by C. Spencer
“Just us,” I hear, “without those constant interruptions.” And I know, I know, I know. She won’t stay long. “All right then?” she says.
All right then. “Sure,” I hear myself say. Overwhelmed but a touch excited as well, ashamed as I am to admit that. Curious, maybe. Followed by this odd sense of relief that she’s not shutting me out the way she used to, as if we could move past this. As if it could ever not hurt. Soon my lungs just sort of deflate, having been held in, I now realize, for quite some time.
So, I’m wondering, this is what we do?
And has she moved on so far that she’s indifferent to it all? Which means we catch up, as she says, like friends who shoot the breeze on a Saturday night?
But how could I ever feel so little for her?
Having realized that if I stop breathing long enough, I can stop feeling whatever this is I’m feeling, shouldn’t be feeling, nerves, or who knows anymore?
Because look at me, I’m trembling, aren’t I?
So what in my bureau says I didn’t dress for the occasion yet Look at what you’ve lost at the same time? As I settle on jogging shorts with a drawstring that might say hanging out with a touch of late-summer something, for all those times when I take that casual jog at nine o’clock on a Saturday night.
So now, what, I just wait. Pick up, tidy up, and wait for her to arrive, which is something I’ve never been good at, patience.
I guess I could’ve lingered on the phone with her, listening while she walked at that pace as if she was eternally late, aggravated by traffic or something during those however many minutes it would take her to get from there to here.
Had I kept her on the line, I would’ve known when she was a block away followed by I’m just outside and I’m at your door, my heart racing with the sound of her knock.
I could never be sensible or rational because it’s never, ever logical with her. I don’t know why that is. It’s just this huge mistake I’m going to make, isn’t it?
Because I know exactly how it’ll go.
So let’s do things differently this time. Maybe?
Like the day we moved in, when I bought champagne in a can to commemorate. But she crawled into bed instead. We couldn’t sleep. We talked for hours about how we couldn’t sleep. About how I wanted to make love on our staircase gripping the banister. Tie me to it, I said. But she laughed. I won’t. Eventually, though, she did.
And now she wants friendship—after that?
Give me the easy answer, the sure thing. What do I do? What if…? Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don’t know. But there’s her knock as my fingers pause at the knob and I’m trembling. So maybe I shouldn’t do this. Step back, breathe.
Except it’s too late. She’s holding me. And I’m wondering why we never talked about this when it was insignificant, when we could still feel our way back.
“Can I get you anything,” I say, and I can hear my voice quiver, “like a drink?” Thinking as I do how simple yet how complicated it feels to see her this way.
And it’s this thing she does just like that. It’s the cream on top.
Next, I’m lifting a knee in a chair, casually, as she’s discussing gridlock as if this was any other day. As if this was the reason she’d come by. As if she’d never left. And I’m wondering as she does—as I watch her lips move, as she leans over the edge of her cushion casually, fingers woven down the center of parted knees, flat-footed—if she’s as nervous as I am. Before we’re filling so much time with so many empty words. Pretending, aren’t we? I am again. Listening to all those things I want to hear. I want to say them, too. I’m reading into them.
And I catch her gaze lingering on me as we settle back into more of this small talk. As I scrutinize my every move, my every word as if any reminiscing on my part might be misconstrued. Until she’s waiting for my response.
“The coast,” she’s saying, “I was asking if you enjoyed yourself.”
“You know how I love the beach,” I say. But it just sinks me back into Rae, and I’m crushed again.
“So, you were with her?”
“Yes,” I say. Because Jordan must’ve told her. That’s all I can think. And I’m following along as palms rub down the length of her jeans as if squeezing them, and only afterward do I realize she’s watching me as I sink into her simmering gaze.
And she says: “Love becomes you.”
As simple as that. And I miss this. Wondering why she has me like this, crumbled into a million bits and pieces, doubting every word. If she even knows I am. As I feign unbroken. As I try to figure out, in which way do I miss her?
Then running a finger along my brow. “What are you doing, Aline?”
“There’s so much I wish I could say. But I can’t.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I’m just sorry,” she says.
“Why?” I say. But what I really mean to say is, let’s not talk about this. Let’s not do this. “It’s only now that I’ve found someone else,” I say, “now that your new is gone.”
“I didn’t enjoy new,” I hear.
But you chose new. You chose her. And afterward, as I stand beside the mantel, as I dust the lack of dust along its surface, I’m tempted to divulge even more. One-up her candor. Forgive her. But instead I just say, “Though maybe I did.”
“Enjoyed new?”
“I enjoyed her,” I say. Exerting some effort to add, “She and I, we—I guess—broke things off, you know, right afterward.” Aline’s gaze narrowing. Mine drifting to her palms now at her lips as if she was praying. “Or I should say, she might’ve broken it off.” Then I apologize. “I’m not much company.”
And it’s intriguing how, as she steps into the doorframe pondering a reply, the light down the hall seems to blind until all that’s left is her silhouette, rigid, shifting. I study the way she moves, the way she’s glancing down the hall. It makes me wonder what she’s planning to do, if she’s planning to leave.
