Love
Her memory lurks around every corner.
Wed matched on Hinge just before Labor Day and were meeting at a Manhattan wine bar.
It was an abrupt change of subject, but I reassured him it was fine.
He noted that Bob Dylans song Abandoned Love got him throughhis divorce,and then the conversation moved on.
I apologized for being kind of a wine snob.
We debated each others celebrity lookalikes and traded family stories.
Two entertaining hours later, he kissed me goodbye.
Back at home, a little tipsy, I googled his name plus divorce.
As a journalist, I get a thrill out of chasing down facts, even if theyre useless.
A little weird, but sure?
I went to bed.
Max and I kept seeing each other.
I didnt mention my detective work.
His custom playlist combined our tastes, mixing girly pop with 60s rock.
The split sounded amicable.
Summing up the relationship, he said, Im over it.
I left dinner with the beginnings of a giddy crush.
Now that I had a few morsels of information, I wanted more.
What else could I learn online?
At first, very little.
His Instagram was private; his LinkedIn, brief.
I couldnt resist comparing myself to Sophie 1.0, who was stunning.
I was a diehard New Yorker who liked romance novels, platform shoes, and piano bars.
In the event of a fire, Id rescue my Dyson AirWrap.
The answer, of course, was nothing.
Still, I hated that I couldnt look away.
We hadjustenough similarities andjustenough differences to nag at me.
I had no clue.
Over the next few weeks, I fell for Max.
We regularly talked until 1 a.m., not realizing how many hours had flown by.
I hosted a dinner party, where he met my friends and got the thumbs-up.
After we made it official, he joined me on a work trip to the Catskills.
When we cozied up by a fire at an inn, I couldnt have been happier.
But Sophies ghost lurked around every corner.
On the drive back to the city, I made an immature joke about the town Coxsackie.
Looking grim, he mumbled, Its pronounced cook-SAH-kee.
I got married there.
Thats where I bought her rings.
I decided that the next time Sophie came up, Id ask him to limit certain details.
But I had no real reason to worry about our relationship.
Several times, he suggested we meet each others parents.
He floated the idea of moving closer to me and doing a long weekend in Vermont.
We were moving fast, but it felt right.
The next morning, he tidied up his apartment while I watched the gloomy news.
He stumbled across a framed engagement photo, one I recognized, and shoved it in a drawer.
Sorry, he said with a guilty cringe.
I wanted to imagine a future with Max, but the other Sophie seemed barely in the past.
She resurfaced often enough that I had a distractingly vivid understanding of him as an ex-husband.
Hed promised to pay 80% of her rent through the end of the year.
Theyd been texting about a paperwork snafu over their electrical bill, and he still cared about her.
Not inthatway, but you know what I mean, he said.
Nobody comes baggage-free, obviously.
But with our relationship so fresh, I couldve done without quite so much information.
As I was meeting him, I was also meeting her like an uninvited interloper into our fledgling romance.
Long after I stopped digging, he kept the IV drip going.
The more I heard, the more frustratingly solid she became.
Heres the embarrassing truth: I was jealous.
Max and I didnt last, either.
Youre a woman about town, like that TV character, he said,grasping for Carrie Bradshaws name.
The more he spoke, the faster I lost interest.
When I said that wasnt very considerate, he paused.
I guess I didnt really think about how it would affect you.
The breakup had made Max three-dimensional in the most unflattering way; by comparison, she seemed pleasantly relatable.
And this time, I wished her well.
