I walked out onto the sand. It was completely silent and dark; only the lights from a nearby beach club illuminated my small patch of sand. I stared up at the sky, at the stars glittering so very far away. In front of me was the tiniest sliver of a moon—bright orange behind the black orb that obscured the rest of the bloody glow. I looked down at the collection of footprints reaching out into the darkness of the beach. I counted three stray sets among the dozens of webbed gull prints dotting the sand. I could see in the darkness that a collection of seagulls had found some space for themselves on the empty beach. They circled and swooped and walked quietly in pairs, pecking at the sand, hoping to come upon a crumb or some other leftover morsel. Some flew against the wind, suspended over me. I felt like I was on the surface of the moon, with only the sound of the ocean to ground me.

I always wished on shooting stars. As a kid I’d run outside barefoot when I knew there’d be a meteor shower. I still did. I’d make wishes on full moons and half-moons and quarter-moons. I wasn’t superstitious; this kind of thing was mostly just in case.

Bobby had recently taken to telling me about other people’s divorce stories. As if it was some kind of road map for ourselves, a how-to manual. Except that we’d shake our heads in sorrow for the people who were having an acrimonious time of it. Lawyer fees and custody battles—it all seemed awful to us. We were not going to be those people, he said to me once. As if he knew it was inevitable. I didn’t want to go home to that inevitability, even if he wasn’t there. Not just yet.

Here’s what else was inevitable: your death, my death, my parents’ death, your parents’ death, the beginning and end of a relationship—a marriage, Bobby kept correcting me. There was a fixation on the word “marriage.” It was something more intense than just a relationship. But I couldn’t see the difference between the two, beyond some paperwork and a name change. Perhaps that was part of the problem. It was up to me to keep a marriage going, put in the work, and make Bobby feel as important as he thought he made me feel. But for some reason, I just couldn’t do that. Nothing felt important beyond watching people die. It felt more urgent than the constraints of a marriage, of partnership, or even of building a life together. The process of dying felt inevitable, clean. But building a life together had too many variables—children, houses, sicknesses, vacations, dogs, piles of shoes, closets full of unworn clothes, broken appliances, sex, and lack of sex. Here, the only variable was the type of disease. It felt more manageable.