SPACE

by Penny Reid

  “Lisa—”

  “Just fucking listen,” she shouted, surprising me, her hands dropping and revealing a face that looked like a stranger’s. “I’m not who you think I am, okay?”

  Despite hearing these words from her before, this time I believed her. I didn’t argue, just watched her and waited for . . . I had no idea. A sign? A glimmer of my Lisa? The woman I couldn’t get enough of? The woman I’d written twenty poems about in six days?

  “But before I say anything else—” she swiped at her eyes leaving dark smudges on her cheeks, sucking in a deep breath “—I have to ask you something.”

  I waited, promising myself I wouldn’t cross to her or try to touch her until invited. Strangely, this promise didn’t seem as big as it had yesterday when we were in the pool, or when we were on the couch. Last night I’d promised myself not to touch her, and it had been torture.

  Today? It was self-preservation.

  When she didn’t say anything, I prompted with forced calm, “Fine. What do you want to ask?”

  She licked her lips, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, a nervous habit I hadn’t noticed before. “If I lied to you, would you forgive me?” she finally blurted, shutting her eyes.

  Lied to me? I straightened my back.

  “About what?” The question slipped out, unplanned.

  “No. I’m not—it could be about anything, okay?” Her eyes opened again and she stared forward at my neck. “If I lied to you at any point this week, would you be able to forgive me?”

  My mind was racing with worst-case scenarios, my stomach sinking. “Did you sell those drugs? To those kids?” More unplanned questions, but what could I do? She was acting so crazy.

  “No.” She was back to whispering again, giving me a clue that the question had upset her. “I didn’t do that. I would never do that.”

  I believed her. But the next obvious choice made my throat tighten with the urge to rage.

  “Are you back with Tyler?” I asked roughly, determined not to raise my voice, but I was already so jealous. I didn’t want to be jealous. I’d never been jealous. But I was so fucking jealous in that moment, the cloud around my vision turned red.

  Fuck.

  I’d never experienced anything like this before.

  I hated it. Hated it. It felt like being branded with a million tiny hot pokers.

  “No.” Her glare turned distracted. “But it’s something like that—” her eyes came to mine, still guarded, still off, still wrong “—something just as bad as that. A lie that big.”

  I’d never been so frantic before to recall previous conversations. I went through every day, every interaction, every word that I could remember. I came up empty.

  “What is it?”

  “Would you forgive me?”

  I nodded but didn’t answer out loud, trying to convince myself while also dealing with this insane jealousy. I would. I would forgive her anything. I would—

  “Hypothetically, what if I told you that I’ve been lying to you every day, this whole week, about something important. You say you love me, but would you forgive me?”

  I stopped nodding. “Have you?”

  She remained silent, her eyes now narrowed, searching. “You wouldn’t forgive me, would you?”

  “I don’t know!” I exploded, not understanding her or why she was doing this. “You haven’t told me what it is. Fuck, Lisa. I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

  “Forget it.” She gave her head a small shake, her eyes dropping to the kitchen floor.

  She looked exhausted and sad, and seeing her this way should’ve made me want to break all her unspoken rules about touching. I should’ve wanted to hold her, but I didn’t. If this had been yesterday, I would’ve promised to forgive her anything and everything, and I would’ve meant it.

  But now? I had no clarity. Making promises now would be a lie, and I never lied. If she’d been seeing Tyler this whole week while spending time with me, falling for her, I wouldn’t forgive her. It wasn’t in me. I would despise her.

  Clearing my throat, I grit my teeth to keep from yelling again. “Forget what? What should I forget?”

  “Forget me. You don’t love me. You might think you do, but you don’t.” She sounded tired, but also as though she were trying her best to be compassionate, gentle. “Believe me, you’ll get over this—whatever it is—so fast, I’ll be a blip, a nothing. Seriously, forget it. You don’t want to know me. I promise you, you don’t.”

  “So you keep saying.” I pushed back against a creeping numbness climbing up my ribs, stalling, needing a way to fix this.

  “Then what’s the problem? Why don’t you believe me? I’m messed up, okay? I don’t know who I am.” Like a switch, her mood and manner turned exasperated. “I don’t know what I want. I’m all fucked up. I am telling you the truth, but you refuse to believe me!”

  In a huff, she turned and stomped to the back stairs.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” I called after her, another unplanned statement of my thoughts.

  She stopped on the third step, turning halfway, giving me just her profile.

  I walked to the bottom of the stairs, not seeing her or anything else, but wading through a general sense of everything crumbling to dust, a barren landscape.

  “What changed? Between last night and this morning, what changed? What did I do wrong?”

  Lisa swallowed, shaking her head. “I’m two different people, Abram.” She pulled her sleeves down to cover her hands, turning completely away and crossing her arms. “I’m the person I want to be and the person I currently am, and if my parents disown me, I feel like I’ll sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown. I feel like it’ll be the end of the world.” Initially her voice had been strong and steady, but it grew quieter and quieter as she spoke.

  I stared at the back of her head, working through my own bitterness and this trail of crumbs she was leaving. I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I couldn’t believe this was the same person I’d spent the last week with. But there she was, looking just the same.

