I read the last paragraph, then tried adding to it but couldn’t focus. I reverted back to my old practices in the weeks I’d lived alone before Carolyn moved in, trying to see how many words I could get down between one train ending and the next one beginning. The trains came, the words didn’t. I glanced at the door every time I heard a noise, repeatedly checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t accidentally silenced it. I was tense and agitated. My father had written; Carolyn was missing. I felt best served to cut the anxiety off at the knees before it snowballed to something else, which I knew it would. I took a Xanax and then paced the apartment waiting for it to take the edge off.

Unlike others, I’ve never taken Xanax recreationally, or as a warm-up to a night on the town, or for any other reason that went beyond its intended purpose, which was to put the kibosh on mounting anxiety before it became destructive. Xanax, quite predictably, always put me to sleep if I just took one, or knocked me out completely for a minimum of eight hours if I took two. I merely wanted to take a nap, but that didn’t stop the question from coming before the pill started working: Where in hell was Carolyn? This right here, this worry, this is why I hate relationships. I’m still the same person plagued with insecurity and jealousy and the past. I started worrying that we had moved too fast. With the benefit of hindsight, her moving in was the wrong decision. Then I shook my head. Screw hindsight; there is no benefit to it. It’s deceptive. Hindsight isn’t twenty-twenty because we can never know what would have happened had we chosen otherwise. There’s no point of comparison. Every decision we make is the death of a thousand other possibilities, and with that to contend with, who the hell knows what is or isn’t the right choice? You can never know anything for sure unless you try.

I undressed and fell into bed and finally started to drift away when the door opened.

“Hey you,” Carolyn said. She flipped on the lights.

“Hey,” I said, my speech sounding slurred. I lifted my head, squinted up at her. She wore the same black pants she wore every day to work and her green apron was in her hand.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Where were you? I kept trying to call.”

“Did you? I’m sorry. My battery died while I was at work. I had to cover someone’s shift for a while. It sucked. Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “I took a Xanax. I’m going to be out cold soon.”

“Nooooo,” she said and sat beside me. “It’s Friday. I want to go do something.”

“What do you want to do?”