Here’s a sentence I didn’t expect to write: I’ve been wearing my dead husband’s clothes the past few weeks, and my boyfriend is starting to think it’s strange.I met Matthew in my 20s at a dive bar in Brooklyn. He bartended there, and I ran a restaurant down the street. We fell in love and, like many young people in big cities, quickly managed to screw it up. But we came back together, again and again. After a decade that included multiple moves across the country — first me, then me again, then him — we finally settled in my Bay Area hometown, where I’d bought a house with my mother’s help, and decided to spend our lives together. We flew back to New York to elope at Grand Central Terminal. I like to joke that we got married in the subway. Four years later, Matthew died alone in his sleep at age 42.It took three weeks to learn his death had been caused by complications related to alcoholism. His heart was worn down by years of drinking and an upbringing riddled with abuse and pain he could never escape. For a long time, I tried to find the right way to love him and make him feel safe, hoping he might move through his darkness and emerge on the other side, healed. It didn’t take. I called my best friend the night I found out he’d died. She was one of two witnesses when we eloped. We sat on the phone crying in silence for a while.“What a waste,” she finally said. Then added, “I’m grateful you weren’t next to him. Otherwise, it would’ve been a waste of two lives.”She was right. There was a time when I may not have recovered from the loss. And though I like to think I would have found the strength to leave Matthew even if I hadn’t met Adam, the truth is I’ll never know.Late that night, unable to sleep, I lay awake on a bench in the kitchen feeling Matthew’s presence swirl above me. He never wanted to divorce, I thought. And now we never will. In a moment of levity, I remembered his competitive streak. If he was looking to one-up Adam, whom I was building a future with instead of him — what a closing statement.Two years prior, I’d decided to focus on my writing and started frequenting events at an underground bookstore in Oakland. When I met Adam, the owner, builder and designer, we immediately fell into conversations full of questions, irreverent observations, dreams, visions, art. Conversations I’d been missing with my husband as he drifted far away. Adam’s and my social spheres began to overlap more and more. After several months, I recognized the undeniable spark of romance in our friendship, and quietly started to consider what an open marriage might look like. I wasn’t sure I could leave Matthew then.The author and Matthew’s first photo booth together, shortly after they met in 2011, at Bushwick Country Club in Brooklyn.Photo Courtesy of Allyson NomanA native New Yorker, he had struggled in California, and we dreamed about moving back to the city, the possibility of children. Meanwhile, his addiction grew; he hid bottles of bourbon in odd corners and drank alone late into the night. I supported us, worked on a novel and prayed for a way forward. He turned down other job opportunities while I begged him to leave bartending behind. I negotiated a promotion at work. He drove home over the Bay Bridge blackout drunk after a baseball game. I attended Al Anon meetings and tried to accept that I had no control over him.A week before Adam left on a trip to Portugal, he told me he was falling in love with me. I refrained from answering his texts while he was abroad, but the evening he returned, we met for drinks.“Obviously my marriage isn’t perfect,” I admitted. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”I wondered if we could push past those feelings. Maybe in a year, we’d look back and laugh. Maybe we could all be friends, maybe more. But Adam didn’t want an open relationship. He hadn’t wanted any relationship, in fact. He’d been trying to focus on himself, and yet, here we were. “It would be good to connect with Matthew,” he said. A few days later, we all attended an event at the bookstore, then got dinner across the street. Adam texted the next day: My heart hurts.We decided not to see each other while I navigated what was left with Matthew. I wrote a letter to him that began, “You showed me the power of believing in dreams,” and ended, “Getting clear is going to require sobriety.” Still, most nights, I fell asleep alone, waking to him tumbling into bed with liquor thick on his breath, and left in the morning before he awoke. My hair was falling out in large patches from stress. I took a weekend away to write. Adam called, said hello, then said goodbye. I laughed and called him back. We talked on the phone for three hours, racing through excerpts from books of poetry, the contents scrawled in my years-old monthly calendars, and a recipe for what to do with chicken fat. When I came back, I knew it was time to have the hard conversation with Matthew. I told him we were going to have to separate. And that there was more than friendship in my relationship with Adam.