The Night I Met the Fiancé

Four years earlier, the fiancé showed up to our first date with a bottle of Malbec and a chessboard.

We had only met the night before at a Mexican restaurant, where we dined pandemic-style: eight of us spread across two small tables pushed far apart, a giant bottle of hand sanitizer sitting between us like a centerpiece.

Tom, an early pandemic date turned friend, had driven down to D.C. for his birthday, and we’d spent the day floating down a river on rented tubes tied loosely together with a length of nylon rope. The current was slow enough that every few minutes one tube bumped into another with a soft, rubbery thud.

We passed around warm cans of beer that had been sitting in the sun. The aluminum tasted sharp and metallic against my lips. When I dipped my hands into the river, the water was cool and smelled like mud.

By the time we drove back into the city that evening, my skin felt tight with dried river water. My hair – bleached nearly white that summer – had stiffened into tangles, twisted into a knot on top of my head. I was wearing black pajama shorts and an oversized black T-shirt that clung damply to my body.

When I sat down at the restaurant, I ordered a margarita immediately. It arrived sweating in a heavy glass. I was licking the tajin from the rim when the fiancé walked in.

I felt the burn of the tequila bloom and settle on my tongue, and watched the fiancé pause at the entrance before spotting us. He moved toward the table with a kind of performative ease.

He nodded quickly in greeting, then sat down at the other table.

I told stories about living in the mountains of Northern Tanzania and felt myself swell with the attention. I watched their eyes fix on me, widen slightly, and take me in as I recounted twelve-hour motorcycle rides, bucket baths, and encounters with impossibly large insects.

I am this kind of woman.

When my second drink arrived, I felt that familiar lift – like I had become, briefly, the most interesting person there.

I could never quite tell the difference between talking about my life and showing off. With alcohol, there was no difference. It was only in the morning that I felt it – that small, exact shame of having revealed too much of myself too quickly.

I took a deep sip from my glass and looked up.

The fiancé was already watching me.

After dinner, I invited everyone back to my apartment.

We walked up the hill toward Adams Morgan in a loose cluster. Halfway up the block the fiancé drifted beside me.

“So,” he said, “what’s your story?”

He said it easily, like he was genuinely curious but also hoped I would ask him the same question in return.

I started talking before any thoughts had fully formed – something about growing up here, living in New York City, moving back for work and school. The usual scaffolding I built to hold attention.

He was shorter than I expected. Thick through the chest and arms, but soft at the edges. I couldn’t tell if he was big or just… fat, and I had the vague sense that big-boned was something people said when they didn’t want to say it.

His eyes sat a little too close together, but they were warm. As I spoke, they traced the outlines of my face and I felt studied and seen by him.

There was earnestness and ease in the way he looked at me.

I could feel a pulsing in my fingers as we walked. A faint thrum behind my temples.

The rooftop of my building looked out over the city. From the edge, you could see the Washington Monument in the distance, thin and white like a matchstick. The Capitol dome glowed just beyond it. The sky was purple and thick with late-summer humidity.

“Did you know D.C. was built on a swamp?” one of the friends said, leaning over the railing.

We opened a bottle of Trader Joe’s rosé and passed it around in plastic cups. The concrete ledge was still warm against the backs of my arms when I leaned against it. Someone put music on, and it drifted out into the heavy air.

At some point, a Khruangbin song came on.

“I love this song,” the fiancé and I said at exactly the same time.

We both laughed, a little too quickly.

The fiancé stood near the center of the group, talking with his hands. He had a small gap between his front teeth, and something boyish in his face that didn’t quite match the confidence he carried himself with.

He began telling us about his time in the Marine Corps, where he’d worked as a logistics officer, the satisfaction he took in building systems and making complicated things run smoothly.

“You always were the best student at the Naval Academy,” Tom said, grinning.

The fiancé rolled his eyes but kept going.

He described leaving the Marines after a psilocybin trip in Joshua Tree that made him question everything he thought he knew about his life. Then moving to Austin to coach lacrosse. Then, briefly, deciding he might go to Boston College to become a musician, despite never having played an instrument.

Now, he explained, he had landed in supply chain consulting at Deloitte.

At the mention of Deloitte, my ears perked up. He’s easily making over a hundred thousand dollars, I thought.

He became, appallingly, more interesting to me at that exact moment. More worthy of my attention.

He spoke about himself and his life the same way I did – feigning humility, but relishing the way he could hold a captive audience.

He grabbed salt shakers and empty cups, arranging them in rows and circles as he explained global distribution networks like he was giving a TED Talk.

Everyone laughed.

I watched him with a flicker of amusement. He had a way of commanding attention that felt both natural and practiced. As he spoke, something in him sharpened. Or maybe it was something in me. He became more remarkable – glinting now, suggestive of a kind of stability and steadiness I only pretended to possess.

“So how long have you lived here?” he asked.

“Two weeks,” I said.

He smiled.

“I just moved down the block.”

We exchanged numbers before the night ended.

Later, I fell asleep – sunburnt with the taste of salt still on my lips.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, my phone buzzed on the bedside table.

“Coffee tomorrow?”