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I trace the edge of the sheet between two fingers.

The name doesn’t hurt anymore and hasn’t for a long time.

“I was really bad at being in love with her.”

Merry moves her body so her head is on the pillow and faces me. One of her legs stays tangled with mine, but the space helps.

“Bad how?” she asks, and her fingers find mine. She squeezes my hand in reassurance.

“Not at loving her.” I stare at the ceiling for a few seconds. “I was probably too good at that.”

There isn’t resentment in my voice, I don’t think. If anything, I sound a little embarrassed, although I’m not sure that's quite right either.

“I let everything else get smaller. My family, Maggie. Things that were mine before Alison was there. And she didn’t ask me to do that, which was the part that took me a long time to admit after. I did it because I thought loving someone that much meant they were supposed to become the center of everything.”

Merry takes a deep breath, and I can feel the concern on her face.

“I didn’t like who I was when it ended. Or maybe I didn’t like realizing how little of myself I’d kept.”

Sometimes, when I tell people pieces of that relationship, I can see them constructing the rest for me. Alison becomes controlling, selfish. Someone who demanded too much until there was nothing left.

My throat tightens unexpectedly. Not because of Alison, but because I remember very vividly that version of myself.

“And I didn’t trust myself after that.”

Merry’s fingers begin moving against my arm, slowly. “With someone else?”

“With myself.”

This is the part I haven’t said to anyone. This is what my mother has tried to pry out of me for years, her asking me to try again and me not being able to tell her I couldn’t do it.

“I knew I could fall in love. I wasn’t sure I knew how to do it without disappearing.”

Merry is quiet for so long that I eventually look up and find her watching me.

There’s no pity in her expression, and I’m grateful for that, too. No immediate reassurance either. She doesn’t tell me that I won’t do that with her, or that she’s different, or that whatever happened before has nothing to do with us.

Instead, she brushes her thumb over my belly button.

Eventually, she sighs. “I think mine was different.”

I lift my head enough to look at her. Merry is staring at the ceiling.

“I always felt like I was missing something.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“With dating. Relationships. All of it.” She makes a small movement with her free hand, as if all of it might be hovering somewhere above us. “I could meet someone and think she was great, and we’d go out a few times, and then it would just… not go anywhere. Which is normal. I know that’s normal. Not everybody you have drinks with is going to become the love of your life.”

She goes quiet again, and I decide to wait it out.

“But then every once in a while, I would really like someone. Not she seems nice, let’s see where this goes. Actually like her. I’d get excited when she texted. I’d rearrange things so I could see her. I’d think about her when she wasn’t there. And those were always the ones that seemed to go wrong.”

There’s no humor in her voice now.

“They’d pull away?”

“Eventually.” Merry’s hand stops on my stomach. “And I never understood what happened. Because I thought I was doing everything right. I was showing up and interested. I was giving it everything I had, sometimes probably way too much of everything I had, and somehow there was always this point where I could feel them stepping back.”