And then she says, “Maybe I’ll take you up on that drink?”
But we don’t say much after that.
As I follow her into a kitchen absent of dialogue yet rich in debate, where she presses her lips to a glass as if preoccupied, while I twist cork. And still I couldn’t say whether her look is one of sincerity or mere empathy, as I pour enough for each of us.
She drags a chair out from under the table and takes a seat. As I join her, I ask, “And how did you convince your parents to take Jordan for more than a few hours?”
“It’s some opening,” she says. Then she begins to talk with her hands. But it doesn’t really matter what she says—I find it interesting. I hope she stays. It feels as if I’ve said so much, and now I need her to stay if only to tell me it’s okay. I’m okay.
“And what’ll you do with yourself all weekend?” I say.
“No clue,” she says, crossing a leg out from under the table. “Doesn’t it feel like we’re going through the same, or similar, you and I? And somehow we’ve found ourselves back here in the same place.” Her shoulders lifting.
And through the course of the next few hours, I talk over her. She talks around the truth. Our glasses fill without my knowing. The house settles. And the night begins to peer in. As our small talk melds into her, occasionally opinionated.
As this becomes that, and my mood shifts into something else altogether, which is good, until I hardly notice her lips, her breath, near mine. But she’s so close, isn’t she? It’s like this subtle bit of nothing. But it’s not nothing. It’s everything. Her gaze, inconsolable. But isn’t she the one consoling me? As I manage to shift. Shaken when I say…something, I don’t know.
But Aline has complicated this, confused me, making it hard to avoid her, leaving me no time to consider what I’m doing, and besides… “Would you like another glass?” I say pouring. But the only thing she wants is a reason why. As in, why can’t we?
Then she sets her glass in the sink, and it makes that sound.
And she turns
to me. But I don’t know what to say. And next she’s pulling keys. But I don’t want her to go.
As I contemplate boundaries and where mine have gone, while she edges past my shoulder. And I sense her breath near mine. As if this was my last and only chance.
* * *
With a hand covering my eyes to block the morning glare, I can hear Andi half shouting into the phone. “You would not believe who I ran into last night.”
“Who,” I say, groggy, stretching to find the clock.
“Since when do you sleep in?” she says.
“I’m not.”
“All I can say is, next time, warn me,” she says, garbled, before that white noise you always get when someone’s lost their signal.
As I roll and startle the cat, who bolts from my pillow.
“Warn you?” I say.
“Who’s calling?” I hear, and it’s Aline and she’s standing at the doorframe fully dressed when it all floods back.
“Is that who I…?”
“You’re breaking up, Andi.”
“It’s Andi,” I say before, “What didn’t I warn you about?”
“I’ll make us some coffee,” Aline says.
“We need to…” Andi says, “because why is you know who…and what—?”
Oh my God, this is frustrating. “Who did you see? Rae?”
“Yes!” I finally hear clear as a bell.
“Is she mad? What’d she say?”
“You tell me?” she says.
“I was going to call,” I say, “then—”
“I know, I know,” she says. “She told me about Aline.”
“She told you what about Aline?” I say.
But she’s talking over me with, “I said no way, but—”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Right,” she says.
“Where was this?”
“Where else?” Andi says. “Pool.”
“Lovely,” I say.
“I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“Tell me what?”
Dead air.
Holy fuck. “Tell me what?” I say. “Andi, you’re breaking up. Where are you?” But she doesn’t respond. Tell me what? And I’m whispering into an endless hum of white noise. “I’ll call you later,” I say, “okay?”
When Aline gets back, she hands me a mug and slides into bed. But we’re not exactly communicative. Even still, I’m not about to talk her through this silence again. As if there was anything left to say.
“How is she?”
“Who, Andi?” I say. “She’s fine.” But why do I feel like I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life? When I haven’t. “Look, maybe we shouldn’t do this sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing,” she says with air quotes. “We did nothing at all.”
“You have such a warped outlook,” I say.
“And you exist in a perpetual state of regret.”
“I don’t regret anything,” I say, thinking I don’t regret you, not what we had, not any of this.
“Then what are you thinking?” she says.
As I tug sheets, feel along the edge of the table, twisting hair. And afterward, she’s watching me. “I’m thinking we need to find a clearer line, that’s all.”
“And where’s your line?” she says. “I won’t cross it.”
“We can’t go back,” I say.
“Who says we can’t go forward?” she says.
“I’m trying to,” I say. “Which is why you’re here. Which is not working. And I’m not angry. I’m not bitter. I know that’s what you’re thinking, and I’m not. But seriously, what’d you think last night would even accomplish, after everything you’ve put me through? That I might swallow my pride and let it go? And please don’t act as if your brief bout of reminiscing was anything more than your extended farewell,” I say. “Because I can’t not see you with her—can’t you understand that? And you can’t just slip right back into my life as if it never happened. As if what you say right now, what you do, means nothing to me. Because you mean everything to me,” I say. “Don’t be careless.”
