“Aren’t you lonely?” they’d ask.

“Not at all,” I’d reply, and it was mostly true. There were times when I missed female company, a sympathetic smile at the end of a hard day. A soft, sexy body at night, somebody to please and play with. But my last breakup had soured me for good on relationships, and the few dates I’d gone on with “perfect” girls had only shown me how well some people could hide their crazy. My sex life was a bit depressing, but nobody ever said, Hey, Noah, I know this completely sane girl with a killer smile and a rockin’ bod just passing through town for a night. Can she come over and blow you?

Until that day, I’d have to deal with a dry spell here and there.

I entered a few notes about the call on my laptop, and then pulled away from the curb. On the road again, I dug out the sandwich and took a bite as I headed for the station. I hadn’t had a BLT in forever, and actually, it tasted pretty fucking good.

“She’s not so bad, is she?” I asked Renzo. “A little off her rocker, maybe, but I guess she’s earned it.”

By the time I pulled into the parking lot behind the sheriff’s department, I’d finished the sandwich, the chips, and the pickle. I remembered what she’d said about the little extra treat, and I dug around in the bag with my free hand.

I pulled out a Twinkie and laughed.

It reminded me of someone.

Two

Meg

For as long as I can remember, I have dealt with extreme stress by eating Twinkies.

Like, a ridiculous amount of Twinkies.

It is totally juvenile and absurdly unhealthy and my arteries are probably already clogged beyond repair with delicious golden sponge cake and fluffy sweet cream filling, but I can’t help it—there’s just something so comforting about them.

However, not even my favorite Hostess snack cakes were going to take the edge off coming home on a Friday night to find my boyfriend of three years packing his bags.

“What do you mean, you’re leaving?” I stared at Brooks in disbelief, watching from the bedroom doorway as he methodically stacked neatly folded, pristinely white undershirts in his suitcase.

“I took the job at that firm in Manhattan. My train leaves tonight.”

“Tonight!” I moved into the room, my stomach lurching. “You’re moving to Manhattan tonight?”

“Yes,” he said calmly.

“But . . . but what about us?”

“Come on, Meg. You know there’s no us anymore.” His voice held no emotion whatsoever.

Usually I appreciated his unflappable demeanor—it was a good, calm yin to my more excitable yang—but I couldn’t help feeling blindsided by this turn of events and a little annoyed he wasn’t displaying any feeling at all. Three years was a long time, even if the last one hadn’t been very good. “Can’t we talk about this?”

“We have talked about this, Meg.” Next to the undershirts, he added a pile of navy blue and hunter green boxer briefs—in all the time we’d been together, I’d only ever seen Brooks were underwear in those two colors. “We talked about it during the holidays, we talked about it over the summer, and we talked about it last month, before I interviewed in New York.”

“I know, but . . . I guess I didn’t think it was a real thing.” The panic rose from my stomach to my chest. If Brooks really was leaving, this would be my third failed relationship in a row. That wasn’t just bad luck. That was a pattern. A cycle. Maybe even a curse.

Brooks stopped halfway between his closet and the bed with a garment bag in his hands and looked at me, a serious expression on his handsome face. “You chose not to think of it as a real thing. I told you it was.”

I chewed my thumbnail, knowing he was right.

“We’ve barely even seen each other for weeks.” He laid the garment bag out on the bed and went back to the closet.

“Well . . .” I searched frantically for a line of defense. “You’re a night owl, and I’m an early bird. I go to bed before you get home, and I’m always up and out in the morning before you. It’s hard.”

“That is all true.” He returned to the bed with an armful of shirts on identical wooden hangers. “But that is not how a relationship should be.”

“We’ve both been really busy with work too.” Brooks and I were both attorneys, although he worked for the Department of Justice—last I knew, anyway—and I’d traded practicing law to work as a campaign strategist. Our jobs were demanding and important. There were late night meetings and early morning conference calls, tight deadlines and high stakes. “It’s been hard to connect.”

“It’s more than that.” Brooks started slipping shirts into the bag. “There’s nothing between us anymore, Meg. We haven’t had sex in months.”

“That’s not entirely true. We tried that one night, but you fell asleep. That wasn’t my fault.” Although it had sort of felt like my fault—Brooks had given it some effort, but had been unable to, ahem, rise to the occasion. Secretly, I’d been kind of relieved, but another part of me wondered why I didn’t do it for him anymore.

“I’m not blaming you. I’m just stating the facts,” he said. Brooks was always just stating the facts. “And be honest. Have you missed it?”

I bit my lip. I hadn’t missed sex with Brooks, and he probably hadn’t missed it with me. Things in the bedroom had grown staid. Boring. Predictable.

For a while I’d been telling myself to put more effort into it—buy some lingerie, talk dirty, offer to give him a blowjob . . . but I hadn’t done anything to turn up the heat. “Maybe we could try harder,” I suggested without much feeling.

“No, Meg. We shouldn’t have to try so hard. We both deserve a relationship that doesn’t feel like another job.”

I stared at his shoes, expensive brown leather cap-toe oxfords, perfectly polished, an excellent complement to his navy blue suit. My eyes roamed up the tailored legs of his pants to his starched white dress shirt and tightly knotted striped tie. At six o’clock, his shave was still close, and his dark blond hair looked freshly trimmed—he had a standing appointment every three weeks. He was tall, toned, and handsome—straight out of a men’s cologne ad in a magazine.

But looking at him, I felt no stir of physical attraction, no heat pooling inside me, no desire to rip that expensive suit off him and pounce. Nor, it was clear, did he feel the urge to pounce on me.

“I’ll continue to pay half the rent until the end of the year,” he went on. “That gives you time to decide whether you’d like to take over the whole lease, move to a smaller place, or get a roommate.”

As the reality of being left alone again sank in, I lowered myself to the bed. “Oh, God.”

Brooks finally stopped packing and sat beside me. “I’m not doing this to hurt you.”

I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to sift through my complicated feelings. “I’m not hurt, exactly . . . I’m—I don’t know what I am. Disappointed. Embarrassed. Angry. And maybe a little hurt. Were you just going to leave without even saying goodbye?”