I’m sitting at a two-top table at a Mexican restaurant in Charlottesville, Virginia with my co-worker Ben, housing chips and guac while he tells me the story of what happened to his wife.
“We don’t call it an accident,” he said, “We call it an incident.”
His wife was out for a run and was hit from behind by a car going 60 mph.
They never pressed charges.
I know this kind of grace, I think.
This is the kind of grace my best friend Sarah’s parents gave to the guy who was driving the car she was in that hit black ice one morning in Michigan. She died. I was 17.
In this moment, Ben knows about my first cancer diagnosis.
He doesn’t know about the second yet. But neither do I.
All I know is I’m bleeding and I’m uncomfortable and I’m back in Charlottesville.
“There are no accidents,” he said.
I agree.
—
Twenty-six years earlier, in the same town, down the road, around a couple corners, up a flight of stairs, and through a couple doorways, I’m lying in my bra in panties in an extra-long twin-sized bed in student housing. Matt—who I had a crush on for the entirety of high school—is lying half on top of me, half to my side. His long, thick, dirty-blonde hair falls in front of his grey-blue eyes as he looks down at me. He has his shirt off. A sheet is half on us and half not. Our legs are entwined. I was visiting for the weekend, as I had been doing for a few now.
I was a freshman in college in Baltimore and I’d drive down to UVA on the weekends. Before leaving I’d blow dry my hair and curl it at the ends. I’d wear my favorite bra—pink, with just a little push-up—and a cute top that hid little cleavage.
I’d drive down 95 and out 66 to 29 listening to Santana and Dave Matthews band. I’d arrive late and we’d go out. One time, on Halloween. I dressed as Roller Girl. How I got around those brick-lined sidewalks in skates, I’ll never know. Probably because Matt held my hand, and always had my back, making sure I wouldn’t fall and—my favorite—that no one else came too close to me.
One time, walking back at night we stopped in front of the Chapel. Did we talk about getting married? I can’t exactly recall but I do remember envisioning what my life would look like. He. Me. Here. I’d transfer. I could work at the coffee shop and do theatre. He was my first love. It would be a perfect life. Until I broke his heart like he had mine a million times before.
But this particular day we had gotten up late and had cold pizza for breakfast. We spent most of the day on his balcony, overlooking a parking lot, drinking PBR or Natty Bo, he smoking cigarettes, talking for hours. It was perfect.
“I’ve been really into this book lately, about quantum theory,” he tells me.
So Matt. So smart. So not full of bullshit.
Our mutual friend Sarah—my very best friend—had died earlier that year in a car accident, coming back from a ski trip. She wore a seatbelt. No one was drunk. It was black ice.
I was supposed to be on that trip. I didn’t go.
If she knew this is where I was—here, on this balcony with the beer cans and the overcast sky—and who I was with, and what I was doing—or was about to do—she would have been beside herself with joy.
The sheer number of chai lattes we drank discussing this boy could have put the three of us through four years at the University of Virginia.
All of this to say, Matt and I don’t talk small anymore.
“Tell me more about the book,” I say to Matt, swooning.
“OK, so… we’re all made of molecules and atoms, right? Energy,” he says.
“Right,” I reply.
The wind picks up. An empty beer can rolls across the parking lot, clanging its way across the asphalt.
“Urban tumbleweed,” Matt says.
We laugh.
“So quantum theory basically says there’s no real separation,” he continues, “Like, the stuff in me is connected to the stuff in the parking lot, to that beer can, even some ancient version of me from a million years ago. It’s all linked—across space and time. No separation. It’s one giant system.”
“OK,” I say slowly. “So…it’s kind of the scientific explanation for all of us being connected?”
“Exactly.”
“Across space and time?”
“Yep.”
“So no one’s ever really just here,” I say. “And no one’s ever really gone.”
Matt smiles.
“That’s exactly it.”
I lean in to kiss him. He tastes like cigarettes and shitty beer. It’s perfect.
