Page 91 of The New Couple in 5B

“There’s something you should know about me.”

Chad and I had been dating about a month, if you could call it dating, which implies something light and inconsequential. We had barely been apart since the night we met, both of us falling hard right away. I remember that time as a kind of hazy, heady rush—my days distilled into time with him or time away from him. He would be waiting for me outside my office, ready to whisk me away. We might do anything—run to see a friend in a show downtown, have a picnic in the park, walk the Brooklyn Bridge, spend hours over dim sum in Chinatown. It was all just foreplay, though, our night spent roaming each other’s bodies. He was a drug; I couldn’t get enough of him.

We spent most of our time in my East Village walk-up, which would later become our first home together, because he had roommates, and his place in Chelsea was a continuous party-slash-flophouse for all his actor friends. That time—it was light, free, glittery with new love.

“Oh,” I said, feeling my heart stutter a little but playing it off. “That sounds very mysterious.”

We’d walked up Third Avenue from the subway, on our way to meet his uncle Ivan for the first time at a little Indian place that he loved.

“Honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t come up already,” said Chad, clearing his throat and not meeting my eyes.

He’d been subdued that evening, and I wondered if he was nervous about my meeting Ivan. Chad had said that Ivan was a bit of a curmudgeon and my internet search had revealed the extent of Ivan’s renown as a war photographer. Also, he was Chad’s only family. So I was nervous, too.

“Now I’m really intrigued.”

He still wasn’t looking at me, eyes on the sidewalk in front of us. “Most people find it when they google.”

Slowing his pace, he finally came to a stop and moved to stand in front of me. I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw on his face. That high-wattage smile was nowhere to be seen, a frown sitting on his forehead.

“I’ve, you know, lost people because of it.”

People pushed past us on the avenue. It was late autumn, the night cool, both of us in jackets and scarves. I reached for him. “What is it?”

His eyes searched my face, then, “When I was in high school, my girlfriend—Bethany—was murdered.” He stops a second, swallows hard.

“Oh,” I said, his words landing like so many stones thrown. “That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

He took both of my hands.Oh, there’s more, I thought. His words—that his girlfriend was murdered—twisted and snaked through my consciousness. I felt a deep pull of fear in my center.

“For a time, I was the main suspect. It went to trial.”

Another blow, the breath leaving me. I stared at him, taking in all the details on his face—the sad wiggle to his eyebrows, the creases in his forehead. I saw his pain, a mirror of my own. The world around us disappeared. It was just us in a hum of the city noise, everything else falling away.

I’d purposely not searched him out on the web, wanting to get to know him in real time, allow him to reveal himself to me as he was ready. Just as I wanted to reveal myself to him, layer by layer. Now it felt like a mistake. Naivete. Me, the true-crime writer, the researcher, accustomed to digging deep to find out the truth. I never even googled his name.

Heat crawled up my neck into my cheeks.

How could he choose this time and place to bring it up? On the street, just minutes before meeting his uncle. Why now?

He gripped my arms, as if reading something on my face that indicated I would run from him. Maybe I should have. Maybe anyone else would have. But I didn’t run. I stared deep into those faceted, heavily lidded eyes, took in the gold wisps of his curls tossed in the wind. All I saw there, despite his words, was goodness. I tried to imagine him on trial for murder; there was no way for me to cast him in that role.

“This is horrible timing. The worst,” he said, reading my mind.

“I—don’t know what to say.” WhatcouldI say? Maybe if we’d been someplace quiet where I could process it, do research of my own. But we were on the street. Was it by design?

“It’s just been weighing on me—so much. And I wanted you to know before you met Ivan, my only real family. And I’m falling hard for you, Rosie. I can’t get in any deeper until you know this part of me, this ugly chapter in my life.”

Since I’d known him, not very long, I’d never seen him look so sad. “Forgive me for telling you—like this.”

“Okay,” I said, releasing a breath. “So—what happened?”

We shifted over to an empty doorway for some modicum of privacy. So much of life plays out on the streets of NYC. It wasn’t so unusual to have a potentially relationship-ending conversation on the sidewalk.

I tried to open my mind, my heart, the way I do when I start researching, just listening to the facts as they are presented.

“The police thought that Bethany had tried to break up with me, and I killed her in a rage, then dumped her body in the woods behind her house.”

I tried to imagine it—Chad enraged enough to kill, hurting someone, a young girl. I couldn’t. I looked at the hands that had only ever touched me in tenderness. I’d never even seen him lose his temper or heard him say an unkind word about anyone.

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