Some nights, the cold sheet against her back was depressing. Some nights, she missed the warmth of another back against her own. But then she would remind herself that she had no right to miss a man who was never really hers to miss. On those nights, when she felt the warm tears creeping away from her, away from her cold face, away from the icy loneliness, she would throw back the covers with anger and sleep on the floor. At least the floor was supposed to be cold.

She wasn’t always lonely. She wasn’t always alone. She was young. She had friends, coworkers. She had family to laugh with. But she was alone in her loneliness. It was a secret, one that only they had shared. And now there was no they, only a she. And it was much heavier when she carried it alone.

“When this is all over…” they used to say, knowing that this would not, could not last for long.

“I’ll write you letters, but never send them,” she would say.

“I’ll dedicate songs to you that you’ll never hear,” he would laugh, “They’ll be the most heartbreaking and passionate songs that you’ll never hear.”

“How do I know you’ll actually do that?” she would ask with a grin.

“Because I just told you,” he had replied. But his smile no longer matched his eyes; eyes that could see the coming loneliness.

She had a very good life. No one would say otherwise. She was young. She was pretty, according to many standards. She had a “good head on her shoulders,” people would say. She had a good job. She came from a good family.

She was sitting at her desk, in her office at her good job when she heard the terrible news. Her boss was standing in the doorway, where he had once stood. Moving to the chair across from her, where he had once sat.

“How does someone get over that?” her boss asked, almost to himself, shaking his head.

She sighed, “I don’t know. You don’t, I guess,” not sure of what she was supposed to say or how she was supposed to respond.

Her boss, “Mr. K” everyone called him, knew that she knew him. He was the one who had introduced them. Mr. K knew that even after they had met at his daughter’s wedding, they kept in touch; that on occasion he had picked her up from work late, after most had gone home.

Old Mr. K never mentioned it; he had his own after-hours secrets to bother with. Not until that awkward morning, when Mr. K shuffled hesitantly into her office and revealed that the other one he had loved so much- even more than her-had died. She was killed in a car accident the day before.

“Excuse me for a moment,” she had said, walking slowly around her desk, past the large Mr. K perched uncomfortable and unhearing in the small office chair, through the doorway. Her pace quickened down the dim hallway, the neon “Exit” beckoning to her.

She slowed her feet, commanded them not to run like an impatient child’s when she eyed her car. It was not too far, but far enough; it sat alone at the end of the row of employee cars. She slid quickly into the driver’s seat once the door was opened. Her chest rose and fell with quick, sharp breaths.

“I gave up everything for her,” she whispered, clutching her hands together on top of the steering wheel, resting her head on them to stop her fingers from trembling. And now this, death; a death that erased all of her own efforts and unveiled the insignificance of her choices.

He had noticed her some time before they met. That night felt like it was just a few weeks gone, not almost a year, like it was. He had seen her while she was working. She had not really seen him until the night of the wedding, tall and haunting, his eyes catching hers over and through the buzzing crowd between them.

“I’m Grace,” she had said after they had danced together namelessly and carelessly, at the insistence of their mutual friend, Mr. K, giving them both relative comfort. “Grace,” he had replied. “I’m Guy.” And she had said their two names together in her head, Grace and Guy. It meant nothing, but the closeness of their names amused her.

The wedding that night had been her third one in mere months. Now a college graduate, Grace had a front row seat in watching friends cross the next item off on life’s itinerary: marriage. Grace was a bridesmaid at that third wedding. She had stood next to the bride, the daughter of Mr. K. She fulfilled the part beautifully, brilliantly.

Grace didn’t like to commit to many things, but if she did, she gave of herself completely. Inside, she was tired of weddings, and she felt too young to be that kind of tired.

Grace understood many things; she collected facts and life lessons, tucking them away in her mind for later use, but she did not really understand love, or marriage. Or she could not understand why it had not happened to her. She had thought that maybe, perhaps, she could have loved her last boyfriend. She loved having a date wherever she went. She loved having someone adore her. She had loved how they looked together and how they met. She loved how their story sounded when she told it to any who inquired.

“We saw each other practically every day for three years at the college gym, never speaking. Then I go visit my grandparents for Thanksgiving, and who happens to be at the local dive bar? Turns out our mothers are from the same small town!” The story was adorable, a marvelous display of fate and circumstance.

People loved hearing it. But sometimes she would get intense flashes of anxiety when they were together. They would be driving, and he would make a wrong turn or pass a spot in parking lot, and this would induce disgust over his inability to pay attention to detail. Sometimes he would tell the most terribly unfunny jokes to her friends, and she would turn away in embarrassment.

On occasion, he would make ridiculous comments, like “Maybe you shouldn’t wear makeup to class,” or “Maybe you shouldn’t swear so much,” and she would absolutely panic. She knew that this couldn’t be the rest of her life, but she had always felt this way when she dated someone.

She didn’t understand how everyone else endured relationships. Her relationship seemed to be a constant imbalance of weighing perks against all the other shit. She wanted to be in love. She wanted to be part of the group of friends who went on double dates and planned conjoined lives after college. At the very least, she wanted to have that same desire that everyone else did.