He graduated unglamorously and then took an assistant offensive coaching job at San Diego State so he could be closer to me while I worked on my MFA at UC San Diego. It was a major show of dedication, but I couldn’t help but feel like a little light had gone off inside of him. He was there in San Diego with me, but sometimes I felt like he wanted to be somewhere else.
The dynamics of any long-term relationship tend to shift in subtle ways, but for us, the change was more abrupt: the moment he got injured, I wasn’t the nerdy bookworm infatuated with the star quarterback anymore. And while that never bothered me, it definitely bothered him. Even after he followed me to San Diego, we continued to live separately, and neither one of us pressed the issue, even after I finished my MFA. I told myself I was waiting for him to make the move, to own the decision, but honestly I didn’t know if I wanted to move in with him either.
So I kept living with my roommate, Cara, a fellow graduate from the UCSD writing program. She was saving money and teaching a couple of writing courses while she worked on her first novel, and I was trying to do the same. Her longtime boyfriend, Henry, was a surgical resident in New York, and she planned to move at the end of the school year to be with him. I knew I had to figure something out by then, but arguments like this made me think Trevor and I still weren’t ready to take the next step.
“I’m going for a run,” I said to Trevor as I hurried toward my bedroom to get dressed.
“What? One minute you’re worried about a tsunami and the next you want to go for a run? What the hell?” He followed behind me. “Emi, you’re going to have to deal with your shit at some point.”
“My shit? What about your shit?” I said flatly as I sat on the floor, tying my shoes. I wasn’t even looking at him. I got up and tried to move past him to leave the room. I might have been carrying around some baggage, but so was Trevor.
“You have to stop running every time I want to have a bigger conversation with you.”
“Later,” I said.
“No, now,” he said firmly.
I shimmied between his body and my bedroom door and headed toward the kitchen. I busied myself filling up a water bottle.
“We’ve been together since we were twenty, Emi.”
“Jesus, I just asked you to read a fucking story.”
“It’s not about the story.”
“What is it about, then?” I asked sharply.
He looked frustrated and defeated, which was rare for him. I felt a twinge of guilt and softened.
“Trevor, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m having a hard time with my writing right now. I don’t want to be an adjunct creative writing professor forever. Do you get that?”
“You’re already a writer, Emi.” He seemed sincere, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.
“All of the other adjuncts have been published in some right, except for me.”
“Cara’s been published?”
“Twice,” I said under my breath.
He hesitated before continuing. “You want to know what I think? It’s not a lack of talent, Emi. I just don’t think you’re writing what you know. Why don’t you try writing about yourself? Explore everything you went through when you were a kid?”
I felt myself getting mad again. He knew my childhood was off-limits. “I don’t want to talk about it, and besides, you’re totally missing the point.”
Pulling my hoodie up over my hair, I pushed the door open and jogged down the stairs toward the walkway as the rain pelted my face. I heard Trevor slam the door and jog down the steps behind me. I stopped on the sidewalk, turned, and looked up at him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going home,” he said.
“Great.”
“We still need to talk.”
I nodded. “Later.” He turned on his heel and walked away. I stood for a moment before turning in the opposite direction . . . and then I was running.
I was convinced that the years of therapy my aunt Cyndi and her partner, Sharon, had paid for guaranteed my past would always be just that. Still, I knew in the back of my mind that I hadn’t quite dealt with what happened on that long dirt road in Ohio, all those years before I came to live with Cyndi and Sharon. I was guarded and withdrawn, hiding in my relationship with Trevor, in my job as an adjunct professor, in my writing. I knew all of this, but I wasn’t sure how to get out of the rut.
After a few miles, I found myself jogging through the parking lot at UCSD, getting thoroughly soaked by massive raindrops.
“Emi!” I heard Cara call from behind me. “Wait up!”
I turned and tightened the strings on my hoodie. “Hurry, I’m getting drenched!”
Cara’s straight blonde hair clung to her cheeks, making her look even thinner than she was, as she jogged toward me. She was the opposite of me—tall, lanky, with light hair and light eyes. I had frizzy, dark hair that flew everywhere, all the time.
We took cover beneath the overhang of the building that housed the creative writing department. “Jeez, Emi, your hair.” Cara tried unsuccessfully to pat it down as we walked into the building and shook the water off our clothes. Before I could retort, we caught sight of Professor James as he was locking up his office.