Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

  He shrugged. He was still touching me underneath the coat. It was nice.

  I think I struggle enough with the ethics of our relationship already, he said. So giving you money would probably push it too far for me. Although, I don’t know. You’d probably be happier with the cash.

  I looked at him, seeing my own face in my peripheral vision, my chin raised slightly. Blurred out on the periphery I thought I looked quite formidable. I slipped out of the coat and left him holding it. I got back onto the bed and ran my tongue between my lips.

  Are you conflicted about our relationship? I said.

  He stood there holding the coat kind of limply in his hands. I could tell he was enjoying himself and too distracted to think about hanging it up.

  No, he said. Well, yes, but only in the abstract.

  You’re not going to leave me?

  He smiled, a shy smile. Would you miss me if I did? he said.

  I lay back on the bed, laughing at nothing. He hung the coat up. I lifted one of my legs in the air and crossed it over the other one slowly.

  I would miss dominating you in conversation, I said.

  He lay down beside me and flattened his hand against my stomach. Go on, he said.

  I think you would miss it too.

  Being dominated? Of course I would. That’s like foreplay for us. You say cryptic things I don’t understand, I give inadequate responses, you laugh at me, and then we have sex.

  I laughed. He sat up a little to watch me laughing.

  It’s nice, he said. It gives me an opportunity to enjoy being so inadequate.

  I propped myself up on one elbow and kissed his mouth. He leaned into it, like he really wanted to be kissed, and I felt a rush of my own power over him.

  Do I make you feel bad about yourself? I said.

  You can be a little hard on me from time to time. Not that I blame you really. But no, I think we’re getting along well at the moment.

  I looked down at my own hands. Carefully, like I was daring myself, I said: if I lash out at you it’s just because you don’t seem very vulnerable to it.

  He looked at me then. He didn’t even laugh, it was just a kind of frowning look, like he thought I was mocking him. Okay, he said. Well. I don’t think anyone likes being lashed out at.

  But I mean you don’t have a vulnerable personality. Like, I find it hard to imagine you trying on clothes. You don’t seem to have that relationship with yourself where you look at your reflection wondering if you look good in something. You seem like someone who would find that embarrassing.

  Right, he said. I mean, I’m a human being, I try clothes on before I buy them. But I think I understand what you’re saying. People do tend to find me kind of cold and like, not very fun.

  I was excited that we shared an experience I found so personal, and quickly I said: people find me cold and lacking in fun.

  Really? he said. You always seemed charming to me.

  I was gripped by a sudden and overwhelming urge to say: I love you, Nick. It wasn’t a bad feeling, specifically; it was slightly amusing and crazy, like when you stand up from your chair and suddenly realise how drunk you are. But it was true. I was in love with him.

  I want that coat, I said.

  Oh, yeah. You can’t have it.

  When we arrived at the launch the following night, Nick and Melissa were there already. They were standing together talking to some other people we knew: Derek, and a few others. Nick saw us coming in, but he didn’t hold my gaze when I tried to look at him. He noticed me and looked away, that was all. Bobbi and I flicked through the book and didn’t buy it. We said hello to the other people we knew, Bobbi texted Philip to ask where he was, and I pretended to read the author bios. Then the readings started.

  Throughout Melissa’s reading, Nick watched her face very attentively and laughed in the right places. My discovery that I was in love with Nick, not just infatuated but deeply personally attached to him in a way that would have lasting consequences for my happiness, had prompted me to feel a new kind of jealousy toward Melissa. I couldn’t believe that he went home to her every evening, or that they ate dinner together and sometimes watched films on their TV. What did they talk about? Did they amuse each other? Did they discuss their emotional lives, did they confide in one another? Did he respect Melissa more than me? Did he like her more? If we were both going to die in a burning building and he could only save one of us, wouldn’t he certainly save Melissa and not me? It seemed practically evil to have so much sex with someone who you would later allow to burn to death.

