When Lo and I were in love, they said I hummed like a motor in my sleep. Often, we’d compare the temperatures of our bodies, plot out synoptic charts lying palm-to-palm in their bed. When I was nineteen, I ran unbearably hot.

We both order black coffee. We both tighten our jackets like they are made of steel.

When Lo and I were in love, we completely missed Halloween because we were fucking for like, sixteen hours, we ordered two Ubers and ate the fee. Lo used to live on an island three hours from my dorm room, and I would take the ferry twice a month to visit them there. We only ate boxed mac and cheese and cinnamon lattes from a quaint but freezing cafe near their basement apartment.

We dressed as Luke and Lorelai from Gilmore Girls that year; neither of us had to buy anything for the costumes. My shirt was too thin; I bought it online. Blue tie-dye and high-waisted jeans with a poorly stitched star on the back pocket, though they were so tight that the star stretched into a sort of lopsided trapezoid.

Victoria is very picturesque in the fall. Sometimes, Lo would go to class, and I’d put on my earmuffs and watch people turn their Christmas lights on. I walked by a man on the street.

Some days, he would say, Jesus saves. I would say, Alright.

Lo says, I’m glad we’re doing this. I run my tongue over my teeth because it’s the only bone I can touch without doing something crazy. I say, I’m glad we’re doing this. Lo drinks their coffee, which they used to put milk in.

I drink my coffee, which used to be a latte. They say they developed a migraine that persisted with a dull, throbbing ache from February to June. They say they could barely get out of bed, and all they could eat without vomiting was strawberries and celery sticks.

I ask if they’ve been to the doctor. Lo says, You know me.

When Lo first moved to Vancouver, they had a wonderful balcony with weeks-old raccoon-shit molding its own ecosystem into the stairs. We would drink iced tea in folding chairs while the ocean wind blew through our sweaters and small hands. Lo would pick pieces of dried leaves from my hair, and I would tell them I feel most loved when I am being treated like a huge, precious doll.

They would ask me to stop saying weird shit like that.

Lo says Charlotte can crochet like a motherfucker. Charlotte is Lo’s new girlfriend. Charlotte has nutmeggy brown hair and a voice that is smooth like static.

She listens to Nina Simone and Bob Dylan. I drink my coffee. The coffee shop has a big motorcycle with a cracked leather seat in the middle of the room.

It is cool and also ridiculous. When Lo and I were in love, I would send them photos of vintage Vespas I found on Facebook Marketplace. The coffee shop is like a thrift store full of ornate items we cannot buy.

There are three chandeliers and a Persian rug. Lo’s stool creaks; they sort of wince. I say, That’s great.

When Lo’s migraines used to come, it was always the night before a massive downpour. We’d lie awake. Lo would think about the pain, and I would think about the storm.

They said once that migraines feel like a kind of hurt wants to push out of your body. They said when it goes away, it feels like the tide is going out. I said, You should write that down.

Lo says, I’m glad we’re doing this. I say, you said that already. They bounce their knee so hard that both our cups shake. We talk about another couple we used to know who broke up.

Lo tells me their best friend is having disappointing sex with a man they suspect is pretending to be bisexual. I tell them my best friend moved in with her high school boyfriend. They say, Cool.

I tell them I am moving soon. They tell me they spent early spring on a fishing boat in Bamfield, scraping barnacles off metal beams and studying them under microscopes. They show me a picture of a starfish balanced on their palm, they have a different haircut, a bright orange life jacket, and they are smiling widely in a sort of crazed way, as though they’ve caught a piece of the sun in their hand.

I can barely look at it. I say, That’s awesome.

I had to lie to my mother about seeing Lo that week. She didn’t think I should see them again. I tell her that she never thinks I should see them again.

She says she wishes she could write a book about everything she knows now that she is fifty. When my mother and I drove from Vancouver to Ottawa the summer of my twentieth birthday, she talked about her book all the time. She said it’d be called The View from Here.

When my mother was very young, her father was arrested under false charges of embezzlement from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and placed in Her Majesty’s Penitentiary in St. John's, Newfoundland. My mother says she remembers how he pulled over the car. He said, Things are going to be very different from now on.

My mother says she remembers her father kept two guns in his car, one in the center console and one in the glove compartment.

We stopped at A&W for dinner. There was a massive sign that read, One Hundred Percent Canadian Beef. I said, Do you think the chicken is American?

She said, Who cares. My mother chewed her burger very slowly. I thought about asking if it tasted like national pride.

My mother said her father was not a violent man. My mother said once there was a blizzard so cold that the East Coast wind blew icicles into her twelve-year-old eyelashes, the snow grew to the height of a fourth grader, and caved in the roof of her neighbor's shed. She said it doesn’t get cold like that in Ontario, even if it feels that way sometimes.

The fast food florescents accentuated just how terrible we both looked after twelve hours on the road. I had gained the weight of an entire toddler from binge drinking white wine and spending most days lying down, thinking about death in my second year of university. Everything I wore was stretchy and stained and shitty.

My mother had just returned from a wellness retreat that specialized in coffee enemas. She was so thin, it was like she was falling out of her body. I was addicted to sleeveless turtlenecks, she was addicted to pretending I didn’t have tattoos.

She tapped her thick fingernails on the taupeish table and smoked a cigarette outside.

My mother said her father was a landscaper after he was a police officer. He liked to turn on loud machines and make unruly things smaller. She said he drank on the job, but he drank everywhere else, too, so it didn’t make much of a difference.

Lo says, I’m glad you’re doing well. Lo talks to me like I am a child about to throw a temper tantrum. I drink my coffee, which is cold and terrible. 

I say, I really am. I say it in a way that is supposed to make us both laugh, but is accidentally very sincere and embarrassing. They say they miss me whenever they watch a reality TV show produced by those awful sadists Nick and Vanessa Lachey. I say, That’s crazy.

When Lo and I were in love, they stroked my sweat-stringed hair and said they’d never put their hands on me unless I asked. I told them I was probably an evil person and a huge whore. I told them I didn’t think I believed in God.

Lo and I spent New Year's Eve together. I drank my teenage weight in champagne and watched them dance on a chair in their wicker living room that smelled like potpourri. They sang Linger by the Cranberries.

In the night, my mother was always cutting the tension by talking about my father's family, about how he was pretty good considering the circumstances. I asked if, when she was a child, she ever thought the moon was following her car specifically. She said, Not really, no.

I am very discreet when I ask about Charlotte, even though I have been having imaginary conversations with her in the shower for months. I tell Charlotte my week has been okay, just hectic. I tell Charlotte she shares a name with the anthropomorphic spider that awakened my sexuality.

I tell Charlotte I have had trouble sleeping in this new country, which is almost exactly like the old country. I tell Charlotte she should play me something from her record collection. I tell Charlotte she can probably do better.

Lo says, We met on Halloween. I bite down on my cheek so hard it draws blood. I say, Awesome.

My mother said she thinks nature and nurture are basically the same. In the dark between Winnipeg and Sault Ste. Marie, the only parts of the highway that exist are the ones her headlights carve out. She says my father's mother is a vile woman, and all her boyfriends smelled like ashtrays.

Lo hated it when I wore perfume on my neck because of the bitter taste. I used to borrow their orange sweater. When Lo and I were in love, they said, What’s the point of dating a writer if she never writes anything about you?

Lo says, I’m glad we did this. I say, Me too.

My mother tells me that hardly anything runs in our family. My mother tells me she looked it up, and the chickens are Canadian, too.