I didn't see that someone else had beat me to the door.
Her porn star-type, probably boob-jobbed body was already entering the doorway.
It was too late to go back; he'd seen me.
I didn't move any closer. Neither did he.
And despite everything I was feeling, a smile forced its way across my face. I had been so wrong, trying to fish for opening lines. There was nothing left to say. I turned around, taking with me my obnoxious grin that wouldn't go away.
By the time I got to the street he had let the door slam and I heard his sock-covered feet running toward me down the path. But I kept going.
He stopped at the corner and hissed at my back, "I never slept with her while we were together!"
"And I never thought you did!" I shouted back.
Sarcasm could still come in handy.
In the Shower
At home I showered, water steaming hot. Tchaikovsky's violin concerto seeping through the open door. I was humming along when all of a sudden I wanted to turn the music off. It was working its way into my head. Rushing through my blood. The tears were hot like the spluttering shower. They kept coming and coming, no matter how much I told myself to stop. I bent over and held my face in my hands, body convulsing with every sob.
Somehow I felt I wasn't crying for him exactly. Those tears were for something else. Something else, only partly related to Nate.
When I stopped, it was over. My body felt like I'd been in a fight. It also felt clean. Not just my skin, but my insides too. As if I'd taken an intravenous breath mint.
I turned the knob to cold before getting out.
Something Else
I've done a good job of blocking him out of my memory.
But sometimes late at night when I'm teetering on the brink of sleep or running home through lamp-lit streets, I think of him. And I want nothing more than to feel him beside me.
Not to see or to hear him.
Just to be faintly aware of his breathing while I dream.
Better Than Running at Night
It's the Fourth of July and I'm expected to bring ketchup to my friend's neighborhood barbecue. She wants to set me up with the guy who's bringing the mustard. But the leaves are applauding the first thunderstorm of the summer and I'd rather stay in bed. My windows are open and the cool rain is misting my skin through the screens. The apartment shakes with each kaboom and cars swish through puddles. Nothing could make me want to get up, no matter how late it is. There will be more barbecues, other guys to meet. And they can find ketchup somewhere else, anyway.
I'm wearing a project I'm working on with Ralph. Pajamas—since I told him I wouldn't wear something like this out of my apartment. He sewed stretchy fabric to fit perfectly over my body. I painted the right half to look like bones and I'll paint the left half to look like muscles. Ralph added gloves and booties that hang off the ends of the arm and leg holes. I'll paint those, too.
I reach over to the bookshelf where I keep all my old sketchbooks, and pull out the first one from NECAD. I flip through the pages, stopping on a drawing I did of a fire hydrant morphing into Clarissa. Looking at her makes me laugh out loud. I haven't thought about her in a while.
I also come across a drawing of a guy in spandex jogging gear running through the rain. I remember seeing him one night while running home. As he approached me, I thought about how strange he looked, racing through raindrops after midnight. Couldn't this have waited until the morning? I wanted to ask him. And it suddenly occurred to me—I was doing the same thing. When the guy passed me, he smiled and called out, "What's better than running at night?" I didn't have an answer then. But now, after everything that happened with Nate, I think maybe I do.
I put my sketchbook on the floor and pull the gloves and booties over my hands and feet. The rain has stopped sounding like individual raindrops, making one continuous TV static gush.
I lie back and shut my eyes. And I hover between waking and dreaming while thunder pelts water at my windowpanes and lightning shatters the sky.
Better Than Running at Night Page 19
