My Olivia,

It is that specific kind of morning you used to file formal complaints about — sun too bright, kettle too moody, birds committing what you insisted was organized crime. I keep making two cups of coffee on accident, despite living alone and being, on paper, a fully functioning adult. Yesterday I drank both of them, just to prove a point to an empty room. The room was unmoved. I respect its composure.

You are in London, currently being loved by people I cannot possibly compete with — your mother, your childhood, a dog I have not met and have already forgiven for being better company than me. I have been told to be understanding about all of this. I am understanding. I am radiantly, spectacularly understanding. I am, in fact, so understanding that they could fit me for a small plaque and mount me somewhere tasteful.

The time difference has become a character in my life — a minor antagonist with a speaking role. London is two hours behind, which means your evenings arrive like late buses: reliably, and always just after I had given up waiting. We now speak at hours that, in any other context, would concern a therapist. You say "it's still early" with the absolute moral authority of someone for whom, apparently, it is, and I have begun agreeing with you about time zones, about weather, about whether or not the word "cushion" should exist at all. I have, in short, become a yes man, and the man I am saying yes to is you, and the terms are extremely favorable.

A list, for the record, of things I did not know were load-bearing: the way you laugh a half-second before the punchline, to reassure the joke. The small, involuntary hum you make when something tastes good — a sound I am now catching in restaurants from entirely wrong people, and taking as a personal slight. The ease with which you walk into a room and leave it friendlier than you found it. The way you say my name, as though you have just been told what it means and found it acceptable. I have been bootlegging these from memory, and the reproductions, I regret to report, are not quite it.

So here is the situation, honestly reported: I miss you absurdly. I miss you with a professional competence I did not know I had. I will be at the gate on the tenth, holding something ridiculous — flowers, a sign, both arms straight up in the air — and you will pretend not to know me for three entire seconds, which will be, without contest, the funniest three seconds of my year. Come home. I have been saving material.