He rolls his eyes and shuts the door.
But he’s right.
I already feel that tingle of what if setting in. That obsessive part of me that meets a woman twice and starts naming our babies. If I embark on an extended email flirtation with someone I have this much history with—someone I still like so much—it will only get my hopes up. Despite my chronic optimism, even I know that I can’t put myself in an emotionally vulnerable place at this time of year.
The Dark Times are coming. By which I mean: New Year’s.
You might think that a person like me—a man known for his perennial pep—would rejoice at the start of a new annum. You would think I’d be a resolutions man. A “this year I’ll run a seven-minute mile and climb Kilimanjaro” type of guy.
I’m not.
As a rule, I’m rarely depressed, but something about the start of the year bums me out. The dread begins around now and gets worse as we approach New Year’s Eve, a holiday I find overrated and disappointing.
It could be a comedown from the holidays. Christmas at Dave’s is always great, his unwelcome opinions on my love life notwithstanding. I roll around with the boys, douse them in presents, joke around with the fam, destroy everyone at UNO. And then I leave—always by the twenty-seventh, to avoid overstaying my welcome. And I go back to Chicago, which is invariably frozen, and I stare at the calendar and wait for the sadness to set in.
I am never as lonely as I am in the aftermath of being so happy.
On the surface, my life is packed to the brim. I have interesting work, a bustling social life, no shortage of women to date, and a calendar of sports and cultural events I keep full.
But it’s full of the wrong things.
I want what Dave has. I want my own cute kids and my own smart, funny wife and my own loud, peanut butter-smeared house in the suburbs.
There were many years when this wasn’t such an ache. When my law firm was my true north. Being an attorney was my dream from the time I was in junior high. I’ve built a reputation as one of the best family lawyers in Chicago.
But I’m bored. And worse than that: unfulfilled.
I keep finding myself wondering if I should be doing something different—volunteering, or making a lateral move, or even starting something of my own—and then I get too busy with work and too distracted by my quest for true love to pursue it.
I’m probably just frustrated. I have everything I want professionally. And once I have a family, work won’t matter as much.
Besides, this feeling always fades by the middle of January, as work jolts back to life (the postholiday season is a popular time to file for divorce) and the Christmas lights come down and everyone gets back into the routine of existence.
I’m happy again. It’s like magic.
But that week of comedown is brutal.
This year proves no different.
The tricycle is a hit with Max. My mother and I make an eighteen-pound turkey. Clara leads her full house of dinner guests in a caroling session, complete with printed songbooks and an accompanist from the music school at Vanderbilt.
I don’t email Molly, even though I think about her.
But then I fly home, back to the tundra. I unpack in my pristine apartment. I turn on the gas fire to approximate some form of the cheer I just left, and it flickers like a mockery of my empty home.
I stay in New Year’s Eve, dishonestly pleading exhaustion, and twist the knife by waking up in the morning and opening Facebook to peruse all the joyful times other people were having.
And that’s when I see it.
A rare social media post from Molly Marks. It’s dated from a few days ago, but it’s not so old I can’t use it as an overture.
I snap a screenshot and paste it into an email.
From: sethrubes@mail.me
To: mollymarks@netmail.co
Date: Mon, Jan 1, 2019 at 11:09am
Subject: Congrats!
Hey Mollson—
Happy New Year! I just saw your news. Congratulations—I loved her on Headlands!
BOXOFFICEGOSS.COM: Golden Globe winner Margot Tess attached to rom-com from producers 6FiftyX
Tess, who took home Best Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Rhathselda in the sweeping historical epic Headlands, has signed on to star in and executive produce Daughter of the Bride. The rom-com, about a woman searching for love at her own mother’s wedding, was written by Molly Marks. Simon Larch is attached to direct.
I should absolutely end this email here—keep it casual, let her either write back or not. But I’m happy for her, and I want to let her know that she deserves to be proud of herself. I suspect it’s not a feeling she indulges in often. So I add:
I have to confess something: after the reunion I went back and watched (okay, you got me, rewatched) your movies. I love how I can relax and not worry someone is going to tragically die and tear my heart out. And I can always hear your voice in them—that sarcasm that lets me know a foul-tempered wretch is responsible for all the happiness on-screen.
Congrats, champ. You’re doing God’s work.
Hugs.
—Seth
