Autumn is the hardest season

I moved to Washington, DC on June 1, 2011. A day later I started working at a restaurant where I worked every single day of that first summer. I made my first two DC friends there: Anna and Sam.

Anna was younger than me by several years and a student at American University. She was studying graphic design and her lettering skills decorated the specials boards that whole summer. She had the thickest curly brown hair and a man she was in love with in Italy. She had the kind of laugh that was always a giggle and brought an entire room to her attention. I loved her immediately.

Sam was tall and handsome and funny. His sense of humor was the kind sprung on you, as he was generally quiet — he’d assign us closing jobs like folding napkins and sweeping and, then, at the very bottom, ten push-ups for one of us and thirty jumping jacks for another. He made shifts playful. At the end of the night, over a beer at the restaurant’s bar, he would listen to you completely, body turned, direct eye contact. He was six-foot-four and helped me lift the glass racks off the shelves in the kitchen because I could never reach. He was kind and thoughtful.

I wanted to kiss him. More than anything that summer, I wanted to kiss him.

Sam had a girlfriend. She was a medical student at Georgetown with long wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. She was…