One November weekend, not long after we had started spending practically every night together, we were cozied up together at a bar with some college friends of mine. Shots happened, more shots happened, Rob was bombastic, Vicky was drunk, and it was the usual circus of yelling and one-upmanship. It was deeply comforting. Even though Michael thrilled me, and I was glad to know I thrilled him, I found myself growing uneasy. It was too much too fast. (Yes, I know I was obviously chicken s**t and too dumb to recognize how good I had it.) At any rate, Michael joined us after his shift ended, and he and Rob instantly fell in love with each other. I was proud to introduce him to some of the people who knew me best, as an adult out of the nest, as a journalist and a writer and as someone who wanted more all the time. Rob put his arm around my shoulder at the bar and said, “Doty, I like him.” And that puffed my chest a little.

But. But but but. The more shots were poured, the looser everyone of course got, and the night got long. Right before we headed for the 7 train and back to Woodside, Michael put his arms around me, kissed my cheek, and said, “I’m either going to marry you, or this is going to end very, very badly.”

Whatever I had been drinking evaporated out of my head and was replaced by cold fear. What did he mean? He was going to marry me or kill me? Obviously that was not going to be the case. But all of a sudden it became clear: the heat of the first few months together was supposed to sustain this until we met our graves, and I wanted to run out of the door right then, screaming into traffic. So I did the next best thing. The next morning, I called my friend Jake, a reporter who had just moved back to North Carolina, and asked if I could come down for the weekend. “I need a break,” I told him. Since we’d met my freshman year of college, Jake had fielded many of my breakdowns, over boys and everything else, and said, “A break from what?”

“I’ll tell you when I get down there,” I said.

Then I went cool on Michael for a couple of days. (I told you, I am not really that nice of a person.) I avoided him at work, I returned only one or two of his many calls, I declined his usual invitation to stay over. I needed to get my head straight. I had no plans to break up with him, but I needed to slow things down. My need for him was evolving into something permanent, and it scared the everlasting holy s**t out of me. And instead of facing it like a grownup and talking it through, I decided to just get on a plane, because taking the E train to the airport and fighting the TSA at rush hour felt more pleasant than that.

“So, I’m going to North Carolina tonight to see my friend Jake,” I told him after he’d finally tracked me down in the newsroom. “I just need to go home for a few days.”

Michael was suspicious, and he had every right to be. “Who’s Jake?”

“I told you about him. My friend,” I said. “Don’t worry, I am not going to sleep with him.” (I was not, did not, and have never, just to be absolutely clear on that point.)

“Why do you need a break?” He asked. I could tell he didn’t finish his thought. From me, his eyes implored. Why do you need a break when things are so good?

I knew those were his questions. And I really didn’t have an answer. All I knew was, the idea of forever with him scared me in a way that I’d never known. I didn’t have the words to tell him how terrified I was. And so I didn’t say anything.

He walked me to the elevator and pushed the down button for me. “Well, I’ll see you when you get back, then.” It was a question more than a goodbye. People were around, so he didn’t sneak a kiss to a spot right below my ear, as he’d done so many times in quiet corners of the newsroom. The door dinged, and I walked through it and turned back to him with a short wave. He didn’t wave back, and I thought: What have I just done? But I kept going downstairs.

Excerpted from Mergers and Acquisitions: Or, Everything I Know About Love I Learned on the Wedding Pages by Cate Doty, with permission from G.P. Putnam, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Cate Doty.

mergers and acquisitions memoir new york times wedding writer cate doty