We hug the coast like a teddy bear. Our feet at the edge of the sand and sea, squeezing each other’s hands for balance. The waves hit us because they can’t not do so on a day like this. The tide is strong, the wind stronger. It whips your hair around like a kite in the sky. You try to control it and laugh when it swirls across your face. We race across the dying light and when we tumble together in the surf, I relish every single moment. I will always remember you just like this.

No matter what happens next.

Dear Mr. Michael Green & Mrs. Madeline Green (née McKean),

We have been advised by our legal department to notify you of a recent discovery that was identified during litigation. You have previously used our deluxe match making service — w/Honey — and were matched following a vigorous research period. Our match making algorithms, which are accounted for in over two dozen patents, determined that you two had a 93.4% compatibility score. Using our refined social messaging system, you were able to successfully meet and begin your love story.

We are aware that you two have since become legally married following your matching on our site.

We are legally obligated to notify you that you were matched in error. Due to a calculation error (more detail available in the attached documents), you two were matched to one another without taking your compatibility score into account. Age, location proximity and sexual orientation were the only factors applied and do not represent an accurate match making process.

Due to Florida statute of limitations, we will be unable to refund any of your match making fees at this time. In the event that either of you require usage of our match making services again, you may redeem the following code for 5% off of your next match making package: FISH200

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We spend forty-five minutes on-hold with customer service listening to smooth jazz before we give up and hit the web. Apparently the same matching mishap happened to dozens of couples about five years ago. Six months ago a guy in Pittsburgh killed his wife and then himself. The investigation uncovered their match through this service. Same “accidental” match that connected you and I. Now the company is scrambling to cover their asses in the event that any other matches ended up in murder suicides. It is all very surreal.

I call my lawyer and this is over his head. He’s fought two traffic tickets and took one ex-girlfriend to court for the return of my apple TV. Class action law suits against match making services isn’t really in his wheelhouse. Besides, “Madeline and you are happy, right?”

It’s a more loaded question than in should be. Of course, we’re happy. You know I’m happy. But lately we’ve both felt that it could be — I don’t know — better. We’ve talked about it. Somewhere between our vacation to Alaska and the three flips we did last year, we lost some of the magic, some of the spark. We’ve both said that we’re just burnt out — but have we gotten any less burnt out since we had that screaming match at each other in your parents’ driveway at Christmas?

That’s when you first used the R word — regret.

You apologized a dozen times that night for saying it, but while it may have been the wrong word, it wasn’t the wrong feeling. I see it in your smile. I still make you laugh, I know that. But nobody knows that smile like I do. When you smile at me now, it’s different than it used to be. It comes just a millisecond slower. A hummingbird couldn’t catch the difference, but I know you and that smile better than I’ve ever known anything.

So what is this letter telling us? Is it a funny oddity we can tell the kids one day? Or is this the confirmation we’ve both been afraid to admit we’ve been looking for?

It happened. We didn’t talk yesterday.

It was the first time that’s ever happened since we met.

After two weeks of email exchanges on the site, you finally agreed to see me. You wanted to stay in your comfort zone, though, and invited me to a happy hour that your office friends were going to. I never told you this, but I got a haircut and a professional shave that afternoon. Like, a serious shave. The one where some Italian guy whips out a straight razor and you pray that you don’t owe anybody money. I’d never done that for a girl before — but you were so funny in your emails, I just really wanted to make a great impression. That story you told about getting lost at Disney World had me in stitches. Who curses out Mickey Mouse? You do, and you somehow made it work.

Your friends were cool and all but I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. You were so much prettier than in your pictures on the site. And not one of those pictures showed off those v-necks you like to wear. You later told me that you purposely excluded those pics from the site to avoid creepy guys obsessed with your tits. Little did you know that you’d end up marrying one.

You let me kiss you that night, but just a peck before you pulled away. It was sweet and all, but my god — I couldn’t wait to see you again. Which is why I threw out that bullshit three day rule and called you the very next morning. And the next. And the next. We have spoken every single day since.

Until yesterday.

