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game, and he made me giggle constantly. The office manager was always walking by my office, “What the hell are you smiling about now? Why are you so happy? You’re up to something.”
    I cherished every conversation with him. His voice just made me swoon, yet he was like talking to your best girlfriend. He would tell me how crazy he was about me, how witty I was, that he couldn’t find anything about me that wasn’t absolutely perfect. He told me that I was one of the only women he had ever met that could keep up with him intellectually, because he was obviously a super genius. You know, I don’t think he was kidding; he really thought that. But more importantly, what really resonated with me was that he said I made him feel alive again after being unhappy for so long. Because I felt exactly the same way about him.
    I was becoming more and more desperate to see him again with every passing day. “I miss you. I can’t wait see you, to kiss you, to throw my arms around you. My God will you hurry up and come up here?!” I would plead with him. “I can’t stand being away from you like this, it’s driving me crazy! Do I need to call this client for you?!”
    The very idea of kissing him monopolized my thoughts most days. I found myself getting so distracted at work, if I didn’t see him soon I was probably going to get fired.
    The six hour distance between us became an ongoing joke that whenever he would leave the office I would say, “Oh you must be on your way up here. Finally!”
    He would always answer the same, “Yep, see you in six hours!” Sometimes he would text just to mess with me, Going out to grab lunch and head to Raleigh, see you in 6 hours! If I told him I missed him, I’d get, Well, in that case I’m leaving now! See you in 6 hours…
    I’ve never been very good at expressing my emotions to anyone, at least not the touchy-feely ones, appearing vulnerable was a sign of weakness to me. But he made it so easy for me to let my guard down. I trusted him implicitly, which was ironic given the circumstances that we now found ourselves in. He was so warm and comforting, and incredibly caring. He became like my hot cup of coffee; my mornings just weren’t right until I could talk to Matt.
    But while I felt like we could talk about absolutely anything, I stopped just short of actually telling him everything. We had discussed our childhoods and families a couple of times, but I was afraid to tell him too much about mine because I didn’t want to appear to be broken or like I had too much baggage. I was pretty broken though, or at least I always thought I was. Since I didn’t know exactly where we were heading, I saw no need to bring up the crazy right out of the gate.
    ****
    My mother divorced my father when I was two. Obviously, I don’t remember everything. I remember that my brother and I saw him on weekends, and I remember him being a loving, attentive dad, at least until I started having opinions of my own. Then he suddenly became cold and critical. He took particular issue with my weight, which was odd, since I was a pretty normal-sized kid. I remember him entertaining women half his age over at his house while wearing nothing but his burgundy fashion briefs. You don’t forget a thing like that. He gave me sips of “wikski” as I called it, probably hoping it would make me go to sleep faster (I still can’t drink it). He would blast “The Moody Blues” through speakers mounted on the walls in every single room. I remember it being too loud for me to sleep. As I got older, I saw him less and less. He either picked me up hours later than expected or just canceled altogether.
    When I was seven, my mother moved the three of us down to North Carolina and from then I only saw my father over the summers and Christmas breaks. My brother eventually moved back to Maine to live with him, but my father didn’t want me. My mother started dating a man down here, and he moved in with us. He worked at home