I love him. I love quantum theory.
In bed that night he leans down to kiss me and stays close instead of pulling away. Dave Matthews Band is playing from his CD player, Crash (the album not the song).
“What do you want to listen to?” he asks quietly.
We both know what’s about to happen.
“Not this. Not Crash Into Me. Total cliche,” I smile.
He laughs. I laugh.
“#41?” he asks.
“Perfect,” I say. “I love that song so much.”
He reaches over and skips a few tracks ahead.
He leans down to kiss me deeply. He looks into my eyes. I, into his. We smile. He reaches behind me and unhooks my bra. He slides his hand down my body to my underwear, wraps his thumb inside and pulls down.
In this moment, and in those that followed, parts of me became parts of him, and parts of him became parts of me.
And while this is my first time, it feels strangely familiar—like we’ve been here before and will find each other here again.
—
Twenty-five years later, somewhere between student housing and the Mexican restaurant, I’m back in Charlottesville for the first time since college, walking to dinner with My Unlikely Friend and our colleague Kaci. We’ve been teaching a group who works for the same company Matt’s mom used to work for.
It’s my first little trip away since I moved out of the townhouse my soon-to-be ex-husband and I rented for our “fresh start.”
It’s just weeks after someone I’d been attracted to for years admitted they feel the same way about me.
“You’re absolutely incredibly beautiful, Alli,” they said.
I feel jittery. Fun. Alive.
“Hey guys, fun fact,” I say as I skip off the curb and start to cross the street, “I lost my virginity in Charlottesville!”
“ALLI” they both exclaim.
“What?!?!” I respond. “Was that too much?? It’s a great town. Lots of good memories here.”
I smile remembering cold pizza and shitty beer, urban tumbleweeds, Dave Matthews Band and sex.
I feel something shift inside me. Something reclaimed. Like something inside me winked at a part of me that had been quiet for so long and said,
Remember what it feels like to feel alive?
We arrive at the restaurant and take our seats at a long wooden table filled with our students, the rest of our colleagues on the way. My Unlikely Friend and I sit diagonally across from each other in the center of the table. The place is loud and boisterous, as is common in the mid-spring days in the mid-Atlantic. Everything is waking up.
As our colleagues begin to arrive they each give me big hugs, ask how I am—each knowing about the suddenness of my divorce, all of whom I hadn’t seen since, each genuinely concerned about my well-being.
My Unlikely Friend is engrossed in conversation with people on his side. I, with people on mine. He orders a burger and fries. I order a burger and side salad.
I fall into conversation with Carlos, our psychologist teammate, about a silent retreat he attended. How incredibly awful and difficult it was, even though he’s a seasoned meditator and psychologist himself. He admits to having experienced so much fear in the first couple days of the retreat that he wanted to leave. He says he thought he had “worked through that shit,” but there it was coming up again. Sometimes the stuff from our past just comes back up and needs to be seen again.
Our food arrives. I reach down to pick up my burger. Mid-conversation with someone next to him, My Unlikely Friend reaches down and grabs a handful of fries—my favorite cannot-ever-resist food, he knows—and places them on my plate. He looks at me and smiles and says nothing.
I smile. I am so grateful. My whole body feels warm. I reach down for a fry, pop it in my mouth, and turn back to Carlos and continue our conversation.
I think, I am not afraid. Everything is going to be ok. Here, I am safe.
—
I’m lying face-up in mud. I’m in a trench.
THWAP.
A fat raindrop lands beside me, splashing mud onto my face.
THWAP. THWAP.
Another drop at my side. On my forehead. I squint, trying to keep the water out of my eyes.
THWAP. THWAP. THWAP.
A drop on my cheekbone, my hand, my lips.
The rhythm of the rain builds—faster. Harder. More percussive. It stings as it hits my skin. I close my eyes.
The ground is thick and wet beneath me. I’m in uniform—boots on. A weapon rests across my torso. My left hand on my belly. My right by my side.
