In our hotel room that evening, Matías is in the shower and I’m sitting on the bed with my computer, looking up flights to Buenos Aires. “It’s amazing to be in a vibrant place together,” Matías said that afternoon as we walked through Washington Square Park. “Now I can’t wait to take you to Argentina. Choose the dates, I’ll buy you a ticket.”

I smiled. “I’ve never been.”

“Believe me,” he said, “Once you’re there, you won’t want to come back.”

As I’m sorting through flights I decide to check my email. There’s one from my mother, which makes me literally gasp. We haven’t spoken in nearly six months. “Habibti,” she’s written, “I’m in Amman with Teta. We wish you were here with us.”

I feel an ache of desperately wanting to be there with them before my mind begins conjuring up images of the last time we saw each other, on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge after she’d left the restaurant mid-dinner. “I miss you so, so much.”

Her words travel past my head, down my throat, and land on my stomach. They stay there, effortlessly imposing their weight.

I hear Matías push back the shower curtain and pull a towel off the rack. He steps out of the bathroom. “My mother emailed me,” I tell him. He knows I don’t speak with her, but nothing beyond that.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I answer, shutting my laptop and placing it on the nightstand. He climbs onto the bed and lets his towel fall to the floor. He grabs me by my shoulders and props me up against the headboard, pulling the rubber band out of my hair. He pushes himself inside me, and I yell, “Stop!”

He jumps back. “Was that too much?”

“No.” I break down into tears and tell him about her. I tell him about the summer, about Healing Internal Trauma, about grief letters. “I didn’t want you to know any of this,” I say.

He wraps his arms around me. “I wish you’d told me about your mother sooner,” he says as I press my body against him. “Maybe you can think of me as someone who can fill that role for you. I have this urge to protect you. You’re my girlfriend, but I also think of you like a daughter.”

We planned to go to dinner that night in Nolita, but he suggests we stay in and order takeout. We pick up sushi and eat in bed while watching When Harry Met Sally on TV. By the end I can barely keep my eyes open. He turns off the television, and half awake, we make love. “I love you,” I whisper. “I really do.”

He comes, collapses, and I fall asleep.

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