Look, learn and live vicariously
Go Ahead! Have a Steamy Summer Fling
So argues writer Alison Espach, whose
bittersweet romance made her wiser—forever.
By Alison Espach
"Have a Steamy Summer Fling"
He was from Georgia, the only blond I'd ever dated. For some reason this mattered to me. He owned his own home, and this mattered too, back when I was 23 and in grad school. My friends referred to him as Home Owner.
We met in April, and by June I was staying in his house indefinitely. It was too early to live together, by Dr. Drew standards, but this was my way to write more, babysit less.
"Why don't you get a real job?" Home Owner asked. But to an aspiring writer, getting a "real job" meant "giving up."
At work, Home Owner advised people on their finances, and in his spare time he was renovating his house during a St. Louis heat wave. On the weekends, he sanded wood while I wrote.
It was a hot 90 degrees, even when dark, so at night we'd lie there in bed, sweaty. But when you are newly in love, there's something cozy and hilarious about not having air-conditioning. We were suffering, and the sawdust was settling on our skin, but we were happy.
Until, of course, the nights became 100 degrees, and he started hating his job, coming home frustrated.
"What happened at work?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said. He began to prepare for sanding, so he wouldn't have to say, "You wouldn't understand."
"I helped a boy move piles of dirt at the playground," I joked. "You live in la-la land, girl," he said.
That August night my throat felt coarse from breathing in the sawdust air. I thought about la-la land and all of the women who didn't live there, the ones with pension plans and health insurance, the ones he secretly wished I was more like. And with a splinter in my foot, I knew that I didn't want to be with someone who didn't love me for me.
The next morning, I made myself a sandwich and accidentally dropped it in a wood-chip pile. "I don't think we're right for each other," I blurted.
"Really? Before I go to work?" he said, putting on his tie.
When he got home, we made love for the last time. It was sweet, until it got way too hot. Suddenly, his hands felt like sandpaper, and I cried.
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It's always hard to break up, and even harder when someone is literally putting a floor underneath you. Home Owner was a man who saw a run-down house, ripped out the carpets and painted the walls blue. He was dedicated to fixing things, including me. And as nice as the vision must have looked to him — this future house, this future me — it wasn't my dream. Thankfully, it only took me one summer to figure that out.
Alison Espach is the author of The Adults.
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