  I’d thought her trust was a beautiful thing. I thought her values unbendable. But now? I couldn’t see what had been right in front of me the whole time, I’d been blind to the truth: she had no trust in me, maybe not in anyone.

  Swallowing around the vice tightening my throat, I glanced up at the ceiling. “Let me see if I have this right: you lied to me, about something big, and you think I’ll tell your parents if I find out. Is that right?” The bitterness snuck into my voice.

  We were now broken. This wasn’t like before, where she’d used logic and ethics and temperance to push me away. I could forgive that. In retrospect, it had almost been cute.

  But this?

  Maybe it’s for the best.

  No. Fuck that. It wasn’t for the best. Us together was for the best.

  Eying her back, her stiff shoulders bunched around her neck, I felt myself soften.

  What happened to make her this way?

  I couldn’t let her go without trying one more time.

  “Lisa.” I placed a hand on her arm, keeping my touch light.

  She tensed and I swallowed fear. I ignored my drumming heart, the taste of sand, the uncomfortable tightness in my chest that made taking a complete breath unbearable, and I reminded myself of Leo’s truest words: I try to stay soft, but the world makes it hard.

  Be open. Be brave. Be soft, for Lisa.

  “I told you yesterday, I just want to make you happy. Do you believe me?”

  I watched her back rise and fall with a deep breath, and the barest glimmer of hope had me curling my fingers around her forearm.

  But then she shook off my hand. “You can’t make me happy, Abram. People can’t make other people happy. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. The truth is, I’m still—I’m still in love with Tyler and—” She took another deep breath, and when she spoke next, I could barely hear her, “And sorry for dicking you
around but nothing is ever going to happen with us, so just give me some fucking space.”

  1

  Electric Charge and Electric Field

  Two and a half years later.

  *Mona*

  “You left.”

  Shifting my eyes from the computer screen to the doorway of my office, I blinked at Poe’s sudden appearance. “Pardon?”

  “The reception.” He pushed his hands into his pockets, strolling to the chair in front of my desk and helping himself to a seat. “You left before the speech.” Poe smiled at his own statement, though it was clear my leaving the reception was what he found amusing.

  “I guess I did.” I leaned back in my chair and returned his smile. “She always gives the same speech.”

  “You mean, she always brings up that she’s mentoring the infamous genius, Mona DaVinci, and you find that irritating.” Poe said this as he studied his nails, still smiling.

  Stinker. He knew me too well.

  Lifting my eyes to the ceiling, I shrugged. “Irritating is such a strong word. But yes. It feels a little condescending.”

  “Because your mentor doesn’t actually mentor you, or why?” Poe leaned his elbow on the arm of the leather chair, stretching his legs in front of him as though getting comfortable, his brown eyes still bright with amusement.

  He already knew the answer to this question, so why was he asking? I folded my hands over my stomach and inspected him, deciding that he was just in a teasing mood.

  Therefore, I made myself sound lofty. “You know I would never say my mentor doesn’t mentor me.”

  That made him laugh, a good, deep, belly laugh, and he shook his head. “You would never say it, even though it’s the truth.”

  We stared across the length of my desk, smiling at each other, good feelings and trust and respect between us, and I couldn’t help but wonder—

  A moment flashed behind my mind’s eye, a dark room, my cheek pressed to a soft T-shirt, the sound of a heart beating beneath my ear. Arms—Abram’s arms—were around me. Reality and time felt fuzzy around the edges, as though I might be able to touch the past . . .

  Sigh.

  In the present, my hand reflexively moved to the folded envelope in my front pocket and I felt my smile fall, likely due to the ache in my chest. Despite my attempts to be rational about the short—extremely short—time I’d spent with Abram, memories of him used to cause a brutal, violent stabbing sensation in the vicinity of my heart, scatter my brain, and send a burst of heat up my neck and over my cheeks.

  I’d written him a letter a month after returning from Chicago, hoping to dispel some of the near-constant torment; I’d placed it in an envelope; I’d addressed the envelope to his parents’ house in Michigan and I carried it with me every day, folded in my front pocket. Writing the letter hadn’t helped dispel anything, but it had given me something to hold, to touch when I felt like I couldn’t breathe in those early days.

  The ache I experienced now—over two years later—was a huge improvement. I hoped soon it would be a mere small twinge. Yet, I still carried the letter in my pocket, every day, though I was unsure why. Habit maybe?

  Despite the nonsensical and lingering physical symptoms and resultant mental quirks, I didn’t regret my decision to help my sister. How could I? She’d kept her word, I’d kept mine, we were so much closer than before, and she was flourishing. Even Gabby and I were friendly more often than at odds. Her latest birthday card to me sat on a bookshelf at my right, proudly inscribed, Donuts before bronuts. Love you forever, Gabster.

  Work, my research was good. Great even.

  Things with my sister were good. Great even.

  I had good friends. Great even.

  However . . . however.

  Taking a deep breath, working to disperse the ache and the image of Abram, I brought Poe back into focus. His smile had turned wry and he shook his head, a faint movement. We never spoke about it, about how I wasn’t over a guy who I’d known for a blink of an eye, but I was almost certain my friend knew what—or who—I’d been remembering just now.

