Ivan had seen the sweatshirt exchange from a few feet away and had been furious with Sarah for not ‘giving him a chance’ to offer her his jacket. He had scolded her for not telling him she was cold and for not thinking abouthow it would make him feelto see her in Ren’s sweatshirt.Ren, of all people.Ren, the man-whore. When they got home, Ivan and Sarah had one of their huge fights, the kind that ended with both of them in tears; it was the first time Ivan said he’d be suicidal if Sarah left him, and she had ended up apologizing for hours.
“I didn’t want Ivan to give me his coat!” Sarah insisted now. “I wanted him to have it because I loved him.”
“But that’s my point. You’re always giving more than people give you. That’s… This is the whole problem with women.”
Sarah’s jaw fell open. “Did you just announce a whole problem with women? Right after admitting that you’re incapable of relationships?”
He sighed, close enough to her shoulder that she could feel the warm puff of his breath.
“You know what you don’t understand about love?” Sarah went on. “It isn’t about who gives more or less. It doesn’t come with a calculator.”
“Well, it should.”
“Exactly.Youthink that way,” Sarah said fiercely. “You’re always focused on how many women you’ve slept with and how many orgasms everyone has had, but when you love someone?—”
“I’ve given more orgasms than Ivan, I can tell you that much.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You know nothing about that relationship.” She could feel her face growing heated. Ivan wasn’t Mister Orgasm, but he had gotten it right more often than not. Forty percent of the time, anyway.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Then another thought occurred to her. “So wait. If I wanted a relationship, let’s say I wanted one with you, would that be something you were offering?”
There was a pause of several seconds before he looked away. “That’s not the reality we’re living in. Let’s get back to the topic at hand.”
By now, her emotions were tossing in an unpleasant swirl. This was likely to be her last chance to kiss the most beautiful man she had ever met, and she couldn’t do it because they were friends, and because a small part of her was in love with him, and because a larger part was furious. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not feeding into this weird fetish where you have to hook up with every girl within a fifty-meter radius.”
“I don’t see you like that,” he said. “You’re different.”
She snorted. “And I’m sure you’ve said that to all the other women.”
“No, I haven’t!”
“You’re like the boy who cried wolf, except instead of crying wolf, you’re saying, ‘You’re not like the other girls.’ But the only way I’m not like the other girls is that you haven’t slept with me yet.”
She heard the sharp intake of his breath as he pulled back to look at her. “You’re important to me.” His words grew faster now, more insistent. “Remember that night freshman year that I came to your birthday party? The only reason I hooked up with Anya instead of you was because we had that whole conversation about love. Remember? And you talked about how you were looking for something serious, and I wasn’t, so it wouldn’t have been fair to hook up with you. But I’m nottaking advantageof people.”
For a moment, Sarah believed him. She believed that he believed it, anyway. She suddenly felt vulnerable, like she’d admitted too much. She slid down again, deeper under the covers, twisting her face away from him. “Well, don’t worry,” she said with more sarcasm than she felt. “There is a whole party full of women out there, one of whom is sure to fall for your handsome, moody thing.”
“You think I’m handsome?” She could hear a smile in his voice, which angered her enough to shove at him with her feet, just enough to push him slowly towards the edge of her bed.
“Goodnight, Ren,” she said. “Go find someone else.”
After a moment, she felt him heave himself up and take a step away from her. Then he paused. She could hear him in the darkness, stopping to look at her one last time. “Thereisno one else I like this much.” The words gave her a strange sensation of vertigo, like she was getting everything wrong.
Then he turned and left, the music growing louder and quieter again as he shut her door.
Two days later,Ivan showed up on her doorstep begging for forgiveness, and Sarah reluctantly agreed to get back together with him. The next time she saw Ren, he waved at her once from across the street and she waved back. He had a strange expression on his face, almost like longing, and her heart did a flip at the sight of him, like she had lost something that she couldn’t put a name to.
She didn’t talk to Ren for another five years.
2
LIAM’S SOCCER GAME, APRIL 2011
It was early April,and it was snowing in Toronto. Sarah didn’t want to be outside at all, let alone hunched on a frosty wooden bench at one end of a soccer field, her hands tucked beneath her knees in inadequate handknit mittens, the lone observer of a casual soccer game that even the participants weren’t taking too seriously. But Sarah had promised to cheer on her boyfriend Liam in his Friday night soccer game. Sarah had, in fact, enthusiastically gushed about how much she would enjoy watching him doing something sporty. As a young medical resident, Liam rarely had time to do anything athletic, and she wanted to prove that she could be a loyal, supportive girlfriend when he did.
So here she was, watching her boyfriend jogging back and forth through a light dusting of snow while Sarah shivered and wished that she had the courage to steal someone’s thermos of coffee and curl up under her bench like an arctic ground squirrel.