  After her reading, Melissa beamed while we all applauded. When she sat back down Nick said something in her ear and her smile changed, a real smile now, with her teeth and the sides of her eyes. He was always calling her ‘my wife’ in front of me. At the beginning I thought it was playful, maybe kind of sarcastic, like she wasn’t his real wife at all. Now I saw it differently. He didn’t mind me knowing that he loved someone else, he wanted me to know, but he was horrified by the idea that Melissa would find out about our relationship. It was something he was ashamed of, something he wanted to protect her from. I was sealed up in a certain part of his life that he didn’t like to look at or think about when he was with other people.

  Once all the readings were finished, I went to get a glass of wine. Evelyn and Melissa were standing nearby holding glasses of sparkling water, and Evelyn waved me over. I congratulated Melissa on her reading. Behind her shoulder I saw Nick coming toward us, and then he spotted me and hesitated. Evelyn was talking about the editor of the book. Nick arrived at her shoulder and they embraced, so warmly that it knocked Evelyn’s glasses sideways and she had to fix them. Nick and I nodded at each other politely. This time he held my eyes for a second longer than he had to, like he was sorry we were meeting this way.

  You’re looking so well, Evelyn said to him. You really are.

  He’s been practically living in the gym, said Melissa.

  I took a huge mouthful of white wine and washed it around my teeth. Is that what he tells you, I thought.

  Well, it’s working, said Evelyn. You have a look of radiant good health about you.

  Thanks, he said. I’m feeling well.

  Melissa was watching Nick with a kind of pride, like she had nursed him back to health after a long illness. I wondered what he meant by ‘I’m feeling well’, or what he meant for me to hear in it.

  And how about you, Frances? said Evelyn. How are you keeping?

  Fine, thanks, I said.

  You’re looking a little glum tonight, said Melissa.

  Cheerfully Evelyn said: I’d be glum if I were you, spending all your time around ancient people like us. Where’s Bobbi?

  Oh, she’s here, I said. I gestured toward the cash register, though I didn’t actually know where she was.

  Are you getting tired of ancient people? said Melissa.

  No, not at all, I said. If anything I could go more ancient.

  Nick stared into his glass.

  We’ll have to find you a nice older girlfriend, Melissa said. Someone with a lot of money.

  I didn’t have the nerve to look at Nick. Around the stem of my wine glass I sank my thumbnail into the side of my finger to feel it sting.

  I’m not sure what my role would be in that relationship, I said.

  You could write her love sonnets, said Evelyn.

  Melissa grinned. Don’t underestimate the effect of youth and beauty, she said.

  That sounds like a recipe for disastrous unhappiness, I said.

  You’re twenty-one, said Melissa. You should be disastrously unhappy.

  I’m working on it, I said.

  Someone else joined the conversation then to talk to Melissa, and I took the opportunity to go and find Bobbi. She was talking to the cashier near the front door. Bobbi had never had a job and she loved to talk to people about what they did at work. Even mundane details interested her, though she often forgot them quickly. The cashier was a lanky young man with ac
ne, who was telling Bobbi enthusiastically about his band. The bookshop manager came over then and started to talk about the book, which none of us had read or bought. I stood beside them, watching Melissa from across the room as she put her arm absently on Nick’s back.

  When I saw Nick look over at us, I turned to Bobbi, smiling, and moved her hair aside to whisper something in her ear. She looked at Nick and then suddenly grabbed my wrist, hard, harder than she had ever touched me in my life before. It hurt me, it drew a little gasp from my throat, and then she dropped my arm again. I cradled it against my ribs. In a deathly calm voice, staring directly into my face, Bobbi said: don’t fucking use me. She held my eyes for a second, with a terrifying seriousness, and then she turned back to the cashier.

  I went to get my jacket. I knew that no one was watching me, that no one cared what I thought or did, and I seemed to feel myself almost vibrating with the power of this perverse new freedom. I could scream or take my clothes off if I wanted, I could walk in front of a bus on my way home, who would know? Bobbi wouldn’t follow me. Nick wouldn’t even be seen speaking to me in public.