“So I wasn’t imagining it,” Matthew said afterward. He left and didn’t return for hours. Our second wedding anniversary was fast approaching in November. We went out to a special dinner. Things were falling apart, but we still loved each other. The one sibling Matthew was close to planned to visit California for the first time to celebrate her birthday, two days after Christmas. Matthew and I agreed to get through the holidays together before separating. We were family, after all. I moved out of my house just before New Year’s Eve. Early the next year, Adam and I went on our first overnight trip. As we were driving back, I confessed, “I don’t know if I’ll ever divorce Matthew.”Adam didn’t respond. But some weeks later, he told me, “I think you’re the one.”Months passed. Matthew moved into his own apartment, though his drinking didn’t change. Adam had lost his family at a young age, but he met my family, and I met the people who became his family. General contractor by trade and artist at heart, Adam offered a solid foundation, but I needed time to trust myself in a relationship again. When I was finally ready to walk away from an existence that had long been weighed down by Matthew’s addiction, I looked around and saw that Adam and I had constructed a world of admiration, laughter, and stability. I stepped into it and filed for divorce.The house that Matthew and I had lived in was now empty of us both. I received permits for a full renovation — foundation replacement, story addition, new roof, a seismic upgrade. Adam had been ready to leave his loft apartment in Chinatown for months. Making the most of our time between homes, we moved to a remote coastal town for the winter. We disappeared into the fog and emerged several months later, when the newly constructed house was ready for us to move in.We wanted to start a family, a dream I’d given up on with Matthew, knowing we were too unstable. If it’s meant to be, I thought, something will shift. Adam and I were home for just a few weeks before Matthew died.We hadn’t spoken in several months or seen each other for over a year. But the fragments of family Matthew had were all on the other side of the country. I was still legally his wife and next of kin, so the post-mortem and clearing out his apartment fell on me. I dropped back into caring for him with the ease of muscle memory.The author and Matthew spending Christmas together while living in the Bay Area.Photo Courtesy of Allyson NomanI again felt his presence drifting nearby, at last light and at peace. I spent a week sorting through his things, listening to the voice that said, this is important, or you can let that go. With his shirt hanging around my shoulders, I felt closer to him than I had in ages.The bitterness of the last few years dissipated. I joked to my girlfriends that Matthew and I were talking again, and without the weight of the physical realm, things were better than ever. I went from being eager to finalize my divorce to being grateful it had never materialized.Adam was patient but wary as I sifted through the past. He checked in often. Our home filled with boxes of Matthew’s belongings. Our belongings now, I reasoned: All three of us. More than a month passed. I mailed packages of treasured items to his closest friends. I listened to his favorite albums, remembering how young we were when we met. I wished I could go back and tell my 23-year-old self: This will end. Cherish it.The edges of a time suspended in mourning began to fray. I set aside boxes containing heirlooms and memories for his family to claim. No one came. Adam created a corner for an altar in our house. In the wake of Matthew’s death, we became a relationship of three after all: a widow, a ghost and a world-builder. I was considering where to scatter Matthew’s ashes: a trail on the coast he loved running?“Maybe I should take him to some places he never got to see,” I said to Adam. “Like Hawaii.”“That’s owning-20-cats crazy,” he said. After a moment, he added, “Maybe Ireland.” The land of Matthew’s lineage.I was taking a walk in the park with Adam one day, when he said, “I may need to go somewhere on my own for a while.” He explained, “There’s not much room for me here right now.”I stared at him, unable to imagine my life if he slipped out of it. I could have said no, or asked him to stay. But I was still frozen, wrapped in grief and one of Matthew’s jackets.In Brooklyn, Matthew’s family set a date for a Catholic mass memorial. It was hard to think of anything he’d want less. I booked flights and a hotel, though I’d already spent weeks wandering through sorrow and falling behind on work. But how could I miss saying goodbye to him in our city? I asked Matthew to send me a sign.It came the next day in a drunken, dysfunctional text from a member of his family — a middle finger to me and our marriage. I took two days to process before telling Adam I wasn’t sure I would go to New York. He reminded me this family member was part of the inherited system that broke my now-dead husband.He agreed I should skip the memorial, saying, “Do whatever you need, but it doesn’t sound like a safe space to grieve.” Then he added, “Selfishly, I want you to stay. I miss you and what we were building.”I looked at the man in front of me, alive and committed to our future. I had been holding onto a familiar pain as though it would sustain my connection to Matthew. In his dying, I could admit how much I missed him.But I wanted to choose Adam. Again.I canceled my flights. Took the boxes to storage. Set a date to scatter the ashes. Matthew’s death, I realized, wasn’t meant to pull me closer to death, but to life.The author and Adam at Union Pool in Brooklyn in 2024.Photo Courtesy of Allyson NomanI will never run into Matthew years down the line, never follow the yank of nostalgia and ask if he has time to grab a coffee. I will never sign our divorce papers. But the pieces of our story are forever knit into who I am. Despite everything, I know how lucky we were to love each other. And sometimes, I still wear his clothes.I understand now I was never meant to save him. I wish I hadn’t had to lose him, twice, to reclaim myself. Allyson Noman is a first-generation Pakistani-Korean writer based in the Bay Area. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Common, JancisRobinson.com, Forbes Wine, and has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize. She is currently querying her debut novel. Find her on Instagram, Substack or visit her website for more. 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