You left before I woke up. Then it was a crazy day at the office for me. I worked through lunch on a kitchen redesign. Then, someone screwed up an order and I had to drive up to Orlando to get twenty cabinets and haul them back. I didn’t even have time to check on the renovation at White Ave. I assume Charlie and the guys got the walls up but I won’t know for sure until the weekend. I ate McDonalds in the truck for dinner. By the time I got home, you were asleep. I’ll be honest — I didn’t even think about waking you up. I was so exhausted, I just collapsed in bed and was asleep before the third sheep.

You were gone again before I woke this morning. How did we get here? Is this the way we’ll be from now on? Ships passing in the night? What does it say that it doesn’t even really bother me? I’ve just accepted the gray that we’ve fallen into.

You didn’t come home last night. I knew you were going to happy hour with work people, but didn’t expect the text message at midnight saying that you were drunk and going to stay at Lynn’s. Another husband might be jealous or angry or worried, I don’t know. I just felt numb to it all. I was half asleep on the couch when you texted, anyway. If you hadn’t texted, I may have never even noticed.

Remember when we fell asleep on the couch on our wedding night? We didn’t even — what do they call it — consummate? We were so exhausted, we just plopped down on the couch and you wedged yourself under my arm and at some point during episode four or five of a Friends rerun, we both passed out. Sans jacket, I was still in my tux and you were still in your wedding dress. You complained like crazy the next day that it was all wrinkled and that there were all sorts of superstitions about sleeping in your wedding dress.

Maybe you were right.

I’ve started living out of one the joints we bought to flip. It’s a small place off the interstate, right next to an outlet mall. We never really talked about it in a dramatic I’m-moving-out sort of way. We had a lot of work to do here; the stupid wiring needed a full overhaul and I pulled back-to-back all nighters. It just happened. So on the third night, wiring done or not, I just went back and you didn’t say anything.

It’s been three weeks and neither of us have discussed it. We still text a lot. There’s that ongoing scandal in your office with the new copywriter sleeping with the editor. In the breakroom, no less! Although I frown upon the sex in the breakroom — it’s where you eat lunch! — I have to admit that I’m rooting for the copywriter. The editor is totally out of his league and I’ve always liked an underdog story. You keep me up to date on all the rumors — even the really salacious ones — but our texts lack depth outside of the gossip.

We went out to dinner with the Hendersons the other night and we got along great. We didn’t let them in on any of our own drama. You wore that silver dress that I like that makes you look like a Bond Girl. That one with the slit up the right side? At one point you crossed your legs and I wanted to take you into the bathroom and hike up that skirt. The feeling passed quickly, though. You said something funny and I laughed and we went back to being the weird friends that we’ve become.

I hope you know that I don’t hate you. It really couldn’t be further from the truth. I love you. I always will. I just really want you to be happy. And you seem happier with less of me right now.

“Hi. Sooo, a client asked me out to dinner. How would you feel about that? Sorry, awkward, I know.”

That’s the text message you send me at three in the afternoon while I’m elbow deep in insulation in a one-hundred-twenty-degree attic. I stare at it for a long time, trying to wrestle up some anger, but I just can’t. It just doesn’t feel right to keep you from something or someone that could make you happy. I want to get angry at this guy. I want to march down to your marble-laced office and punch this Armani-suit wearing douchebag in the face. Lift you up in my arms and carry you home.

The feeling passes, though. So easily, it just fades away from me. The fight is all out of me by now.

“It’s okay. Have fun.”

I throw in a smiley emoji even though I hate them.

We haven’t spoken in two weeks. I check your status on our social media account and I see the dooshbag has liked a bunch of your posts. He actually seems like a nice guy. He posts a link on your page to the Italian Festival next weekend and you comment that the two of you should get there early and see who can eat the most cannolis.

You and I never went to the Italian Festival. You said that it was always looked too crowded. Maybe I was the crowd.

After the festival, I check your page and you’ve both posted pictures from there. Some random pics of food, a juggler, the pier. The pics of you and him, though, I pause on. There’s a selfie of both of you shoving cannolis in your mouths, powdered sugar going everywhere. It’s a really cute pic. It reminds me of our trip to Italy with your parents. We basically lived on dessert there the entire time. Well, we also discovered your love of wine which somehow eluded you all those years previously. I’ve never seen you so drunk as that day we toured the Coliseum. When you leaned over to show me where the scene from Gladiator was filmed — it wasn’t, by the way — you nearly fell in. You grabbed on to me and I held you close. Your breath smelled like grapes and your eyes still popped even behind those sunglasses. Your arms were a little sweaty from the heat and you just glistened.

