Over the years Mark had become friends with all of her friends. Unlike the-man-before, everyone liked him. Recently he even began to play the bass in her best friend, Jake’s, band. Jake liked him. And because Jake held a certain deference for authority of all kinds, most especially academic things, Jake asked Mark many questions about Literature and Shakespeare and teaching. Aida, her best girlfriend, thought Mark was lovely and very kind — if perhaps a bit repressed. Aida believed all people were repressed, of course, the classic psychoanalyst.

A good person, all her friends said, which she knew.

Her family loved him, too. Her father, who must have seen a lot of himself in Mark—the two of them professors, both thoughtful and generally content, if anxious and sometimes awkward and misunderstood—  and loved him a great deal, always hunting Mark down to ask very specific questions regarding 17th and 18th Century Literature and to talk in general about how Mark’s courses were going at the college. More than once her father and stepmother brought home United Kingdom-themed gifts: t-shirts with slogans about Cake or Shakespeare, or spatulas decorated with British flags. Not that Mark baked or cooked. They just enjoyed thinking of him and picking up thematic items at various stores throughout whatever journey they had embarked upon.

Her sister and mother enjoyed Mark’s tendency to pose dramatically for photographs and insisted he had the cutest dimples, an attribute she stubbornly refused to acknowledge, calling them wrinkles instead, inspiring the playful and patient rolling of Mark’s eyes and a barrage of counter-arguments from her female family members.

Her mother asked Mark how to brew the perfect cup of tea, the order in which milk and tea and sugar should be combined. Her stepfather never missed an opportunity to take Mark out for a hike, not that Mark was a physical man or particularly liked hiking, at least not the uphill sort, but Mark always went along, knowing her stepfather enjoyed the time, and her stepfather always took her aside afterwards to tell her what a decent person Mark seemed to be.

The family loved his accent, and when visiting, they wandered around the apartment repeating unfamiliar sounding words and phrases amongst each other: bAHsil and toMAHto; Would-do and Jolly-good.

He was not like the-man-before. Not at all. Unlike the-man-before, who was dapper, in fitted suit and tie, Mark sometimes wore cheap H&M ugly-colored sweaters that did not go well with his shoes. Bald at 33 and professorially soft, Mark had very different qualities. For instance, she loved that you would never know how much Mark knew about a topic, how long he might have studied it. He never needed to make a point of things like that.

Discerning and opinionated about the music he bought, the movies and plays he watched, Mark did not particularly need to impose his views on others. He wasn’t one to focus on the discord. No matter how misinformed, herself included, no matter how much Mark knew better and otherwise, he never made a person feel small. It wasn’t his constitution. He was generous. Inherently curious. She wished she was naturally that way, too.

The-man-before flaunted measurable indicators of success and prowess, all easily identifiable, serving to distract her from less visible, but more significant, characteristics. A bright young litigator, partner-track at a respected firm, Thomas was crafty with his tongue. He was handsome, athletic, and rented a lovely apartment in Old City before buying a gorgeous Twin Victorian on a nice block near the university. There, he lived with his young daughter and two cats, one named Pants and one named Guido, names she would have chosen herself, had she been creative enough to have thought of them. Thomas, the-man-before, was full of surprise and energy. He was clever and often made her laugh. She liked watching him work on his motorcycle and loved that he could build things with his hands.

She realized only later that she had failed to see what was important. It was her own vanity that blinded her to it. She felt too good taking him to the office holiday party or to a friend’s birthday engagement. She felt too much pride sharing photos of household improvements. She enjoyed too much creating holiday cards displaying photo collages of their handsome lives.

What was important, she realized much too late, was what surfaced only when they were alone. Always percolating, it seemed, but concealed behind these handsome, observable things — at least to her. Or by her. She’s never been quite sure.

What was important was that in the end there was nothing she could do to satisfy him. Nothing she could do to make him stop. What was important was that each day, as she worked too hard to understand it all, to do and change what she could, becoming all the more entangled until she forgot herself.

As it happened, walls and doors shut so slowly she didn’t notice until she was breathless, until she became too tired and too small in that Twin Victorian that had become her home.