The Lost Girls by Jennifer Baggett

publishing companies. I’d probably be filing boring office forms instead of getting paid to read the latest happiness literature (which I’d have done for free). Maybe I’d be reporting on a local fender bender, as I had when I’d interned for a small newspaper in college, rather than, say, interviewing women about what makes life meaningful or testing out guided meditation techniques on DVD.
    I was learning even more than I had in school, writing stories that reached millions of women, expensing my lunches, and riding black Town Cars to parties paid for by the company.Everything seemed right in my life, but a current of restlessness ran through my veins that nothing I did—from taking on extra writing assignments to occupy my mind to training for a marathon to push my body or going to a rooftop barbecue with friends to chill out—could extinguish.
    The person who most understood my drive to find a deeper meaning in it all was Elan, my live-in boyfriend. Just breathing him in made me feel more relaxed—when I actually saw him, that is. As a graduate acting student, he was in an equally demanding program with a class schedule that constantly changed. The fact that we both clocked long hours in an effort to achieve our individual dreams also served as a kind of glue to hold our relationship together. Most significant others might feel neglected by a partner who channeled more time and energy into launching his or her career than advancing the relationship, but Elan and I saw it as a necessary sacrifice at that point in our lives.
    Years earlier, I’d met him at a friend’s birthday party in a smoky club in the West Village. I remember it was a Friday night; I’d worked till 8 p.m. and hadn’t wanted to go out at all. My sister Sara, who lived with two of my college friends and me in a railroad apartment, had practically pulled me out by both hands because she thought I’d been spending too much time at the office. I glanced back at our lumpy futon as the door clicked shut behind us, wanting nothing more than to wear my favorite sweatpants and sink down into the couch eating popcorn. I hadn’t expected to make it until midnight, let alone meet a love who would take my breath away. But New York does that. It can wear you down, and then—just when you feel like collapsing—it’ll jolt you back with the best night of your life.
    Magnetized by Elan’s deep, soulful eyes and shock of anarchist curls, we ditched the friends we’d come with to spend hours huddled together in the corner of the dance floor. I remember our voices grew hoarse; we were spilling over ourselves to shareour stories. I remember leaning in close to hear him above the music, catching the scent of his sweat in the humidity, and how it sent a charge through me that reached all the way to my toes.
    When he called three days later (which seemed like an eternity to me then), we spent the entire following weekend together. We kissed as if we couldn’t get enough on an empty bench in Central Park, sipped lattes at a sidewalk café in Little Italy, and lay on the roof of my Upper East Side apartment trying to find the brightest stars not eclipsed by the city lights. It took less than three weeks before he said he loved me. I felt the same way. It was instantaneous, a force I couldn’t fight even if I’d wanted to. It felt as though we’d known each other before we even knew each other.
    Three years had gone by so fast. We were still together and sharing an apartment in the hipster neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We’d go on long bike rides, stopping on a cobblestone street near the Manhattan Bridge at Jacques Torres, my favorite chocolate shop. We’d spend five hours on a Wednesday night spooning on the couch and watching Lost DVDs before I’d fall asleep in his arms. We’d pick tomatoes from the garden he grew on our patio to cook dinner on Sunday nights