As we argue in circles, until I’m wishing I could go back to talking around this instead of about it. Her convincing me otherwise. Me wondering if there will ever be something in our ending aside from this overwhelming weight of grief. This drained of feeling anything at all. My wanting to find some good in it, in us—in me again.
And as much as this feels like another end, I don’t know if there ever will be an end with her. And when I realize this, it’s somehow encouraging and disconcerting at the same time.
Later, really as soon as I find myself alone, I call Andi because, “Not that,” I say. “We just talked, I swear. But you know, that’s not why I called.”
“Listen, I pulled her aside, Rae, last night. She asked about you.” And just with the sound of that, my stomach flips. “Not right off. It was weird. She kept glancing around, asking about me and…Let’s just say, this girl knows a thing or two about soccer. Were you aware of this?”
“Go on,” I say.
“Well we got around to the whole How’s she been? thing and this is where I’m like, shouldn’t I be asking you? Seriously, since when?”
“I didn’t feel like talking about it,” I say.
“I got the sense that she might’ve, who knows, wanted to run into you.”
“She’s there all the time,” I say.
“She’s not, actually.”
“Aline and I are trading schedules. She’ll have Jordan alternating weekends and I’ll have her the rest of the week. She’s being, I don’t know, cool right now.”
“So did you?” Andi says.
“Of course I didn’t,” I say.
“You did.”
“Why would you think that?”
“You’re serious,” she says.
“Yes, I’m serious. Not that it matters. She slept on the couch.”
“Why?” Andi says.
“We had a few drinks. That’s all. And I didn’t want her driving home like that. Can we not go there?”
“Where would I go?”
“Where you always go. Where I could’ve gone,” I say. “As if this was simple.”
“Well, it’s where I would’ve gone,” she says.
Chapter Twenty-five
Spanx
Rae
After berating myself over everything I said, everything I did because I’m such an idiot, I just hit the gym. Which is like the most amped up workout I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Not that Avery’s thinking the same.
“They have classes and trainers for that,” I tell her.
“How could I possibly spin wrong?”
“You could, I don’t know, pull a hamstring at the rate you’re going. Who knows?” I say. “Besides, why are you so averse to weights?”
“Because,” she says, “they’ll make me bulky.”
“They won’t make you bulky,” I say, taking in curves only accentuated by this posture. Add that cropped tank. “We need to work twenty times harder than a man,” I say, “just to get anything remotely close to muscle,” thinking We need to work twenty times harder than a man to get anything at all in this world. And I’m tucking a towel behind my neck when she gives me her best contemptuous-can-be-evocative look while slipping off the seat. “It’s biologically impossible,” I say.
“Yet look at those two,” she says. “I can’t even.”
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“I’ll never fit the mold,” she says.
“There is no mold, and they’ll never have what you have.”
“And what’s that?”
“Cleavage,” I say.
“Stop, they wouldn’t want it,” she says. “It gets in the way.”
“Or me.” I grin.
“I don’t have you,” she says.
“You’ll always have me,” I say. “And think about it this way—I don’t know one lesbian who doesn’t love a woman w
ho trains.”
“When I’d rather just shop,” she says, twisting weights as if dangling a handbag, limp. “It’s such a gorgeous day. It’s dripping in sunshine.”
“Try a squat,” I say. “Humor me. But do it, c’mon, for real.” Admiring her form.
“If you’re trying to coach me—to save me from entering Spanx territory, which is where I’m heading—might I suggest you keep your day job?”
“What would motivate you?” I say.
“Sitting over here on the bench, watching you,” she says. And soon we’re back on bungalow vs. condo vs. that two-story cape she found on Realtor.com. That is, until I finish a few more sets. “And will we indulge in one of those cute little faux energy drinks I saw at the café?” she says.
“Why don’t I buy you lunch, instead.”
“So is this a date?” she says.
“If that’s what you’d like to call it.”
“And to what do I owe this honor?” she says.
“To your one squat,” I say. “And that top.”
“Lunch,” she says, “then shopping?”
“Sure, anything you want,” I say.
“Anything?” she says.
So by two, we’re enjoying precisely that along with a few tall glasses of iced coffee, unsweetened for me, on a glimmering patio under the wooden trellis at Archipelago which, draped in white string lights, is feeling almost festive.
Albeit, I’m not.
But from here, from underneath their canopy, you can just sense the enthusiasm all around, those crowds. Shops for blocks now shoulder-to-shoulder. And I’m thinking it must have something to do with that tax-free weekend. Or back to school. Who knows? Something like that.
But the next thing I know, Avery’s doing this thing where she swirls a tall drink spoon in her glass for no apparent reason. In other words, she’s hoping to get my attention. And I know why. It’s not as if I’ve been exactly tolerable since we left the gym.
Maybe I’ve run out of upbeat things to share—or more precisely, maybe she’s more interested in her life and I’m more interested in mine. And we can’t seem to find common ground. So this day has evolved into a long string of one-sided conversations, her too consumed with real estate and me, well, isn’t that a given?
