I've ruined everything that I've ever loved.

When I meet him we are colleagues at a chain coffee shop. We both like to follow the rules but I am better at it than he is and this drives him insane. I mismark cups on purpose to see how far I can push him. He proposes to me at the end of our first shift together after I write raz g.tea instead of R GT. I decide that I will keep him as mine only under the condition that he continues to make me feel the way he does on this day.

I realize I am not pretending when I find myself getting jealous of the girl he knows through Twitter. When he talks about her I know it isn't going to work. She is young, and deceptive, and weak. She is only comforted by the idea of him, his body terrifies her. It elates me. I express my feelings for him on a Starbucks cup. I think that he accepts.

He drives his mother’s car to Washington DC to take her on a first date. The night he comes back he meets me at our work and kisses me in the parking lot. Not just the spot near my car but in the middle of the thoroughfare. He is wearing an FBC kit only at the time I don’t know it is called a kit and he scolds me because I call it a jersey. I purposefully wear that black dress. We eat dinner at the restaurant across the parking lot and I drink beers because I am nervous about being on a date with someone who doesn’t drink.

My best friend calls me because she is injured and I make him go with me to Wegman’s to purchase an ACE bandage and some aspirin. We deliver the supplies and we play darts in her apartment because I am too drunk to drive and he beats me. We go to the beach and come close to being arrested for trespassing as we are making love on a rock. The police officer that is at the scene is one of the regular customers at our coffee shop.

The distance from me to him is 458 miles. Or three years. Whichever comes first. There will be a time when we think it will be too hard to keep going. It is hard because I am in a city looking at the same thing he is looking at in a different city. We will learn to live this way, but not yet.

I am concerned that our entire relationship can be chalked up to these markings on Starbucks cups, me taking his last name, a shot, and mutual hate for things. When he writes my name on his arm I am concerned that I will feel compelled to write his name on my arm as well. Every man after him will have to live with the fact that they are not the first man to do this.

I write love letters to him on the bar because we cannot exist outside of this place.