The Tenacity of Nothing

Sophie Carver:
What we had was a paradox of love; it was contradictory, absurd, but felt truer to me than anything else ever did. It made me love too much and made me want to never love again. I tried to keep myself distant, to make sure I wouldn't get hurt, but I did anyway. He infected me with love.

Chris Meyers:
In the grand scheme of things, she was good--maybe even great. And maybe in some parallel universe, everything would've worked out; she would've been perfect, I would've been perfect, and love would've been predictable. That's how it was supposed to happen. But nothing went according to plan--the timing was off and we never had a time, not even an instant, when we loved each other.

So I had to end it.

Sophie:
He had left my apartment that morning before I woke up--no note, no phone message, nothing. I tried calling him, but his number was unavailable. It was as if he had disappeared. It was as if I had just made him up.

When he appeared on my doorstep, he had his hands in his pockets. He never had his hands in his pockets.

He looked at me and said we needed to talk.

Chris:
I remember hearing once that our first thought when waking up is the truest thing we will ever think. So every night, falling asleep, I prayed that somehow my subconscious would untangle the truth from the lies and I would wake up, knowing why we were still together, knowing why we had gotten together in the first place.

Sophie:
He told me I was better than great; he told me that I was one of the best things that had ever happened to him, that I was an integral part of his life, that, on some level, I completed him.

And then he said that it was over.

I told him, "You can't do this--I love you!"

And he said that it wasn't working between us, the timing was off, some bullshit about how the square root of a negative is mathematically impossible.

Chris:
Do you want to know what my first thought was when waking up that morning?

Sophie:
He told me that he couldn't keep doing it; he couldn't keep pretending. He said he didn't want to pretend that there was a relationship when it was only ever one-sided. He said, "We just don't know how to love each other."

I was sobbing, begging him, promising that there would only be love after this, that I would love him forever.

Chris:
My first thought that morning was that I didn't love her and never had.

Sophie:
He didn't believe me. I didn't believe myself.

I told him to get out. He just stood there, as if he could say something, as if there was something to say. I was screaming at him, "Get out, get out, get out!"

Chris:
Love should have a formula; it should be mathematically definable. It should be a paragon of geometry. It should be perfect.

Soph and I should have been perfect.

Sophie:
He walked to the door, opened it, and eased it closed behind him. I wished he had slammed it shut.

I collapsed, sobbing, trying to hold myself together. Without him, I was less than the sum of my parts.

Chris:
Do you know what the square root of negative one is?

Neither do I.

Sophie:
It doesn't exist.