We had met at a neighborhood bookstore almost eleven years earlier, on a Wednesday evening when I had gone in to escape a sudden storm. The shop had a narrow poetry aisle, uneven wooden floors, and a cat that treated customers as obstacles to its preferred sleeping arrangements. Amy was standing near the front table with three books balanced against her chest, arguing good-naturedly with the owner about whether the ending of a novel was honest or merely cruel. She wore a yellow raincoat, and rainwater had left dark spots on the shoulders. I remember her voice first, certain and amused, before I remember the shape of her face.
I joined the argument without being invited, saying that not every unhappy ending was more realistic than a happy one. Amy turned toward me with an expression of exaggerated suspicion. "You've clearly never read the book," she said. I admitted I hadn't, and she laughed so openly that the owner laughed too. Ten minutes later we were sitting on the wide window ledge, discussing books neither of us had read and the odd habits of people who pretended they had. When the rain stopped, neither of us hurried to leave.
Our first date was at a tiny Mexican restaurant where the air conditioner dripped onto my shoulder and the server accidentally brought us someone else's appetizers. Amy ate half the mistaken order before anyone noticed. She told me she worked in communications for a nonprofit and had recently moved across town. I told her I designed municipal water systems, a profession that sounded exciting only to people who had experienced a water main failure. She asked more questions about my work than nearly anyone outside the engineering department ever had, and I fell a little in love with the attention before I fell in love with the woman giving it.
What she did not tell me was that, six months earlier, she'd been three weeks from marrying another man. There was no reason I should have known. People arrive in new relationships carrying entire landscapes of lives that preceded the introduction, and none of us expects an exhaustive inventory over dinner. Amy told me she'd had a serious relationship that hadn't worked out, a statement that was true enough to pass unnoticed. I did not ask whether there had been a ring, invitations, or a dress waiting inside a garment bag. At the time, that past belonged to her, and I was interested in the future we might build.
She was different from anyone I'd dated before. When she was happy, she could become animated over the smallest things: a good peach from the farmers' market, a clever sign on a shop window, a dog resting its head on the arm of a stranger's chair. When she was uncomfortable, she grew polite rather than argumentative, and the more upset she became, the more carefully she chose her words. I noticed that habit early, but I mistook it for composure. It took years to understand that sometimes the people who seem least likely to fight are the ones who learned that expressing disagreement carried a price.