can learn to play golf! I can, like, go to a Yankees game!”
I hear his footsteps, and then he’s above me.
“Do you really want to be Shilla forever?”
I look up at him.
“You know about Shilla?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”
“I hate baseball, but I mean, I’d go with you,” I start to cry now. I remember that he bought me a gift certificate to golf lessons a few months ago, but I tucked it into a drawer at work and promptly lost it. “I’ll learn how to golf.”
“But you don’t need to go with me; you don’t have to learn if you don’t want to,” he says. “That’s kind of the point. That I need to go without you, but that you don’t want me to go.”
I feel the snot running down my upper lip. “What the hell is wrong with Shilla anyway?”
“Nothing’s wrong with Shilla.” He’s quiet. “But maybe we need a little distance to start being Shawn and Willa again. I kind of liked us from before.”
I don’t reply, so he says:
“I reread your dad’s book, and the tenets of it make a lot of sense.” He rattles off the table of contents. “ Embrace the Master Universe Way. Accept inertia. Close your eyes and follow the map. Be what you already are. Set yourself free .”
“What the hell are you talking about? Those are words that wrap up his philosophies in neat little packages. They’re words. They don’t mean anything.” I’m surprised to give voice to this notion. “And you’re not, like, accepting inertia. You’re changing it! You’re screwing up our plan!”
“It’s like the epigraph in the book says,” Shawn continues as if he hasn’t even heard me. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never meant to be.’”
I say nothing, so he suggests:
“Maybe it’s something like that. Maybe you and I are something like that.”
“So you’re setting me free?”
“Maybe not for forever.”
“Forever doesn’t matter. Now is the only thing that does.”
“Well, then for now,” he says.
And he sets me free.
8
The Rules of Shawn and Willa’s Pseudo-Separation
*as agreed to on June 12 and to dissolve on agreed-upon date in August
1. Shawn and Willa will have no contact — barring an emergency such as death — during the designated time period.
2. If one party does contact the other, the contactee is under no obligation to return the engaging party’s email/phone call/text/Facebook message, etc.
3. Within the designated time period, the named parties can behave as if they are single.
3a. This means that should anything physical happen with a new party, there will be no repercussions in the union should the named parties decide to remain married.
3b. It is also understood that should sexual relations occur, the sexually active party must use protection.
4. While neither party can be prevented from googling/Facebook-ing the other party, this is highly discouraged.
4a. However, both parties agree not to change their Facebook status to “it’s complicated” without consulting the other party.
5. Should the need for communication arise but is non-urgent, for example, about Nicky’s whereabouts, each party can check a mutually agreed upon email account:
[email protected] .
6. Have fun!
9
Shawn leaves on a Wednesday. An average Wednesday by anyone else’s standard but anything but average for me. We said our awkward goodbyes (“ Speak to you in August !” “ Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do — ha ha ha !”), and then he goes to kiss me, but I turn my head, so we sort of bump noses while our lips pass over each other.
Nicky stands in the living room and makes an explosion noise with his cheeks, then his hands follow — his fingers mimicking a grenade, and Shawn says:
“Come on, dude, don’t be like that. I’ll see you next week in Palo Alto. Wired2Go has the coolest office ever. You can zipline from one floor to the next. You’ll love it.”
“Sounds