Free While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella by Kate Moretti

thinking about him. I want him to instantly know me .
    “Actually, you’re the first person whose company I’ve truly enjoyed in a very long time.” I take a deep breath as I say it, knowing it sounds a bit pathetic and needy. When he doesn’t answer right away, I rush on. “I have Paula. I have Pete. I guess I have Amy, if I wanted. I should really call her. I used to have Scott.”
    “Who’s Scott?”
    “My ex. He broke up with me the night before I met you.”
    “Did you love him?” His reply is immediate. Interested. Curious.
    I pause, partly because it’s an extraordinarily intimate question, and partly because I don’t immediately know the answer. Greg’s voice, low and soft, almost whispering, and the time of night give the sensation of being in a cocoon.
    “I guess I thought I did, but I haven’t given him much thought in the past week, so maybe not.” I pause. “I don’t think I loved him in any exceptional way. I loved him because he was there, and he was easy. And I was already tied to him through music. I loved him in a convenient way. We were compatible, never fought.” I stop and think before I realize that’s all of it. I think of how in movies, the hero always lists the way your socks never match or the way you use half a box of floss a day as reasons to love someone. I never had those with Scott. I didn’t know all his quirks, and they certainly never felt like tender points, rom-com reasons for loving someone. He had a tendency to chew with his mouth open and hold a napkin up to his mouth so he could talk at the same time. I always thought he was gross and simultaneously efficient.
    “I think if you can list all the reasons you love someone, then maybe it isn’t real?” Greg says.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Like maybe when you truly love someone, it defies convenience and rationale. Like maybe if you have to fight hard for it, it’s somehow truer. You’re not together because you can be. You’re together because you really want to be.” He’s talking so softly that I can barely hear him.
    “Have you been in love?”
    He coughs into the phone. “Not recently.”
    I wonder if he’s drunk or what he’s really saying. I wonder how we keep ending up in these intense conversations.
    “Isn’t it better, though, to pursue a relationship with someone that’s at least available to you?” I laugh to lighten it up, but he doesn’t laugh back. I take a chance. “Than, say, with someone in another country?”
    Shameless flirting. I stretch out on the sofa on my good side and pull a pillow against my chest.
    “I’m sure there are charmingly available Canadian men.” I can hear the hesitation in his voice, as though he doesn’t exactly want to flirt back, but he doesn’t not want to either. I decide to push.
    “Yeah, but none of them have saved my life.”
    Then, thankfully, he finally laughs.

Chapter 6
    G reg calls me—never the other way around. I text once in a while when I’m bored with reading or crocheting or watching realtor shows. But if I ever call him, it rings once and goes straight to voicemail, like he hits decline. Fast. He always texts back, sorry in a meeting! Call you tonight! Unlike other men, he actually does.
    “Have you called your mom?” he presses one night, his voice in that late-night, low rumble that I feel in my legs and my toes. “You have one mother. Call her.”
    Sigh. “I know. But you don’t understand. She’s a train wreck, and I don’t feel like I have room right now for two of those.”
    “I do understand. What if you just called her and said hi. Like nothing happened?” He’s chewing something. An apple. A cracker.
    “What are you eating?” I pretend to be irritated.
    “Hobnobs. Call your mother.”
    I’ve thought about it, truly I have. The thing is, Paula lives in that space between knowing there’s a problem and addressing it. She counts on her own volatility to keep people from calling her out on her shit. It works on