That's Not a Thing

by Jacqueline Friedland

  “Yeah,” he says, taking a step back and reaching for a camel coat on the wall hook, “I guess you’re right. I was just leaving anyway. This shit’s not worth this shit.”

  My eyes dart away from the fuming man back to Aaron, and I see Aaron trying to contain his smirk at the guy’s flustered grammatical mess.

  “Yeah, okay, that’s probably true,” Aaron says somberly.

  As the guy makes his way out of the bar, Aaron turns back to the waitress and me, assessing us quickly with his eyes. “You guys okay?” he asks.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry I brought that down on you,” I say to the petite waitress, who nods back at me while her eyes are fixed on Aaron. If this were a cartoon, she would have little red hearts coming out of her eyes at the moment. I can’t say I blame her. That little bit of peaceful conflict resolution that he just did was definitely kind of dreamy.

  “No problem,” she says lightly. “Let me get you guys a couple of drinks on the house.”

  “For real? But I just sent a dart at your head and set all that craziness in motion. I should be buying you a drink.”

  She pulls her eyes away from Aaron and smiles at me. I notice that she has a tongue ring as she starts talking again.

  “No, it’s fine. That was a whole lot of hoopla, and you guys helped us come out on the right side of it. Consider your next round comped.” She takes the napkins that I had returned to the table beside us and wipes at her apron skirt as she turns and heads toward the bar.

  Aaron guides me back to our table with his hand resting on my lower back. The contact sends a little shiver up my spine, and I’m thankful for it, relieved to know that I do truly have a genuine attraction to him. Whatever else may be complicating my life, my feelings for him are legit.

  “Man,” he says, as we settle back into our seats, “who knew you’d be such a nightmare at darts? Don’t you think you should have mentioned it, like maybe that’s something you ought to share with a guy who has to spend the rest of his life with you?” He kicks me lightly under the table and I feel my cheeks warming with at the way he’s looking at me. I guess we are trying to move past our earlier conversation.

  “Whatever. It’s a stupid game, throwing pointy stuff around in public places.” I kick him back, less lightly, with just enough force to turn the sexual tension up a notch.

  The waitress brings our wings and two more beers. We relax into our drinks and chat about other things. He tells me a little about the conditions of the babies he treated today, and I ask for an update on his parents’ house-hunting plans. He informs me that they’ve changed their minds and have decided to stay put on Long Island.

  As Aaron is wiping the buffalo sauce off his hands, sliding the napkin over each finger, one at a time, he glances toward the door of the bar. “Stay at my place tonight?”

  We are always negotiating about which apartment we’ll sleep at after we have a night out together, but this time he sounds tentative, like the question is not about which apartment we’ll be sleeping at but about whether we’ll be spending the night together at all.

  “Done,” I answer breezily, but I suddenly feel a pressure in my stomach, a dismay that only thickens as I realize that my clandestine behavior with Wesley may have changed everything between us. Although I fessed up and told Aaron about my night with my ex, it may have already been too late. Even if Aaron still trusts me to be honest with him, which is now debatable, it seems as if I have managed to weaken his trust in us.

  As he looks at me in relief, the set of his jaw softening almost imperceptibly, I resolve to fix this, to show Aaron that my loyalty still lies with him. By declaring it to myself, I hope to make it true.

  AS SOON AS we are inside his apartment, he’s all over me. He knocks the door closed with his foot and pushes me up against it, molding his lips to mine before he even turns on the lights. I can taste beer on his warm tongue, and urgency. He hoists me up without pulling away, and I wrap my legs around his waist, enjoying the heft of his wide body flush against my own. He keeps one hand underneath my butt to support me and the other one in my hair, bringing my mouth even closer to his, as if he’s trying to devour me.

