I haven’t believed in God since I was eleven, but in high school I still prayed for him to make me beautiful. Hey, God, I’d say. You have a second? But God never seemed to have a second. I wanted it so badly, though, to be beautiful, the way Claire Greenough and Dani Eidelman and Layla Wiest were beautiful. They had dyed hair and boyfriends and they always had someone to talk to between classes. And sure, maybe Dani’s boyfriend cheated on her, and maybe Layla wouldn’t eat more than three grapes for lunch on Wednesdays—but just look at that isosceles nose and those skinny, skinny forearms and the way that cartilage piercing glistened in the cafeteria’s industrial lighting.

    Because look: I am not beautiful. I’m not super-ugly or anything, but I’m not beautiful. If you and I were playing Spin the Bottle at a party and you spun the bottle towards me, you’d probably kiss me rather than awkwardly pretending like the bottle was pointed at somebody else. But if I came up to you after the game ended and put my hand on your shoulder you’d probably just brush it away, and anyways that’d probably end up being the night where you made out with Claire in the laundry room and told the entire school about it the next day. And I’d hide in the bathroom and try to talk to God about the whole thing, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Come on, he’d say, I don’t have time for this! There are people dying in Africa, and besides, Layla Wiest has a zit she needs me to get rid of.

    God and I lost touch around the time I went to college. I mean, I’d still think about him every now and then, and he’d still write on my Facebook wall on my birthday, but that was about it. I didn’t tell him when I lost my virginity in a fumbling late-night tryst, and I certainly didn’t go crying to him when the guy wouldn’t even smile at me the next day.

    But then came Jordan, Jordan with his gap teeth and mussy hair and calves sticking out of the tops of his running shoes. He laughed at the same parts of movies as I did and he always waited for me when I had to go to the bathroom and he threw out the t-shirt with the snakes on it when I told him I didn’t like it. The first time he kissed me in the morning his mouth tasted like toothpaste and fluoride rinse and I was amazed at a kiss that didn’t taste like cheap alcohol.

    And when he told me I was beautiful I knew he was lying, but it felt good anyways, and it was as if God had popped back into my life, just when I thought he’d been gone for good, and offered me a deal: you’ll never be beautiful, but he is, and he’ll tell you you are, and that’s almost as good, right? Sure, God, I’d said. Pleasure doing business with you. And we’d exchanged cards and cordial goodbyes and promises to keep in touch, but we’d known, both of us, that we wouldn’t.