Page 35 of Engineering a Love Story

“Do you enjoy your job?”

He shrugs. “It’s difficult to put the word enjoy in the context of what’s gone on for the past four years. Aurelian is intense. People are passionate. Manish’s devotion is contagious. But it is cool to be part of that, all those super-smart people, everyone radically enthusiastic, building something people will use.”

“But the way you work, it doesn’t seem sustainable. Doesn’t it wear you out?”

“I choose this over the alternative any day. I don’t ever want to be some guy punching a clock nine-to-five.” The waitress delivers the tart, which is in a silver ramekin and has a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting off one side. Seth immediately lifts a spoon. After a few quick bites, he continues. “I don’t want to be lukewarm—about anything. Ever. What’s the point of that?”

His intensity is in such stark contrast to the relentless cynicism and apathy I’ve always known. Even with Ash, who had no reason to be apathetic. Seth appears willing to dedicate himself to something, even if he knows it might fail. It’s like he doesn’t get that the world might conspire against him, that it’s easier than you’d ever imagine for everything to simply fall apart. Or he’s brave enough to go forward even knowing it might, and I’m in awe of the mind-blowing optimism that must require.

I also can’t deny how much I’ve adored having Seth’s passion focused on me. Even for one day.

“I recognize I might not have the healthiest and most balanced approach at Aurelian. But that’s how it is right now.” He holds my eyes as he says this last bit, and I take it as the warning it’s undoubtedly meant to be.

My wake-up call comes early the next morning. Seth is still asleep when I leave.

August

Twenty

It’s hot the day I finally move out of my house, not unusually so for the first of August, but I’m still slick with sweat after only an hour of maneuvering boxes. The movers won’t arrive until after lunch; it’s cheaper to move in the afternoon, it turns out.

Wandering the jumble of rooms, I check my sticky notes. I have a system: blue stickies on things Ash will come to collect, yellow on items going to my new place, and pink for all the stuff I still don’t know how to handle. Most of that pink-flagged collection is stacked on the dining room table, which boasts its own pink note. While Ash has been slightly more helpful the past couple of weeks, collecting his gear from the garage and claiming a few other items, he still refuses to discuss the dining room set with me at all.

It’s been an exhausting week. After working all day, hashing through a first draft of the Market Spotlight with Evan, I finished packing in the evenings. Shlepped books to the library. Mowed the lawn. Ensured all the trash (so much trash) was at the curb on the right night. I wrapped and loaded china into boxes, though I don’t know what to do with that yet either. Some mornings, when I wake with the sun, I wonder how I’ll push through another day, but I feel like the end is in sight, and I trudge on.

Amid all that activity, I steer my mind clear of Seth. I’m tempted to continually replay those hours we spent together, especially since they seem glittering and vivid compared with the shameful drudgery of dismantling my life here. But this will do me no good. The weekend with Seth was a lovely interlude. I have to focus on this move. Killing it at Gilroy. Getting out of this house, finally. Figuring out how to live alone in my new place, a prospect both exciting and terrifying. I can’t allow pointless thoughts to distract me.

Once the movers arrive, we caravan from the North Shore to the narrow, cut-through street in Cambridge that holds my new building. I don’t have much stuff: boxes of books and dishes, a queen-sized bed that’s now only mine, a sofa, my old bike. The movers are done in thirty-five minutes.

Inside, I absorb the stacks of boxes, trying to decide where to begin. Travis had asked if I wanted help settling in on my first night, and he thankfully arrives not long after the movers go. He totes a bottle of champagne and his cigarettes, which I ask if he won’t mind smoking outside.

“I need to quit anyway,” he says, tucking the pack into the back of his khakis and pushing hair from his face.

The apartment is hot. I’ve brought one standing fan and try to blow air across the living room, which is now dominated by my green sofa. The couch really is too big for this space, and when I think of all the ballgames Ash and I watched on it together, it feels stranger having it here than even our bed. But we bought it only a year ago, and I can’t afford to replace it.

Travis and I dig until we find my crystal wine glasses. “Nice,” he says, pouring the champagne.

We toast. To my new apartment. To August, one of the nicest months in Boston. And to the Sox, who are, as usual, trailing the Yankees in the AL East, but not by much.

Travis also wants to toss one out to Al Gore. “That man is going to need it,” he says. Bush officially named Dick Cheney his running mate only a few days ago, a match that will be feted at the Republican Convention this week. We do not toast Dick Cheney.

We unpack. Travis stacks my plastic plates in one of the cupboards. “But where’s the rest of it?” He lifts an empty box. “You were married to … that man. Where are the serving platters? The fine linens?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t want all that stuff.” I motion to the galley kitchen. “And where would I put it?” Travis looks incredulous for a few moments, but then he moves on to a new box.

As he unloads my stereo and sets the receiver and speakers on some upturned boxes, I ask what’s happening with Daisuke.

“There’s been a change there actually. He applied to BU and got accepted.” I straighten from where I’ve been leaning into a plastic crate. Travis explains that Daisuke’s parents are pleased he’s giving up baseball and finishing school. They approve of his move. “Though they don’t know he’ll live with me.” He makes a face, adding that he can’t say exactly when Daisuke will arrive. “He’s still working out his financial aid and student visa.”

“What? We’ve been sitting here talking about W and my dishes, and you had this to share?”

A slow smile moves across Travis’s face. “Yeah.”

Possible outcomes circle in my brain. Travis hardly knows Daisuke. They barely speak the same language. They might fight. Maybe Daisuke will want to go out all the time, which is not Travis’s scene. What if it doesn’t work out and then they’re living together?

I almost voice these concerns, but then I look at Travis, who is fiddling with wires at the back of my stereo, and see his grin and how his cheeks have reddened from sharing his news, and I say nothing. Instead, I grab the champagne and insist on another toast.

After we order pizza, Travis goes down to collect it. He returns smelling of smoke, flat box in hand, and announces he met my neighbor from the first floor. “Nice head of curls. His name is Hector. He’s from Puerto Rico,” Travis says with a passable Spanish trill. “I think more your type than mine.”