It was one of those moments.

One of those moments you’re having with someone else now.

I find a pic where you’re kissing him on the cheek. It doesn’t make me angry. Just sad. I grab a beer, remember that one beach in Italy and get shit-faced.

Charlie’s cousin has started working for us part time doing some design work. We used to use our friend Manny but he’s been working up North a bunch on some projects for his buddy. Her name is Lesley and she’s a young little thing. She’s going to college to be an architect but has taken a few semesters off. That’s what they always say, right? I’m sure she’ll be back at the books in no time.

She’s smart, though, and has a good sense of design and she doesn’t throw around words like Feng Shui to impress people like Manny does.

She’s trying to convince me to take down a wall and have an open kitchen but I’m not buying it. The living room is small, certainly, but without the wall it leaves a large section with no end point — no place for the back of a couch or a table. The furniture would just be abandoned in the middle of the room. She talks with her hands dramatically, showing where we can put a kitchen island with a grill in it.

She grabs her measuring tape and starts to compromise, measuring for a cut-out instead of the whole wall demolition. When she bends over to measure the counter, her jeans ride down and I can see her panties. There’s a rush of blood and I know I’m staring. I shake off her idea and walk away, sure to have my back to her. In the next room, I take a deep breath and clear my head. I feel like a goddamn school boy. Has it been that long? I haven’t even looked at anyone like that since our third or fourth email all those years ago.

I make Charlie work with her from now on.

You changed your status to “Available” and I can’t blame you, although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the dooshbag has you change it. I’m not stalking you, I swear. I’m just curious. He’s a funny dude, I’ll admit. He quotes Space Balls a lot on your social page and any guy that likes Space Balls is okay in my book.

I hope he’s making you happy.

I miss you.

It’s been three months since you and I have communicated in any way. You liked a status on my page about Tom Hanks. You always did like my Forrest Gump impersonation. That’s the last time we communicated in any way at all; you clicking a button that indicated you liked some inane comment I blasted out to the world.

I stopped following your page and your status and your updates a couple of weeks ago. There was a pic of you in the guy’s arms and I just thought to myself that you looked so happy. It’s weird to explain but I somehow felt that just by me looking at the picture it would somehow make you less happy.

I went on a date with Charlie’s cousin last week. She’s really pretty but she can’t quite challenge a v-neck like you can. We had fun but there wasn’t much of a spark or anything. I think we both could tell that there wasn’t magic in the air or anything.

You know that I can be a bit of chatterbox, especially once you get me going on old building projects. Remember that time we got drunk and I told you the entire construction process of the Empire State Building. Five people died building it! Anyway, this girl and I didn’t have much to talk about even though we’re both in the industry. I just didn’t feel like unloading some of those boring stories on her. You had a way of making me feel like that they weren’t as boring as we both knew they were. It’s something this girl doesn’t have. Maybe no other girl has. Maybe when I meet someone special I can have you teach her how you do it.

I got the request in my email today. You made it really easy, just a few clicks and the marriage would be over. The property splits were fair and the savings account stuff we had somehow worked out over the last year without even discussing it with one another. I open a bottle of jack, toast by myself, and click the buttons. There was a Congratulations at the end that made me laugh out loud at its absurdity. On my third Jack & Coke, I go to our website and disconnect us. Your status and your updates and your dooshbag disappear into the ether.

Honestly, I wish you the very best.

Dear Mr. Michael Green & Ms. Madeline McKean,

We have been advised by our legal department to notify you of a recent mishap within our Customer Retention Department. We recently notified you of a match making error that resulted in your match.

We apologize, but you were unaffected by this error.

In an over-abundance of caution, these letters were incorrectly sent to all matches that occurred using that algorithm even though the error did not occur in all calculations.

Your match making actually occurred due to a 98.5% compatibility score. Congratulations.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.