All the Things We Never Knew Read Online Free

robust,” he said. “Goes with everything. Can I come in?”
    I stepped aside and gestured him in. He had a builder’s build, the kind you get without having to go to the gym. He had to duck through the entryway, which meant he was at least six foot four. He wore the same kind of jeans he’d had on at the coffee shop and a black dress shirt.
    I felt like a schoolgirl, standing nervously in the dining room, trying to decide what to do next. I looked down at the floor. The shoes. Yes, the shoes. “Those look well-loved,” I said of his Italian shoes. A.Testoni, I could tell from the natural seams and hand-woven twine.
    â€œBologna, fifteen years ago. I thought I would die when he told me how much it would be to have them made.” He gazed at the shoes as if he was remembering the smell of Italy.
    â€œBut worth it?”
    â€œThey weather like hiking boots. Worth every last lira.”
    His dialect, I found out, was from Quebec, where he grew up, along with the half-dozen countries he’d adopted as his own. His lips were full and soft. There was a tiny scar that barely showed beneath his moustache. I’d reported on a doctor who fixed cleft palates in children, and the scar was exactly like the ones I’d seen ondozens of pictures of orphans. “It was brutal,” he said, when he saw me looking at the scar. “Seven surgeries later, I still can’t breathe.”
    I turned, embarrassed that I’d been studying his face so intimately.
    Embarrassed that he seemed to be able to read my thoughts. Within hours of knowing David, I sensed an enormous vulnerability, a part of him that was wounded and in need of care. His strong exterior was so unlike his interior, and his ability to remain coolly aloof, even while talking about his own disability, was already confusing to me. Over the years, David’s feelings of being different would only increase, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. His favorite saying was “We’re born alone; we live alone; we die alone.” I found it odd that he left out the most important part: “Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
    Over wine, he told of his life and travels: Morocco, Spain, and Mexico, warm countries where a single man and his backpack could blend in with ease. He’d log or pull construction jobs in his home base, Canada, and then travel until his money ran out. He’d been married once, a marriage of convenience, he said, so that he could get a green card in the United States. “We were young, twenty-something, both of us. We met in a traveling circus.”
    My eyes widened. “No way.”
    â€œNo, really. I’d joined to take care of the Clydesdales, the only horse in the world that doesn’t make me feel gigantic. Jen was doing something more legitimate.” He paused, studying a painting on my wall. “I cheated on her, and she ended up gay,” he said. “We’re really good friends now, though.”
    My reporter instinct kicked in. “Cheated” is a big word for anyone to use in casual chat. I suppressed whatever thread I should have followed for an innocuous question.
    â€œAnd the uh, woman, you cheated on her with?”
    â€œWe spent ten years together. The craziest, spookiest, mostfucked-up years of my life.” He said it affectionately and poured the last of the red into his glass. “We’re lucky we both got out alive.”
    I let the line sink in, unsure of what to make of it. Two long-term relationships, both described in ominous terms. Was he trying to make himself sound like an unlikely partner? Did he care? Years later, a therapist would describe how we, like everyone, followed our unconscious patterns in our seeking out of partners.
    That day, however, it simply felt like we clicked. The wine bottle was empty and the sky had darkened before we got around to looking at