You, Again(75)

Maybe she should say these things with clothes on. Yes, clothes first, then excuses, then exit.

She’s about to tiptoe into the living area to track down her dress, when a ringtone shatters the silence.

“Call from…Dust. Daddy.”

Ari grabs her phone out of the bag and swipes away the notifications she’s racked up. The battery is at two percent. She clears her throat.

“Twenty-four hour Erectile Dysfunction Hotline, how may I direct your call?”

There’s a quiet moment in which Ari can hear the trace of a resigned sigh.

“I’d like to file a complaint about one of your service providers.”

“Oh,” she says, quickly transitioning into a singsongy customer service voice. “I’m sorry to hear that. What’s the nature of the problem? Failure to deliver a blow job?”

“I’d describe it as a failure to communicate. Sometimes she even uses humor to fend off serious conversations.”

Ari gasps. “I see. There must be some malfunction in our training program.”

“Clearly.” There’s a long silence. “Are you planning to come back to the bedroom?”

“No,” she admits.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen if you come back?”

Ari searches her potential-sex bag for her toothbrush. “Spooning.”

“You can be the big spoon,” he offers. “It could just be sleeping.”

“It really couldn’t, though.” The wood floor creaks beneath her feet as she pads back to the bathroom. “I don’t do this—”

“This is different,” he insists.

Except, it’s not different at all. Every relationship starts this way. And most of them end in tears and half-empty bookshelves.

“You said some really intense things.” She squeezes some of Josh’s toothpaste (Colgate Total—she’d expected something more exotic) onto her toothbrush.

“I was ‘intense’?” he replies. “You invented a new dialect. For all I know, you proposed marriage.”

“Yeah, because I can’t wait to jump back into one of those again.” She brushes vigorously and spits. She’s never been more passionate about dental care.

What the hell does she do with her toothbrush? Just set it in the little stand, mingling with Josh’s Oral-B 7000?

Ari snoops around the artfully distressed metal basket attached to the side of the tub, which contains a lot of “product.”

“You use Russian leather scented body wash?”

“Ari.”

She pops open a bottle of Aesop “Calming Shampoo” and inhales a whiff, hoping for some immediate effect.

Nothing.

What the hell does someone with such ridiculous taste in grooming products know about the reality of relationships?

Ari stares at her reflection. She has a terrible case of raccoon eyes and a burgeoning hickey where her neck meets her shoulder. “I haven’t had missionary sex with a man—like, vanilla, face-to-face, whatever—in a really long time.”

“What? What about the couples?”

“They usually want to do that with each other. It’s too—”

“Intimate?” Josh suggests.

“—awkward.” She makes a face. “All that eye contact.”

“You know,” he says, “Zeus ordered Apollo to rearrange the entire human body so people could have sex face-to-face. When they found their missing half, it healed their existential wounds.”

“So, that’s why I’m such a disaster.” She turns away from the mirror. “I’ve been bleeding from my existential wound this entire time.”

“We should definitely spiral about it in separate rooms for twelve hours,” he says, probably lowering his memory foam pillow over his air passages.

“Works for me.”

Her phone goes dead.

Ari shuts off the bathroom light. Pushing against all her deepest impulses, she peeks into the bedroom, hiding her body behind the doorframe. “I’m scared, okay? We could really, really hurt each other.”

“Do you think I don’t know what it’s like to be hurt?” Josh sits up on his elbow. “You’re the only good thing in my life.”

Ari stares at him, holding her breath. She could raise serious objections to that statement. There’s a construction worker in a neon vest waving a slow down sign in front of that statement.

“Let’s just…watch a movie or something. Please.”

She shifts her weight. “You know I don’t watch movies naked.”

“I know.” He tosses a soft white ball at her. “Put these on then.” She looks down at a neatly rolled up pair of socks.

Ari sits on the edge of the bed and pulls the enormous socks on; they’re more luxurious than some of her shoes.

“I don’t do this,” she says again, gesturing at the bed. “I told you this the first time we met. I don’t sleep over.” And I’m scared shitless of this entire thing, so I’ll be going and probably not contacting you for three weeks.

“So we won’t go back to sleep.” Josh peels back the covers so she can slide in next to him. These sheets must have a thread-count in the thousands. It’s like staying in a very nice, austere hotel. There’s an awkward silence hanging like a cloud over the room. Or perhaps that’s a fancy Japanese diffuser.