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“I get that.” Since he didn’t have a wife and kids to run away from, why would he ever need to leave?

He muted the television, and in the awkward silence I realized how totally alone we were. “Can I use your bathroom?” I asked. Whenever I got nervous, I needed to pee, which was always inconvenient when I went horseback riding.

He pointed. “It’s next to my bedroom.”

His bedroom. The place he goes to bed. The place he takes off his clothes and … I wanted to see his bedroom. As I walked toward the bathroom, Michael answered his phone, which gave me the opportunity to peek my head in, but I couldn’t see much, so I walked in. A blue paisley comforter was pulled up to cover the whole bed, but parts of the white sheet stuck out from underneath in a haphazard way. There was a bottle of Calvin Klein cologne on his nightstand, next to a framed photograph of him at Disney World with a man and a toddler. On the dresser were a bunch of action hero figures. They were in various positions of combat, like Batman was fighting the Incredible Hulk.

I picked up Thor and was looking at him when I heard, “What do you think of my superheroes?” He said it as if it was perfectly normal to find me in his bedroom. I dropped Thor, knocking over Superman and causing Lex Luthor to launch into the air and nosedive under the bed.

“Sorry,” I said and got down on my hands and knees to pick up Lex Luthor. I tried to stand them back up in their original positions, but they kept falling over. “These are cool. I noticed them on the way back from the bathroom.” He knew I was lying because you couldn’t see his dresser from the hallway, but he didn’t say anything.

“My mom found them a week ago in her garage. If I’d known there was going to be a woman in my bedroom, maybe I would’ve left them in the box.” As I continued to struggle to get them back in their original positions, Michael took Superman and Lex Luthor out of my hands and easily positioned them back down on the dresser so they were fighting each other. He moved closer to me. “You look really pretty today,” he said.

“My hair’s flat.” I ran my fingers through it again.

“I like it. You look like a teenager.” He brushed a strand out of my eyes, and it felt as if fireworks were exploding from my roots. Suddenly, I heard music playing—how cliché. Oh, wait, it was coming from his cell phone. Michael ran into the living room to grab it, and I followed.

“Hey, Kirk, I know you wanted the article yesterday, but I’m just about done,” he said, then listened a beat. His mouth turned down. “I know you had a deadline, but I can get it to you in a couple of minutes.” His shoulders drooped, and his lips were pressed tight. “Maybe you could use it at another time?” He rubbed his forehead. “No, no, I understand. Okay, bye.” He dropped his phone down on the couch. Then he picked up the TV remote and threw it across the room. The batteries flew out and clanked as they hit the floor. I jumped. I’d never seen him angry. “I should’ve made the deadline. That article was going to pay my rent for the month.” He picked the batteries up and tried putting them back into the remote, but the piece that held them in had broken off. He sat on the couch and put the remote back on the coffee table.

“I should go,” I said.

“No, no, don’t. I shouldn’t have reacted that way.”

I sat down next to him. “I’m sorry about your article.”

“Me too. I’ll try to sell it somewhere else.”

“Wow, you’re amazing. I wouldn’t be able to get over the disappointment that quickly.”

“Considering I just threw the remote, I would say I haven’t. But in these situations, I remind myself that some stuff isn’t worth it.”

“I wish I could feel that way,” I said. “I worry about everything. Right now, all I can think about is my dad and how bad I feel for him and whether I’m going to get the same disease someday.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Yeah, but I wish I could be more optimistic.”

“My mom has always said, ‘Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.’ She loves quoting Benjamin Franklin.”

“My mom vibrates worry, which is why I have a hard time not seeing dark clouds everywhere. And right now, they aren’t letting in any light.”

“Years ago, I worried about everything too, but after my dad died so young, I thought I’d better live every moment like it’s my last. As the Green Lantern says, ‘No matter how bad things get, something good is out there, just over the horizon.’”

Had the universe put Michael in my life to teach me to stop focusing on all the things that were going wrong? The doctor could be wrong about my dad, or if he’s right, Dad could stay stable for years. Doctors didn’t know everything. If I stopped worrying all the time and loosened up and enjoyed myself, then in forty years if I lost my memory, I’d have no regrets. I was going to start doing some of the things on my bucket list. Maybe not heli-skiing, but I could at least share a bowl of Top Ramen with a cute guy. I’d add that to my bucket list later.

“You know what? I’d love some of that soup,” I said.

Michael got two bowls out of the cabinet, filled them with ramen, and brought them to the card table that was in a nook between the kitchen and the living room. As I rested my arms on the table, it wobbled back and forth. Michael took a small piece of wood and pushed it under one of the legs. I blew on my soup and took a bite, the salty noodles slithering down my throat. He asked how Gia was doing, and I admitted I didn’t really know.

“Lately it feels like there’s a lot of secrets between us,” I said. Sometimes her secrets, sometimes mine. I told him how Jim and I sometimes parented differently and how it could cause an argument, and then I realized I needed to keep my two worlds separate. I didn’t want to talk about Jim with Michael.

Instead I told him about my childhood and how I had fought anxiety. I shared with him how I was afraid that when Gia left for college, I wouldn’t have a life anymore. I confessed that I had been looking for a job and didn’t know that I would be able to get one. I even told him about Gia not wanting to have sex with Jason and how I worried about him dumping her.

He told me about how little money his parents had when he was growing up, how he’d been bullied in seventh grade, and how his grandfather had committed suicide when he was ten. He was such a good communicator and seemed genuinely interested in everything I said. It was the deepest conversation I’d had with anyone in a long time.

“When I was a teenager, I tried to sleep with as many girls as I could. I thought it made me cool,” he said.

“I got really hurt by guys like you.”