Iowa City was small enough that when we weren’t out together we ran into each other anyway. Sometimes I guessed as to where he’d be, and found him, or didn’t. Other times I swear I did not intend to find him and heard his brassy voice, his imposing laugh, cut across a restaurant or a street. And when that happened, when I realized I was nearby him, globs of sweat dripped down my torso.

I’d been in love before but I’d never before felt love like this. That meant something, I reasoned.

So when he sometimes said he didn’t want anything serious I didn’t entirely care.

That day we were supposed to go camping it threatened rain. All day I prepared. I drove over to the cheap grocery store and bought hotdogs and buns and cherries and the makings for s’mores. I went to the pharmacy across the lot for a bottle of Zinfandel and beer and cigarettes — he smoked Marlboro Reds — and then to the gas station for firewood and charcoal and ice. He didn’t know how seriously I made all these decisions, contemplating whether he’d prefer watermelon or cherries.

Watermelon or cherries.

He was chatting with some woman as I pulled into the parking lot. I didn’t know her but presumed she was part of his PhD-related world of committees and panels and things. I sometimes wondered whether he loved someone else, whether that was the problem. Or if he was gay. I sometimes imagined, months or years in the future, running my hands through his strawberry hair and telling him, “I used to hope you were gay because it’d be easier to handle than you not loving me,” and he’d laugh.

I rolled down the window.

It’d begun to drizzle.

He was just joking with her, I could hear.