Heart the Lover (20)

Then he tells us about the landlord’s daughter, the ferryman’s sister, and a pretty French girl on the flight home who told him in a sexy accent if they didn’t hold hands during takeoff the plane would crash. ‘Best come-on line ever. I’m using that one.’ But once they were safely in the air she let go and refused to speak to him for the rest of the flight.

He is amused that everything he says delights us. ‘Whatever you guys are on, I want some.’ he says, which only makes us laugh harder.

‘Sam should be getting back soon, right?’ Ivan says to me.

‘No idea.’

‘He hasn’t been in touch?’

‘We broke up before he left.’

‘Heard that before.’

‘Definitively this time. Very mutual. Fini.’

Yash presses his leg against mine.

‘?a suffit?’ I say.

‘Yup, we got it, Hink,’ he says and we freeze.

‘Hink? You two have gotten super weird,’ Ivan says.



The next night Yash goes out with him alone while I’m working. He comes back later than me and flops on the bed. ‘The guy has no clue. Picked up on exactly nothing. This might be easier than I thought.’

‘To hide it forever?’

‘Not forever. I just want Sam to hear it from me first.’

The week before classes start, he moves into his room on MacDougal Street. It’s bigger than mine, the bathroom is cleaner, and there is AC. It’s like going to a hotel. I stay there many nights in a row.

One morning, early, the phone in the kitchen rings. One of his housemates knocks on the door. We’ve been messing around. ‘Please don’t move,’ Yash says.

He comes back so grave I think his father has died. ‘Sam is coming for the weekend.’

We leave no trace of me in his room. He borrows a mattress and I help put the sheets on it. We sleep separately that night. Sam is coming early the next day.

I work lunch at High Five and an evening shift at Bubble Time. I jump every time the phone rings, hoping for an update. He was planning to tell him straight off, get it over with. By nine I’ve heard nothing. Claudette wants me to go out, but I can’t risk running into them. I go home. Yash is in my room, sitting stiffly on the bed.

He looks at me and shakes his head.



‘What happened?’

‘He got here and I showed him my place. We went out for lunch. I knew you were at High Five so I took him the long way around. It was bad. Even before I said anything it was bad. I kept feeling like he knew. But at lunch he talked all about some girl he’d met in Berlin, and then about you and how the breakup had been for the best. And I’m thinking, this is going to be fine.’ He laughs. ‘I’ll just tell him and it will be okay. But I can’t seem to do it. We go over to see Cole and have some beers with him and that guy Lonnie from Pike, and they’re both surprised I’ve been in town all summer and haven’t come by or been out at the bars and as we’re walking out of there Sam asks me if I’m seeing anyone. And then I’m sure he knows. Maybe Ivan did say something? Shit, I don’t know, but I say it.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said I’m thinking of taking Jordan out.’

‘Thinking of taking me out?’

He drops his face into his hands. ‘It’s all I had the courage for. And he flipped on me. Said I could never ever do that, that it would be reprehensible, unforgivable. He told me to swear to him that I would never do that. And I could not. I have no idea where he is now.’

‘Maybe he went home to Atlanta.’

‘No. He’s here. He’s not through with me.’

‘You’re going to have to tell him the truth.’



‘I know.’

I walk him downstairs. Hug him at the door. Watch him move slowly up the hill to MacDougal Street.

I have the house to myself. Everyone else is out. I knew Sam would react that way. Yash will lose him if he chooses me. I will lose Yash if he chooses Sam.

I’m in the bathroom when I hear knocking at the front door.

‘Jordan,’ he calls.

He must have followed Yash here. Fuck. I move slowly to my bedroom. The light is on, the window open. I sit on the floor so he can’t see me. The knocking continues. The door is unlocked. He doesn’t come in. I hear steps going back down the front porch.

‘Jordan.’

He must be standing directly below my window.

‘I just want to talk to you.’

A long time later he walks away.

I don’t hear from Yash for the rest of the weekend. On Sunday evening he comes into Bubble Time with his laundry. After he gets a load going, we sit together on the patio. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small figurine made of blue glass. He gives it to me. It’s a dolphin, back arched, about to surface for a leap.

‘It reminded me of you.’

‘I didn’t take you for a tchotchke giver.’



‘It’s an aberration.’

‘That bad?’

He nods. ‘I told him. That it had already started. With us. It was bad. He was so angry. I get it.’

‘You get it? When exactly does his owner’s warrantee on me run out?’

He bends his head over so far I can’t see his face. ‘I don’t know how to do this.’