  There is a flavor to Aaron’s actions that’s different from his usual gentle, almost careful pace with me. He is always conscious of his size and treats me as though he’s afraid to hurt me. Except tonight, his movements are fierce, territorial, and I know now without a doubt that the happenings with Wesley are bothering him more than he has let on. As he continues to kiss me like he simply can’t get enough, like he wants to inhale my entire being, his hands roam quickly from one part of me to another. I’m finding his hunger hypnotic, addicting.

  I slide my hands underneath his shirt, up over his rigid oblique muscles, trying to pull us even closer. Without pausing, he carries me over toward the couch and begins undoing the button of my jeans before he’s even set me down on the cushions. The clothes prove too complicated to lose without our pulling apart for at least a moment, but after a flash of fabrics and tangled sleeves, we’re back at it with as much fervor as a moment before.

  He climbs on top of me, and I relish the weight of him, like I always do. I chew on his ear as he groans, deep and loud, an announcement of his intentions, of his latent ferocity. I’m in a stupor of lust, lost in the wild motions, the roughness that he usually keeps contained. He pushes against me, every thrust a pronouncement, a demand, and I surrender to the pull, lost against him.

  When we finally finish, a grand finale accompanied by Aaron’s primal roar, we are a sweaty tangle of arms and legs, our clothes in disarray throughout the room. The lights from buildings across the street provide the only illumination as I lie beneath Aaron and wonder absently how my shirt managed to land all the way over by the kitchen entry.

  Aaron leans up on an elbow, cool air reaching my sweaty torso as he pulls back enough to see my face.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “I love you,” I answer.

  He kisses me gently on the forehead and then disappears into the bathroom for a moment. While he’s gone, I open the storage ottoman that doubles as a coffee table and pull out a cozy fleece blanket. I settle back onto the couch, draping the blanket over myself for warmth. I’m sure my hair is a disaster at the moment, but I feel so satiated, gelatinous, and spent that I just curl up back where I was.

  Aaron reappears, sipping from a paper cup of water. “Scooch,” he says as he reaches me and lowers himself back onto the couch. “Want?”

  I shake my head as he holds out the water, and I move farther onto the wide leather sofa, turning my back toward him so he can wrap himself around me, which he does now with ease.

  We lie silently for a few minutes as he plays with pieces of my hair.

  “I don’t like it,” he finally says quietly, “the reappearance of Wesley in your life. The way he’s getting under your skin.”

  “I know,” I start cautiously. “I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, but it’s so hard to turn my back on him when he has this condition, you know?”

  I can hear the neediness in my voice, the desire for Aaron to validate everything I’ve said.

  “But why does it have to be you?” His voice is steady, calm. “Doesn’t he have people to take care of him?”

  “Not really,” I answer on a sigh. “I mean, you know his parents are gone, and he has no siblings. His aunt and uncle live in England.”

  When Aaron doesn’t say anything, I keep talking. “He used to have a cousin, Lulu, who he was really close to, but the last I heard, she had moved to Nepal or something. With a guy.”

  “Well, what about friends? Doesn’t he have any friends who could help?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, as I shake my head against the couch cushion. “At least when we were together, he was always working so much, hustling to make money for school. He had plenty of friendly acquaintances but never enough time to be particularly close with anyone. I’d guess that with all the work of the
restaurant and his having been back in New York only a matter of months, his social situation is probably pretty much the same. As far as personal connections go, he’s always been sort of a man with no country.”

  “Except for you.”

  “Except for me.”

  We are both quiet as we digest these words, and the silence begins to stretch between us. Finally, he says the last thing I am expecting.

  “Well, then you have to make it your business to be there for him. I’ll help.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  March 2017

  I’m just getting to work when Lana calls.

  “Hey,” I answer, dropping into my desk chair. Nicola isn’t here yet to roll her eyes at me for engaging in non-work-related chitchat.

  “Are your parents hosting Mother’s Day again this year?” Lana asks, without preamble.

  “I guess so.” Mother’s Day is still a couple of months away, and I can’t say I’ve given it much thought. “Why?”