  I walked home on my own without telling anyone I was leaving. My feet were throbbing by the time I unlocked the front door. That night in bed I sat up and downloaded a dating app on my phone. I even put up a picture of myself, one of Melissa’s pictures, where my lips were parted and my eyes looked big and spooky. I heard Bobbi come home, I heard her drop her bag in the hall instead of hanging it up. She was singing ‘Green Rocky Road’ to herself, loudly enough that I knew she was drunk. I sat in the dark scrolling through a series of strangers in my area. I tried to think about them, to think about letting them kiss me, but instead I kept thinking of Nick, his face looking up at me from my pillow, reaching to touch my breast like he owned it.

  *

  I didn’t tell my mother that I’d brought the little leather copy of the New Testament back to Dublin with me. I knew she wouldn’t notice it was gone, and if I tried to explain, she wouldn’t understand why it interested me. My favourite part of the gospels was in Matthew, when Jesus said: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. I shared in this desire for moral superiority over my enemies. Jesus always wanted to be the better person, and so did I. I underlined this passage in red pencil several times, to illustrate that I understood the Christian way of life.

  The Bible made a lot more sense to me, almost perfect sense, if I pictured Bobbi as the Jesus character. She didn’t deliver his lines entirely straight; often she pronounced them sarcastically, or with a weird, distant expression. The bit about husbands and wives was satirical, whereas the passage about loving your enemies she played sincerely. It made sense to me that she would befriend adulteresses, and also that she would have a pack of disciples spreading her message.

  The day after the book launch, a Friday, I wrote Bobbi a long email apologising for what had happened between us in the bookshop. I tried to explain that I had felt vulnerable, but I did so without using the word ‘vulnerable’ or any synonyms. I did say sorry, I said that several times. She replied within a few minutes:

  it’s okay, i forgive you. but lately i sometimes feel like i’m watching you disappear.

  I stood up from my desk after reading this email and remembered I was in the college library, but without really seeing the library environment around me. I found my way to the bathrooms and locked myself in a stall. A mouthful of sour fluid washed up from my stomach and I leaned over the toilet basin to be sick. My body was gone then, vanished somewhere no one would ever see it again. Who would miss it? I wiped my mouth with a single square of tissue paper, flushed the toilet and went back upstairs. My MacBook screen had gone black and radiated a perfect rectangular glow from the reflected ceiling light. I sat back down, logged out of my email, and continued reading a James Baldwin essay.

  I didn’t exactly start praying that weekend after the book launch, but I did look up online how to meditate. It mainly involved closing my eyes and breathing, while also calmly letting go of passing thoughts. I focused on my breathing, you were allowed to do that. You could even count the breaths. And then at the end you could just think about anything, anything you wanted, but after five minutes of counting my breath, I didn’t want to think. My mind felt empty, like the inside of a glass jar. I was appropriating my fear of total disappearance as a spiritual practice. I was inhabiting disappearance as something that could reveal and inform, rather than totalise and annihilate. A lot of the time my meditation was unsuccessful.

  My father called me on Monday night at about eleven to say he had put my allowance in the bank that day. His voice rolled around on the line uncertainly and I felt a drenching sense of guilt. Oh, thanks, I said.

  I put in a few extra quid for you, he said. You never know when you’ll need it.

  You shouldn’t have. I have enough money.

  Well, treat yourself to something nice.

  After this phone call I felt restless and too warm, as if I had just run up a staircase. I tried lying down, but it didn’t help. Nick had sent me an email that day containing a link to a Joanna Newsom song. I sent back a link to the Billie Holiday recording of ‘I’m a Fool to Want You’, but he didn’t reply.

  I went into the living room, where Bobbi was watching a documentary about Algeria. She patted the couch cushion beside her and I sat down.

  Do you ever feel like you don’t know what you’re doing with your life? I said.

  I’m actually watching this, said Bobbi.

