The host showed us to a booth in the corner, set our menus down, and left. I scanned the glossy page, half my brain deciding between dishes and the other half charting the distance from Atlanta to Wilmington, 
North Carolina. It was longer than I would have liked. I loved the energy of Atlanta, and hadn’t ever been to Wilmington.
I texted a friend from high school after I was accepted into UNC-Wilmington’s graduate program for creative writing. He had gone to school there, and talked about the cheap rent and gorgeous beach and excellent fitness center and lively bars.
When I called Robby and told him about the acceptance letter from UNCW, he was overjoyed. The next day, though, he did some research.
“It’s a beach town,” he said. “What on earth would I do there?”
It was an excellent point. Robby was raised in Atlanta, I was raised in Charlotte, and we had both envisioned living in large, southern cities for the foreseeable future. We loved noise and sun. And, quite unfairly, I hadn’t mentioned that I was applying to UNCW except in passing. I applied on a whim, as I had done with my other applications: I researched the program, loved what I found, submitted my application the night it was due, closed my laptop, and went to bed.
I was accepted to Georgia State a few weeks after UNCW, and we were once again overjoyed. I wasn’t as in love with the program, but it would make more sense. We move inward. Robby keeps his job in downtown Atlanta. I take the train to school.
These factors all played through my head as the server brought coffee. I lifted the mug carefully. I was wearing a white
dress and felt positive I would spill. After this lunch, I planned to drive straight to Georgia State and explain that, while I liked their program and wanted to stay in Atlanta, I needed a way to pay for grad school and had until the end of the day to accept a teaching assistantship offer from UNCW. The only thing made clear from my tangle of phone calls to Georgia State was that no one was positive which assistantships would open up, or when.
Robby didn’t glance at his menu. He ordered the same thing every time. When I looked up, he was staring at me.
“So, what are you thinking?” he asked.
“Depends on your job prospects in Wilmington,” I said. Based on our research, they didn’t look good. I envisioned Robby miserably (and perhaps resentfully) waiting tables. The degree wasn’t worth that to me. He planned to talk to the president of his current company about the possibility of switching to a remote position. We were hopeful, but it was a huge risk to bank on.
“I think we should do it,” he said.
I beamed.
“It’s clearly what you want.”
I sighed. Renditions of this conversation had occurred every night for the past week, and that sentence was present in each.
I did want to go to Wilmington. There was a fantastic financial path that rolled through the next three years like a red carpet. Couple that with unique academic qualities and life at the beach, and I was just about sold. But there was nothing concrete for Robby, who had a job in his home city that came with a steady paycheck and potential 
upward mobility.
“If it were just me,” I had told my friend the day before, “I’d already be packing.”
On the occasion that I feel a flash of envy toward my single friends, this is why. The most joyful parts of my life—Robby and our two dogs—come at the small price of not being able to solitarily move without huge emotional cost. A totaled year and a half of our four-year relationship has been accomplished while living in separate places. It sucked, we hated it, and we’re not doing it again.
Our Atlanta v. Wilmington conversations did hold progress: Robby would fantasize about waking up and walking our dogs on the beach, or I would fall in love with a house for rent near downtown Atlanta. They unfailingly ended with an agreement that, whatever we decided to do, we would make it work. We would make each other happy.
Today’s conversation, though, had to end in a decision.
Robby smiled a little. We both suspected what we would decide. The night before, we had walked Blue and Orion around a nearby lake. Robby took a breath and said, “I need to tell you something.”
“Go for it.”
“I think we should move to Wilmington.”
“Wow.”
“It’s an amazing opportunity for you. And if things don’t work out with my current job, I can figure something else out.”
I could tell his words were the smooth, quick product of two emotionally intense weeks.
“What changed your mind?” I asked.
“I pictured Blue running on the beach,” he said.
“Sounds about right.” Blue is our mastiff puppy, and Robby loves him more than he will ever love me or anyone else.
“He’s never been to the beach,” he continued. “I think he’d really like it.”
“Yeah, buddy. Me too.”
“The sand will be good for his joints, and he loves to swim. And we just ordered that life jacket for him.”
We crossed a small bridge. Murky water looked blue under the evening sky.
“And really,” he said, “I could use a fresh start.”
I looked at him. “I’m not holding you to this,” I said. The decision to move held zero risk for me, but few promises for him. My deepest fear was that he would reluctantly agree to go to Wilmington, end up in a shit job, and quietly resent me forever. I wanted him to think for another night. “We have until tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll talk at lunch.”
The server returned and took our orders, then buzzed back through the swinging doors. The star-eyes glinted in the afternoon light.
I thought of what my friend had told me on the phone: “I mean, you moved to Atlanta for him. Now he should move to Wilmington for you.”
I disagreed with that logic. When I moved to Atlanta from Charlotte, I had been laid off from my job and was sick of not living with Robby. Though I loved life in my home city, I could no longer afford my apartment and felt with every fiber of my soul and bank account that it was time to go. I wasn’t giving up security, because I no longer had any. For Robby, and by extension, our relationship, going
to Wilmington would be a drastic–and potentially stupid–move. Throughout each conversation we had, I contemplated how he stayed in our college town and waited tables for a year until I graduated, or how he spent six miserable months in Virginia while I studied abroad, and then six more miserable months in separate cities because I didn’t want to move in together right after graduation. I didn’t regret those pieces of our story–I wouldn’t want to be with someone who made me feel like I couldn’t study abroad, or couldn’t live by myself. But I knew that if we were to tally who had sacrificed more, he would win by a landslide.
I contemplated whether it was “fair”–if there is such a thing–to ask him to do this. I decided it was. Not only were we making the decision together (I had never asked), but I knew I would do the same thing for him. And life at the beach is hardly a punishment.
Robby smiled at me and shook his head. I pictured him in sunglasses, sprawled on the sand. I saw all the poems I would write, bobbling like kites along the shoreline. “Let’s do it,” he said.
“Okay,” I told him. Sunbeams shot from my ears.
Image Credits
Wilmington, NC Riverwalk, wilmington-nc.com
Coffee, iStock
Beach, Here We Come, Healing Ana