Last year was the first in which unmarried Americans outnumbered married ones; and yet, even with all of these single people, we still don’t have a word for the person who was your most important person—if you don’t wind up with him or her. Neel was that person for me, and so the person he’d chosen took on a mythic dimension—was she also a physicist? Or a pianist, or a kindergarten teacher, or a director of marketing? Did the fact that they were getting married in India mean that she was Indian, as Neel’s parents had always hoped for him? Was she younger, or the same age we were? Was she okay
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