“Sure,” she said. She smiled again; it was starting to feel more natural anytime she did so. “I’m just surprised, is all.”

We stepped outside the café, and I felt overwhelmed as we walked off in different directions. I wanted her, I wanted her life, I wanted to live inside her life while still living inside my own. I wanted, above all, for her to like me.

Two days later, when she still hadn’t sent any of her work, I followed up. Three essays arrived in my inbox that night. She seemed to be a guarded person, so reading her unpublished writing was like cutting to the front of a long line. She wrote about her French Colonialist guilt, which as a Palestinian I felt uniquely qualified to absolve. She wrote about reading La Fontaine fables to her daughter. She wrote about middle-of-the-night despair, about wanting more. I couldn’t believe how much her inner world resembled mine.

The problem, as always, was asymmetry. Not only was she straight, but she had a husband to share her inner world with. I presumably had Anna’s world, yet somehow hers was never nearly as captivating.

I read each of the essays several times. “They’re nice,” I wrote in response, still afraid to shatter a veneer of detachment.

A month later we went to lunch, but I couldn’t eat. I wore a dress that once belonged to my mother, her gold hoop earrings, her Michele watch. Anything beautiful that’s mine was once hers. Now that I’d read the professor’s writing, now that her sapphire wedding ring was refracting light from every surface, I was too conscious of my motions to land the fork in my mouth, so I stopped trying. “Sorry,” I said, laughing dumbly. “I can’t eat and talk at the same time.”

She had chosen a place on the Upper West Side known for its burgers, but I ordered a salad. I imagined she was judging me in that moment. I’m familiar with that judgment, after years of anorexia. I was past it by then, but still, how could I eat something so unsexy as a cheeseburger in front of the sexiest woman in the universe? She continued to look attractive and in control as she ate her burger, chewing with unapologetic authority. I had the ridiculous salad packed up though I knew I’d never eat it. When the check came I offered to pay. I’d looked up the place beforehand—cash only—and I fumbled self-consciously through bills fresh from the ATM. My eyes began to blur, I put down too much for the tip. We got up and left, and the minute she turned the corner from the restaurant tears spilled down my cheeks. I was certain that I’d given myself away, though I admit: by then, a part of me wanted her to suspect.