  I looked at the screen, where old wartime footage was overlaid with a voice-over explaining the role of the French military. I said: sometimes I just feel. And Bobbi placed a finger over her lips and said: Frances. I’m watching.

  *

  On Wednesday night I matched with somebody called Rossa on the dating thing and he sent me a couple of messages. He asked me if I wanted to meet up and I said: sure. We went for a drink together in a bar on Westmoreland Street. He was in college too, studying medicine. I didn’t tell him about the problems I’d had with my uterus. Actually I bragged about how healthy I was. He talked about how hard he had worked in school, which he seemed to consider a formative experience, and I said I was happy for him.

  I’ve never worked hard at anything, I said.

  That must be why you study English.

  Then he said that he was just joking, and actually he had won his school’s gold medal for composition. I love poetry, he said. I love Yeats.

  Yeah, I said. If there’s one thing you can say for fascism, it had some good poets.

  He didn’t have anything else to say about poetry after that. Afterwards he invited me back to his apartment and I let him unbutton my blouse. I thought: this is normal. This is a normal thing to do. He had a small, soft upper body, not at all like Nick, and he did none of the usual things that Nick did to me before we had sex, like touching me for a long time and talking in a low voice. It started right away, with no introduction really. Physically I felt almost nothing, just a mild discomfort. I let myself become rigid and silent, waiting for Rossa to notice my rigidity and stop what he was doing, but he didn’t. I considered asking him to stop, but the idea that he might ignore me felt more serious than the situation needed to be. Don’t get yourself into a big legal thing, I thought. I lay there and let him continue. He asked me if I liked it rough and I told him I didn’t think so, but he pulled my hair anyway. I wanted to laugh, and after that I hated myself for feeling superior.

  When I got home, I went to my room and took a single plastic-wrapped bandage from the drawer. I am normal, I thought. I have a body like anyone else. Then I scratched my arm open until it bled, just a faint spot of blood, widening into a droplet. I counted to three and afterwards opened the bandage, placed it carefully over my arm, and disposed of the plastic wrap.

  22

  The next day I started to write a story. It was a Thursday, I didn’t have class unt
il three, and I was sitting up in bed with a cup of black coffee on my bedside cabinet. I didn’t plan to write a story, I just noticed after some time that I wasn’t hitting the return key and that the lines were forming full sentences and attaching to each other like prose. When I stopped, I had written over three thousand words. It was past three o’clock and I hadn’t eaten. I lifted my hands from the keyboard and in the light from the window they looked emaciated. When I did get out of bed, a wave of dizziness came over me, breaking everything into a shower of visual noise. I made myself four slices of toast and ate them without butter. I saved the file as ‘b’. It was the first story I ever wrote.

  *

  Bobbi and Philip and I went for milkshakes after the cinema that night. During the film I had checked my phone six times to see if Nick had replied to a message I sent him. He hadn’t. Bobbi was wearing a denim jacket and a lipstick that was such a dark purple it was nearly black. I folded our milkshake receipt up into a complex geometrical pattern, while Philip tried to convince us to start performing together again. We were being evasive about it, though I didn’t know why exactly.

  I have college work, Bobbi said. And Frances has a secret boyfriend.

  I looked up at her with an expression of total horror. I could feel it in my teeth, a hard banging of shock in the nerve endings. She frowned.

  What? Bobbi said. He already knows, he was talking about it the other day.

  Talking about what? said Philip.

  About Frances and Nick, Bobbi said.

  Philip stared at her, and then at me. Bobbi lifted her hand to her mouth, slowly, the hand flat and horizontal, and gave one tiny shake of her head. It was enough to signal to me that she was really freaked out and not playing a game.

  I thought you knew, said Bobbi. I thought you said it the other day.

  You’re joking, Philip said. You’re not really having some kind of affair with him, are you?

  I tried to work my mouth into a sort of casual expression. Melissa was going away to visit her sister for the weekend, and I had messaged Nick asking if he wanted to come and stay with me while she was gone. Bobbi won’t mind, I wrote. He had seen the message and not replied.