It is loud.
People are screaming. Sobbing. Dying.
Gunfire cracks in rhythm with the rain.
It is cold.
But I am not cold.
Am I dying?
The rain softens, but falls harder. I open my eyes and let it wash over me—down my face, across my ears, into my hair, along my neck.
My right side goes warm.
I am not alone.
Someone is there. To my right.
We’re ok—here, in this trench, in the mud—while the screams and gunfire rage around us.
Is this World War One?
Yes. This is World War One.
But it’s not.
It’s not World War One and I’m not in a trench.
I’m in the basement of a large house outside of Frederick, Maryland lying on a rose quartz–covered massage table getting my first reiki session.
What the hell?
The gunfire continues.
I feel someone reach for my hand.
It’s My Unlikely Friend.
But he’s not My Unlikely Friend yet. I mean, I hardly know him at this point.
What the hell is he doing here? He’s in Montana.
The session ends.
My eyes flutter open.
I take my time sitting up.
My friend Judy, who had been doing the reiki on me, hands me a glass of water.
She asks how it was.
I tell her everything—about the trench, the war, the warmth, and My Unlikely Friend who at this point isn’t really even a friend yet.
“We’re not even really friends!” I exclaim. “I mean we worked, like, two workshops together and I texted him the other week on Memorial Day but that’s, like, it. It was so weird he was in this thing.”
I remember he wrote back and said he had thought of me when he took a friend to self-commit to a psychiatric ward. He said, “I remember us talking about how we are attracted to people that need us.” He was headed to a veterans retreat in Montana for 41 days.
Judy smiles.
“Well,” she says. “It’s pretty amazing that you were able to find so much peace with all the chaos that’s going on in your life.”
Chaos in my life? Two months before, my husband and I had sold our house and moved into rental to test out what would be best for the next phase of our life together. Things were… calming down? Getting better?
Anyway.
That was reiki, I guess.
—
A few weeks after the reiki session, I’m back in Frederick, this time teaching a group of yoga teachers-in-training how to teach adaptive and trauma-informed yoga to members of the military—my specialty.
We sit in a circle, on yoga mats, with props to make us cozy and comfortable. A large purple wall with a mandala painted on it is behind me—the ceilings high, string lights giving a cozy vibe to the space.
We’re talking about how to make yoga and meditation more accessible to men—particularly to men in the military—how to honor the masculine and feminine sides of this ancient practice that gently demands a perfect balance between strength and softness, and how feminine energy has its place in the warrior mentality.
I check my phone during the next break. I have a text from My Unlikely Friend—who’s still not my friend yet.
Strange. He’s never texted me for a non-work reason before.
I open the text. It says: “Checking in. Hope you are well. This was my 52nd birthday this year. Sunrise summit of Sacajawea Peak, cold plunge in Fairy Lake, then coconut banana pancakes for breakfast.”
There’s a photo. My thumb hovers over the screen as I stare at it. My breath catches.
The photo is of him and seven other veterans standing on top of a rugged mountain top holding an American Flag. They are bearded. Tan. No one is smiling. The rugged grey rocks sit in contrast with the warmth of the pink early morning sun that’s rising behind them. They hold the flag between them.
I smile.
When we’re back from break I pass my phone around to my students so they can see the photo. I ask them what they see.
“This photo is the balance between the masculine and the feminine…” one student says. “It’s exactly what we were just talking about”
I text My Unlikely Friend back after class and share what we had been discussing when he sent the photo.
“Can’t have fire without ice, power without vulnerability,” he replies.
He continues, “It does hurt my vagina a bit to say that, but I’m still a work in progress. Let’s get on a call soon and catch up.”
—
The next week, I’m lying on my back on my couch talking to My Unlikely Friend—who at this moment is actually becoming a friend. It’s late afternoon on a Tuesday. I’ve got a blanket tossed over me even though it’s late summer. My head rests on a pillow, the phone on my chest as I listen through my AirPods.
