They will be handsome. They will be handsome in a way that perhaps not everyone will automatically agree with you about, but they will have that something that you like. You will see in them something that you are immediately convinced is unique, is irreplaceable, is meant for you.

They will be funny. They will have the facility with the spoken word, with making people feel at ease, that usually manifests itself in lucrative sales jobs. When they talk, you will hang on every word because your whole body seems to shake with a desire for it to be true. When they laugh, you laugh. When they get mad at you, you get mad at yourself. You should have known better — how dare you.

They will be evasive. They will slip in and out of your life with a certain imperviousness; nothing seems to stick to them, not even your love. And the more you try to put them in a stable, consistent, understandable compartment of your life — the more they seem to resent you for it. It will seem that most of their confidence and charm is based on a distinct ability to not care.

They will make you realize that you are not like them, that you are not impervious to anything.

They will be smart. They will use their intelligence in a cunning, ugly way, though. They will use it to run circles around your own convictions, to make you believe that you are losing your mind for wanting them to participate. You will grow to resent their intelligence, as it has generally only been a source of great distress for you. You will wish that they were slower, so that you wouldn’t have to spend so much time trying to outrun them.

They will move quickly. When they sense that someone is on their trail — that they are beginning to put together the pieces that have been intentionally obscured for so long — everything will change. There will be a reason for not coming home, an alibi for the suspicious calls, a different interpretation of what they have been saying behind your back. It will all make sense, and then it won’t.

They will be angry. You will confront them, and they will hate it. They will resent you for wanting more for yourself, for insisting on the truth, for not playing the game they are convinced that they are so good at. The more confidence you find, the more it will seem to erode theirs. You will respond to this anger with a strange, unfamiliar mix of exhaustion and desire. You will crave their approval because you are never quite sure when you are actually getting it.

They will be gone. You will convince yourself that this is going to change, that lying isn’t necessarily the worst thing someone can do, that the million excuses you have chosen to listen to will eventually prove accurate. But it won’t. And it will be over. And then you will realize that you will have simply been lied to — aside from being occasionally lied next to, when the timing was convenient for them.