopened mail next to his coffee maker just because he was cute and studying for the MCAT.
Ethan hated seeing the way I’d disappear around those guys.He’s not obsessed withyou. He doesn’t even know you, he’d argue whenever I brought one of them around.
With Rich, it was different. We were so similar and wanted so many of the same things that at times I’d forget that his Charley and my Charley weren’t quite the same. Over the course of our relationship, I revealed so many pieces of the real Charlotte Beekman, not always on purpose. She’d crack offduring arguments and on bad days like shards from a broken mirror. Brief glimpses of a Charley who might hate playing pickleball on Saturday morning and isn’t always agreeable—and, in fact,usuallyisn’t.
I remember the moment he first realized who he wasreallylooking at. We were playing Scrabble in the basement. He was quitting smoking again and using me as a distraction from the nicotine cravings. Rich liked to win as much as I did, so, naturally, I’d spent our entire relationship feigning disinterest in the epic high of triumphing over an opponent in a low-stakes tabletop game. But that Sunday morning, I was tired and overworked and needed a freaking win, and he caught a glimpse of the real me. And he knew what it meant. I knew he did, because I’ll never forget his face when he looked back at me as I preened over my triple-letter use of “K.” It was as though he’d seen something ugly.HisCharley was this beautiful, live woman andIwas the Madame Tussauds wax figure taking her place.
Ethan has never understood how love and sex have a way of making me feel like I need to take cover. I’ve kept myself behind plexiglass, hoping someone would take a hammer to the protective barrier but too scared to ask for it. For a long time, it was easier to let people think I already was the woman I let them see. ThenIcould decide if I wanted to stay that way. But I don’t have it in me to spend another decade waiting to be discovered as the cheap knockoff of myself.
“I know,” I finally answer. “But I’m done with the whole dating thing. It’s not worth it.”
“And everything else…?” He raises his eyebrows.
“Well…I’m not going to have sex with justanyone. I’m a rare treasure.” I put on my best impression of averyseriousperson and to my delight, he lowers his head solemnly in response.
“Well, of course,” he agrees.
What I don’t say is that I’dloveto be capable of enjoying sex with someone outside of a romantic relationship, but even after Rich left me, he continued to be the central figure in every subsequent encounter in a manner I couldn’t stomach.