He gives me a run-down of his time in Montana. Each day they’d wake up at dawn, workout, sauna, cold-plunge, eat, and do horsemanship.
He told me the first few times he had done the cold-plunge he’d been resistant—bracing against the cold, rigid, still. Then, he realized his resistance to the experience was preventing him from experiencing the real benefits. So, one day he just let go and allowed his body to shiver.
“I… have something kind of weird I want to share with you,” I said slowly, staring at my ceiling. “Several weeks ago I was up in Frederick and I did my first reiki session…”
I told him what I experienced—the rain, the mud, the cold, the trench, and him.
“That’s wild!” he said. “What day was that?”
I pick up my phone and open my calendar app. June 14.
“I’ll look it up in my journal,” he says.
When our call ends I stay lying on the couch for several minutes. My screen lights up. It’s a text from him.
It says: “‘June 14 intention: I have to stop fighting myself.’ I was in a state of surrender and openness to healing that day. Maybe we both were.”
It was the day he let himself shiver.
The text continued, “Out of the sauna (fire) and into the cold plunge (rain). Maybe you were the energy that made me shiver in the tub to learn the lesson to stop fighting myself.”
I place the phone down.
—
And back in Charlottesville after the dinner and the french fries, My Unlikely Friend and I start to walk back to the hotel together.
“I know the way!” I exclaim. “I got this!”
We walk a few blocks, chatting away. It starts to rain.
We walk a bit more and end up at an intersection we don’t recognize.
“Shit,” I say.
“Yeah, this is not the way we came,” he says.
The rain starts to fall harder.
I pull out my phone to check directions. We missed a turn.
“It’s cool though,” I say. “I got this! This way!” We turn left and continue to walk and talk.
It begins to rain harder—the rain tapping the top of my head, sliding down my ears and onto my neck.
Honestly, I’m not sure this is the right way either but we keep walking.
Then, My Unlikely Friend starts to give me crap about us being lost. It’s hilarious. Usually I have such a great sense of direction.
Puddles start to form.
There’s a small bridge that crosses over the street we’re walking on. Stone. Sleek from the rain. Bits of yellow reflect off of it from the streetlights.
I have a feeling someone’s going to jump out from under the bridge to get me.
I trot ahead to catch up with My Unlikely Friend.
“Hey! When’s your birthday??” I have no idea why I ask this. He keeps walking.
“July 19th.”
I stop.
“Wait. Your birthday is July 19th?” I shout.
Of course your birthday is July 19th, I think.
I look up at the sky. The fat raindrops fall onto my forehead, my cheeks, down my face, across my ears, into my hair, and along my neck.
Chaos. But here, I am safe.
My Unlikely Friend stops and turns. “Yes, my birthday is July 19th!” he yells back at me, “Why? When’s yours?”
I look at him. The rain falls soft and hard.
“Mine’s July 20th.”
“That’s fucking crazy,” he says.
I smile. “Fucking crazy,” I reply.
“You’re nine years and one day older than me!” I exclaim. “And you’re a CANCER! I told you you were a fucking softie.”
My Unlikely Friend, who served in naval special operations for 24 years—in explosive ordnance detection, where his job was to defuse explosives ranging from hand grenades to nuclear weapons—tells me to fuck off.
I giggle because at this moment, I know. I know my Unlikely Friend. I know this place. I know we’ll get back just fine.
“Hey, when we get to the hotel, wanna change and hang out in the lobby some more?”
“Sure thing, lady,” he says.
We keep walking.
Eventually, we find our way back—safe.
—
The next time I’m back in Charlottesville, I’m with Ben. In the Mexican restaurant.
I learn he became his wife’s primary caregiver. I learn he was able to use all the training he gained before becoming a police officer to help her.
Two weeks later, I learn I have a second cancer, completely unrelated to the first.
A 3.85% chance.
I hear Ben’s voice:
“There are no accidents.”
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