  Poe, his smile slowly giving way to a thoughtful frown, reached forward and picked up the snow globe on my desk, shaking it. “Don’t worry, I covered for you at the reception. I told everyone you had a flight and couldn’t stay.”

  I knew he’d cover for me. We always covered for each other, which was why I’d left the reception. When I returned from my memorable one-week trip to Chicago, Poe Payton had been the shoulder I’d cried on the one night I’d allowed myself to cry.

  It happened two weeks before the fall semester. I’d been nineteen and drunk at a grad school mixer. He’d told everyone I was on flu meds. I’d bawled in his car, telling him the entire story on the drive back to my condo between self-recriminating sobs and rants. He stayed over, spending the night on the couch. He also made me breakfast in the morning, told me a story about his oldest sister’s disastrous love life that made me feel better about mine, and then we went for a silent, oddly cathartic walk on the beach.

  I shoved the ghost of Abram from my brain and allowed myself to be distracted by the floating bits of white swirling around the snow globe Poe had just given another shake.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go with us? To the cabin?” I asked, hoping he would change his mind. “It’s not too late to get you a ticket.”

  “Nah,” he said, bringing my attention back to his face. “Who wants to spend a week surrounded by snow, skiing in Aspen when one could be here, surrounded by ocean and sunshine, surfing in Southern California?”

  I made a face. He’d tried to give me a surfing lesson once and it hadn’t gone well.

  “You know I don’t ski. Or surf,” I added quickly, just in case he offered to teach me again. “And the allure of being surrounded by snow has more to do with the beverages and hermit life than the activities.”

  “The beverages?”

  I began ticking off my fingers. “Hot cider. Hot chocolate. Hot, mulled wine. Hot—”

  “I get it. You like it hot.”

  “Yes. But only in the snow.” I didn’t mention that the other main attraction was the snow itself.

  Hushed, gently falling snow was the closest I would get to the quiet of space without visiting a sensory deprivation chamber. I’d tried that once and had something like a panic attack after two minutes. The walls had been too close, claustrophobic. It had felt oppressive, suffocating.

  But I’d grown a bit preoccupied with the concept of complete silence, a recent occurrence after testifying before Congress on climate change last summer. There’d been subsequent interviews on cable news outlets during the fall and everyone had been so loud. Why did reporters shout on TV? Didn’t they know viewers could turn the volume up if needed?

  Stressful.

  Summary: The quiet isolation of the mountains, cut off from the world by distance and snow, felt like the only place I could draw a complete breath these days. Whenever I had free time, I went to Aspen.

  “So noted.” Poe reached forward again, arranging the snow globe on the desk so that the front of the little model cabin within faced me. “Does the cabin actually look like this?”

  “Not exactly.” My attention flickered to the rustic little log structure encased in water and glass, a memento I’d picked up on my previous return trip from Aspen. “And I don’t think ‘cabin’ is really the right word for it. It’s more like a—”

  “Mansion?” he asked dryly, making me smile.

  “Uh, lodge?”

  “A mansion lodge?” His voice was still dry, likely because he knew he was right. All of my parents’ properties were mansion-like.

  But I didn’t like to admit it, not even to myself. I suggested instead, “A small estate.”

  “A huge estate compound mansion lodge? Something like that?”

  I laughed. “It’s not like that.”

  It was totally like that.

  “Really? How many bedrooms does it have?”

  �
��Um . . .” I moved my eyes up and to the right, counting silently. “Twenty?”

  He made a choking sound and I looked at him just as he’d placed his hand flat on his sternum, like the number upset his delicate sensibilities. “Twenty?”

  His expression was priceless. I laughed again.

  “You could sleep in a different room every night, and still not sleep in them all.”

  My cellphone, face down on the desk, started to buzz. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you live your life like the princess in that story, where the bed is never right.”

  “You mean Goldilocks? She wasn’t a princess. And I don’t like cereal, not even oatmeal.” Glancing at the phone, I saw it was Allyn.

  “No. The other story, the one with the pea.” He sounded oddly stern.

  I swiped my thumb across the screen, whispering just before I brought the phone to my ear. “Don’t be ludicrous.”

  He quickly whispered back, “Ludicrous is awesome, everyone wants to be him.”

  I gave Poe a glare that was ruined by a traitorous smile, and suffused my voice with friendliness as I answered the phone. “Allyn! Hey! Are you all packed? Is there a problem with the itinerary?”

  “No, everything is great! I’m just calling to let you know I’m on my way to the airport and I’m SO EXCITED!” She yelled this last part necessitating that I hold the phone away from my ear.

  Poe chuckled, shaking his head at Allyn’s exuberance. They’d met a few times and got along wonderfully, almost better than she and I did.

  His gaze was warm as it settled on the cell in my hand. It was also full of mischief. “Tell Allyn I say hi,” he whispered loudly, clearly hoping she would hear him.

  “Wait. Is that Poe?” Allyn asked. “Did you convince him to come?”

  He shook his head, but he smiled. “I’m not going.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Allyn, not returning his grin. “He said he’s not going because he doesn’t like all-expense paid trips to Aspen.”