  “I’m not inviting Reese.”

  “Okay.” I still don’t know where we’re going with this. I hear voices in the hallway as other attorneys and admins arrive. I push at the glass door of my office with my patent leather–covered toe; the frosted door swings closed while I wait for Lana to explain what she means.

  “I’ve had it. I think it’s time he starts getting left out of the family affairs that he enjoys so much, so he can see what life might be like without me.”

  “Lana, what are you talking about?” I laugh out loud. “Why does Reese care whether he comes to my parents’ Mother’s Day barbecue?”

  “Oh my God, for real?” she demands, her voice rising a couple of octaves. “It’s like the highlight of his year every year, the whole down-and-dirty barbecue thing. Dope, actually, is how I remember him describing it to his dad last year. The Altmans are so dope.” Her voice is laced with ridicule as she draws out the last word. She pauses for a second, and I can hear her sipping on something, which I imagine is her daily nonfat vanilla iced latte. “Also, he’s obsessed with your dad’s blue cheese sliders.”

  My dad isn’t much in the kitchen, but he does grill like a champ. Between the backyard smoker he added to his arsenal a few years ago and the next-door neighbor’s deep fryer, I think it’s fair to say that our annual Mother’s Day get-together actually is pretty dope.

  “So, what’s the plan? He misses out on his Jeff special and then he decides he can’t live without the Altman Mother’s Day barbecue, which translates into not being able to live without you? Cue proposal?” I can’t say I’m impressed by the plan here.

  “No, dumbass,” she quips. “I was thinking that I could tell him he’s not invited, which is the first blow, and then spend the whole afternoon with one of Aaron’s cousins or some hot doctor friend that you can tell him to bring. I’ll post a whole bunch of pics on social media for Reese to see after the fact, and maybe that will get him thinking.”

  “Okay, I have problems with this plan on so many levels, the first of which is that you should not need to make your man jealous in order for him to realize how much you mean to him.”

  My mind flashes to the mind-blowing sex Aaron and I had last night, and I wonder if I’m actually right about that.

  “Secondly, if this is how you’re feeling now—today, or last month, or last year—why are you waiting until Mother’s Day to take action?”

  She sighs so heavily into the phone that I wonder if she has to grasp it tighter so it won’t blow away. As I wait for her to respond, I reach for the mouse on my desk and wiggle it to bring my computer screen to life.

  “I just need a little more time,” she says, as if she’s pleading with me, “before I start making waves. I’ve kind of given myself until May, and if it seems like he’s still not ready to get serious, I’m going to rock the boat. But I don’t want to start the rocking until I’m ready to deal with the consequences. I know how to push Reese, and I’m just worried that I might end up pushing him in the other direction.”

  “Okay, fine. I guess that makes sense. A little.” I open my email, tensing as I wait to see if I have any messages from attorneys that are going to ruin my day. Nothing jumps out at me from within the list of bolded, unread messages, just some firm-wide announcements and possible spam. “I can’t imagine that the barbecue is anything other than on, but I’ll double-check and keep you posted.”

  “Awesome,” she says, and I can hear that subtle shift in her voice that tells me she’s turning her focus to something else, maybe readying to get back to whatever work she has sitting on her Lucite desk.

  “Hey, Lan,” I say, trying to hold on to her attention for one more minute, “you’re one of the most fabulous people I know. You’re breathtaking and exciting and full of fun. If Reese can’t see that or can’t appreciate you in the way you want, another guy will. You need to know that.” I don’t tell her how lucky she is to know her mind, to at least be able to understand her own emotions.

  “Thanks, man. I know,” she says, with too much resignation in her voice. “I just really wanted it to be Reese.”

