9. Clement

This is Clement. You were dragged to a lecture at the ornithological society by that guy from work who never even tried to hide that he had a thing for you ("It's not a date," you insisted when you agreed to go, but he still brought flowers and told you how beautiful you looked), and there he was at the podium. Afterward, during the white wine mingle, you started talking to him just to get away from the workplace skeeze. But then something about the way he answered your empty questions lit a fire in you, and you started buying your own ruse. If he's that passionate about Petrochelidon pyrrhonota, you thought, just imagine how worked up he could get about a real live human. It turned out, not so much. He left on a tracking expedition to Venezuela a few days later, and you didn't even say goodbye.

(Image: Beams)

8. Torvald

This is Torvald. You thought he was too pretty. "No guys who have better hair than I do," you said to yourself at the deli, watching him place his sandwich order. (BLT, rye, toasted, no mayo. Not that you were paying attention.) "Definitely no guys who wear pants that cost more than mine," you said as he stepped away from the crush of lunch-eaters and you could get a look below the neck. "Excuse me?" he said, because you hadn't even realized you were talking out loud. It turned out his pants weren't actually that fancy — they ripped when you were tearing them off later that night — but, yes, the bathroom had not one but two flatirons. The next month was surreal: he wrote a song for your cat, made you eggs when you slept over, listened sympathetically when you complained about, well, whatever it was you were complaining about those days. (Your mother? Your roommate?)

One night when you were making out on the futon a key turned in the front door and in spilled a man and a woman and a tumble of suitcases. Turns out this wasn't actually, his apartment — he was just crashing here while his friend was in Europe. Turns out he didn't actually have a job — but he knew a guy who was going to get him into a studio and make something happen. Turns out one of the flatirons in the bathroom wasn't his. Thank god for that, at least.

(Image: Landon Pigg, via)

7. Miles

This is Miles. You were always so sure he was using you, but you were never actually quite clear about what it was you brought to the table. Not that you weren't at the peak of your confidence then — the new job and the great haircut and for once having a quick answer when the bartender asks what you're drinking — but he just never seemed to need anything you could provide. Silence more than conversation, space more than intimacy. For two weeks it was twenty-two hours a day of steely distance, an hour at the bistro where you tried to crack his reserve(meeting with little more than two-syllable answers, red wine stains, and a lingering sense that the part in your hair could be better), and then an hour of the most sullen, angry sex you've ever had. And right in the middle, or right at the beginning, or right at the end, these lightning flashes of the most crushing, vulnerable tenderness that made everything — you, him, the stupid bistro, your stupid hair — completely worth it.

(Image: ELC Clothing)

6. Sam

This is Sam. Was there ever any question? Everyone wanted him from seventh grade on, and you weren't strong enough to fight something like that. You might have pretended not to care senior year when the alphabet conspired to make you lab partners in physics, maybe you publicly shrugged off the well-known fact that he called you every Sunday afternoon to double-check what the homework had been, but inside you were turning cartwheels and screaming at the top of your lungs. You taught yourself how to wear eyeliner, in case he liked it. You started wearing skirts more. Other boys started to notice (and you noticed them noticing) but never Sam. But then there was the party after graduation, someone's backyard had a bonfire and a keg, and you're pretty sure you were both pretending to be drunker than you really were. One kiss. He tasted like beer and toothpaste. No one saw.

(Image: Chace Crawford (!) by Alexi Lubomirski)

5. Peter

This is Peter. You weren't really looking for anything — definitely not anything serious, anything you'd actually have to put yourself into — which was why you spent that Saturday night sacked out at B&N on a chair near the travel section. He was browsing Europe: Central and Eastern with his back to you and you noticed that you were wearing the same sneakers. You had to say something. Over coffee — then beer — then scotch out of wine glasses back at his place — you realize that you know half a dozen people in common and you go to all the same bars.

For the next two months everything you love gets reinforced: Pancakes without syrup? Check. Fleetwood Mac but not Stevie Nicks? Check. One Hundred Years of Solitude? Check. Costume parties, the Mets, How I Met Your Mother, tacos al pastor? All check. Okay, so he never really knew how to dress. So he peed with the door open, never paid for dinner, and forgot to tell you when he was going up to Vermont for a week. Sometimes people actually do meet in bookstores, and sometimes amazing things come of it. Sometimes it ends quietly, and you're relieved that it's over, but you're also glad you had it in the first place.

(Image via The Mid Wasteland)

4. Douglas

This is Douglas. You knew exactly who he was the minute you saw him on the other side of the basement bar: cheap scotch with a beer back, tattered Kerouac paperbacks, pocketknife, LPs of Leadbelly and Johnny Cash. You weren't actually expecting the motorcycle, but to be fair it was hard to picture him riding the subway or taking a cab. "What are you doing in the city, anyway?" you asked and without a word he took you by the hand and put you on the bike and after two hours you were at his cabin (a pond, a barn he restored himself, a stand of pines to hide his homegrown). Three days later you put your clothes back on and he drove you back home. You figured you'd never see him again. You didn't.

(Image by Mario Sorrenti)

3. Eustacio

This is Eustacio. You woke up at 7:30 a.m. to sign up for that Art History class (a feat all the more impressive considering you only went to sleep at 5, thanks to that party on the other side of the quad) and you still didn't land the section you were hoping for. You showed up for the first day of class and didn't notice him until the professor getstured his way: "This is Eustacio, my teaching assistant. He's here to help you get as much out of this course as you can." It wasn't until after the midterm study session that you were alone together, walking back towards campus breathing the early spring air. You were chattering about Frank Stella and Minimalism and all of a sudden he just kissed you, mid-word, and kept on kissing you. He taught you how to drink beer like a dude, finally, and he didn't laugh at your poetry. He confessed that he truly wanted to be an architect, but he worried the profession was dying.

It ended when summer break came around — he said he had to focus on his dissertation, and you were headed to D.C. for that internship anyway. In the fall, when you got back to campus, you saw him here and there and you'd exchange sly smiles, but nothing ever really came of it.

(Image: Lucien Smith; J. Crew)