In June of 2007, I watched the movie Once with you. We’d rented the DVD from

Blockbuster, the way people did then. We were twenty-one, so dinner meant sharing a bag of corn

chips, drinking Coronas, and sitting on that funky old couch I bought cheap at an estate sale.

That was back when we were still a couple living together in Seattle, and we’d only ever been

with each other, and we loved each other, but we wondered what else was out there.

And in the movie Once, two musicians meet in Dublin, a Guy and a Girl. The Guy is

Irish with an ex-girlfriend in London, and the Girl is Czech, separated from her husband in

Prague. And the Guy and the Girl play music together, and make an album together, and want to

be together, but somehow they know they will never be together, that they will go back to their

exes. And in one scene, the Girl and the Guy go for a long walk by the ocean and they talk about

the Girl’s husband. “Do you love him?” asks the Guy. And the Girl answers in Czech, no

subtitles, something that sounds like “mulioo tebe.” He asks her what that means, and she just

smiles, and they keep walking.

I always intended to find out what that meant. But back in 2007 the internet was limited,

so when I googled it, nothing turned up. And I made a mental note to find out what “mulioo

tebe” meant but I forgot and then I kept forgetting, for years and years.

And then in 2008 we moved from Seattle to New York to go to grad school, and at the

end of 2010 you broke up with me and I was sad, but then I also sort of knew it was for the best.

I had a wandering eye, and you had a lot of growing up to do. But knowing something is for the

best doesn’t make it easy. I drank a lot of vodka that month you dumped me, and I’m not proud

of how many times I rewatched The Office which, together with the vodka, dulled the pain. But

even then, crying drunkenly while watching Pam and Jim finally get together, I knew that you

and I were better off apart. “Don’t have ex sex,” my friends warned me. “Don’t worry, I won’t,” I

said. “Yeah, right,” they said.

But I was right. We never did have ex sex. We just had a tense year when we barely

spoke to each other, and then we found out that we couldn’t not speak, and then we became sort

of friends, and then we became real friends. And then in 2012 I met someone, and I got engaged,

and you came to the wedding and you sat there in your rented suit on a rented white folding chair

looking like you’d just been sucker punched in the crotch. But I ignored the way you looked in

the suit on the folding chair among all the other smiling faces so I could concentrate and just get

married already without you throwing a sucker punch at the whole thing.

And then in 2015 you got a job in New York and I got a job in LA, and you got a

girlfriend and it got serious, and then I had a baby, and my baby and my husband and I went on

vacation once and visited you in New York, and I got to meet your girlfriend and you got to meet

my baby, and they both seemed very nice, and we were happy for each other.

And then, things happened more and more quickly. I had a second baby, and I got hired

as a program director, which meant I wasn’t leaving LA, and you got promoted, which meant

you weren’t leaving New York, and we texted about how it felt to have jobs and partners and

funny pets and never enough time. And I told you: “I think you’d like the book I am reading and

the music I’m listening to.” You replied: “oh cool,” and told me about the book you were reading

and a music I might like, and we enjoyed each other’s books and music and said thanks for the

recommendation, which led to more recommendations. Sometimes we didn’t talk much, but we

always kept talking.

And then I still had two kids and a husband and a job and a very cute cat named Phil

Conners, and you still had a girlfriend and a job and a dog named Baxter with curly black hair,

and one day you told me that your girlfriend was pregnant, and you were going to be a father,

and you were nervous. And I said don’t be nervous, you’ll be great. That was in 2025.

And then all of a sudden, one summer night, late, when I was too hot to sleep, I

remembered the movie Once. I remembered that we had watched it on our old couch in Seattle in

2007 when we were both twenty-one, and unsure, and in love. And the Guy in the movie had an

ex-girlfriend in London, and the Girl had a husband in Prague. The Guy asked the Girl, “Do you

love him?” and she said, “mulioo tebe.” And I had meant to google what that meant for eighteen

years. And when I did, I thought how stupid the Guy had been, how stupid, not to know what it

meant. So I just had to message you, right then and there, that “miluju tebe,” in Czech, from the

movie Once, that we’d watched together in Seattle over corn chips and Corona in 2007, means “I

love you.”

Clare Rolens is an English Professor living in San Diego. You can find her writing in Vestal Review, Fiction Attic Press, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, among others. She serves as a poetry editor for the journal One Sentence Poems, and the book review editor for Clues: A Journal of Detection. She can currently be found reading something by Shirley Jackson or getting her kids to eat their vegetables. Follow her on Instagram: @crolens.

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