  I TAKE ADVANTAGE of the lack of tyrannical emails in my inbox and devote my morning to Moe’s asylum case. In only a few more hours, Moe will be returning to our office for our next client meeting, possibly the final meeting before we have to file his papers, and I’m trying to create an efficient agenda. The firm allows me to devote only so many hours and resources to this case, but there are still numerous questions I need answered. I have a passing worry that I might face negative consequences when the partners, or whoever it is that reviews my time charts, notice how many of my ten-minute billing increments I have allocated to this case. Even so, this man’s whole future is at stake and I can’t give anything less than 100 percent.

  I pull up the Human Rights Watch report, the document I used as my first jumping-off point to learn about Myanmar when I began working on this case. I read it over again and find the information still useful but a bit broad, too generalized, sort of like the stories I’ve been hearing from Moe himself. I’m having a hard time actually putting myself into Moe’s narrative, following the chronology from point A to point B. After another Google search, I find several videos about resettled Burmese people who are now living productively in the United States. Many of them have settled in Southport, Indiana, which is where Moe says he plans to go once his immigration status is settled. I click on one link after another, reading articles and stories about displaced Christians, tortured Muslims. I see the same statistics over and over, and my eye keeps catching on the fact that 1.2 million Muslims continue to endure human rights abuses in Myanmar. I wonder how it’s fair that such a small percentage of these people escape to safety. I wonder what happened in the cosmic universe that allowed for Moe to get out while so many others were murdered or trapped in his very same village.

  Against my will, my thoughts jump back to ALS. I don’t remember the statistics I saw about the prevalence of the disease, what percentage of the population it affects, but I again wonder about fate and what made Wesley fall into the category of the damned.

  Before I know it, a couple of hours of online searching have passed and the honest truth is that I feel no more well versed in the workings of Burmese society than I did when I walked into the office this morning. I’ve consumed an overwhelming amount of information, and it’s difficult to separate truth from propaganda. For example, I discovered something called the 969 Movement, which one website says is a violent initiative meant to limit the spread of Islam, and which another site describes as a peaceful attempt to preserve Buddhist culture. I’m not familiar with the organizations behind either website, and there’s no way for me to decide which information to believe. Instead, I ignore the question for the time being and stand up from my chair to seek out Rose Conway, the senior associate who is technically supervising me on this case. Although I’m doing all the work, she joins me for the meetings with Moe, and when the time comes to present our case before the i
mmigration judge, she will sit first chair.

  I find Rose in her office and fill her in on the work I’ve managed to complete, as well as the holes that still need addressing. We have ample data about Moe’s home district, the political climate of the region as a whole, and the day on which the Myanmar military plundered his village, but we are still missing adequate details about how those attacks affected Moe personally. Beyond the obvious devastation that a military attack would precipitate, we need to populate Moe’s application with personalized details to bolster our claims: names of lost loved ones, specific actions of enemies that have led to a continued fear for his safety in his home country. We also need more background on the time he spent in the refugee camp in Thailand. I want to know why he avoided speaking about that period when we last met.

  Rose nods while I talk but doesn’t jot down any notes. Instead, she fishes for a pair of eyeglasses that she finally pulls from her purse. Along with her dark hair pulled into a low ponytail, and a long pearl necklace hanging over her pink sweater set, the wire-rimmed spectacles are the final touch, completing her costume as an up-and-coming superstar attorney.

  We head down the hall to the conference room where we will be meeting with Moe. It’s noticeably chilly, the air-conditioning blasting forth in the odd display of corporate bluster that turns our office into an icebox, even during the winter months. It’s as though there’s an unspoken understanding that whichever firm can afford to keep its rooms the coldest must somehow be filled with the smartest, most desirable attorneys.

  Rose’s assistant has taken care of stocking the room with platters of pinwheel sandwiches, cookies, and petite bottles of soda. There’s enough food for a party, even though there will be only four of us here once Moe arrives with the interpreter. I wonder how it must look to him, all this excess, after having grown up in one of the world’s least developed countries. His life was so different from the average American’s that he had to be shown how to flush a Western toilet after he arrived in the States.