“Mary Kay, look at me.”
You look at me. “I am a steel fucking trap. You have my word.”
You calm down a little, but you’re still flinching, looking over your shoulder, a paranoid inmate on Crucible Island. You don’t let me talk. You say that last night was a drunken mistake—no—and you weren’t thinking clearly—yes you fucking were—and I tell you that you were perfect and you shudder. “I am anything but perfect.”
My words are coming out all wrong and I know you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect, but it would be too cheesy and needy to tell you that we are perfect together.
You purse your lips, those lips that are puffy from my kiss. Me. “Can we just go back to normal? You know… how we were?”
I bob my head like a trained seal that couldn’t make it in the wild. “Absolutely,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting to rush into anything with you. We can take it slow. I want to take it slow.”
It’s a big fat lie and you cluck. “That’s the thing, Joe. There is no ‘it.’ There can’t be an ‘it.’ I have a daughter.”
“I know.”
“I can’t be getting home drunk after midnight. She has to come first.”
“Of course Nomi comes first. I know that.”
You hide your face behind your hands and tell me that you’re not emotionally available right now and I want to take a sledgehammer to the chip in the windshield and smash the glass because you’re making our kiss about your daughter. You pull your hands away. “It’s her senior year, Joe, and I don’t want to miss any part of it…” Then don’t spend two nights a week at a fucking wine bar with Melanda. “She needs me. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.” You raised an independent daughter who likes to read and so what if she’s not a minisocialite the way you were? Neither was I at that age. “To you she’s halfway out the door, all grown-up… But time flies and it’s almost Thanksgiving and in a few months, she’ll be away. And I just can’t make any big changes when change is already coming.” Ha! As if life is ever that predictable and you should let me in now, right now, so that I’m carving your turkey next week and you are wrong, so wrong and you sigh. “Do you get it?”
“Of course I get it, Mary Kay. You’re right, there’s no rush. We can put this on hold.”
You smile. “What a relief. Thank you, Joe.”
You win because you built the boxing ring—Me vs. Nomi—and I can’t hit above the belt, in the womb. That said, you came to see me and you wouldn’t be justifying yourself to me if you didn’t care about me, if you didn’t want me eating your mashed potatoes and your Murakami. Yeah, there was something off about your little speech, Mary Kay, because deep down, you know you belong with me now, right now.
Our chairs squeak when we stand and you hang your head. “Do you hate me?”
You’re better than that. You don’t ask stupid questions. But I give you the stupid answer you deserve right now. “Of course I don’t hate you. Come on. You know that.”
Then you bite your lip and say the worst word in the English language. “Friends?”
You cannot shove me onto a tufted sofa with Seamus and Melanda and we’re not friends, Mary Kay. You want to fuck me. But I shake your hand and repeat your hollow sitcom of a word that does not apply to us. “Friends.”
6
I go outside. I walk and I walk and my pinky toes burn—these sneakers are for show, not for this—and I walk away from your house and I want to walk into your house and I really did fuck up last night, today. I should have torn off your chastity tights. I should have brought you home or I should have gone home with you and there is no going back and I am the man. Bainbridge is safe, but did I text you to make sure you got home okay?
Nope.
You’d been drinking and did I insist on being your escort?
Nope.
I walk into Blackbird and the whole fecal-eyed family is in here—even the grandfather—and this island is too fucking small and there are so many of them and there is only one of me and I get a coffee and sit outside on a bench.
I go on Instagram. Bad Joe. Bad. Night is falling and Nomi posted a picture of you on your sofa and you are asleep in your clothes.
When mom is “sick.” #Hangover.
I wish I could like this picture, I wish I could love this picture but I don’t feel the love right now. My toes are on fire, my whole body is on fire but you’re out cold, dead to me, to the world. I take a screenshot of the photo and examine every corner, every centimeter. I’m not invading your privacy, Mary Kay. We all post our photos knowing that our followers will zoom in to grade us. I zoom in. My heart beats.
The fecal-eyed family barges onto the street and none of them say hello—FUCK YOU, FAMILY—and I look down at my phone and what the hell, Mary Kay? There’s a bottle of beer on the end table that makes my blistered toes pound. You don’t drink beer, you don’t like the taste and you don’t let Nomi drink beer and the bottle is open, half empty. Whose is it, Mary Kay? Who the fuck is drinking beer in your house? I send a text to Shortus.
Hey Seamus! That gym kicked my ass today. Beer?
I wait and I walk. My toes are never going to speak to me again.
No can do, New Guy. Doing a ten day dry out. Remember: That voice in your head that says you can’t do it is a liar.
Ugh. I hate gym culture and the beer isn’t his, but whose is it? I reach the beginning of your street and your house is close but if I walk down that street and look in your window… I can’t. I promised I would be good and being good means believing in you, in us, and hey, it’s just one beer. You did look bad today. I don’t know everything about you and it’s possible that you drink a half a beer to take the edge off when you’re hungover and I go home and watch more Succession and you don’t call, you don’t text and Shortus hits me up to tell me that we can get a beer next week maybe and phones have made it so easy to be friends without ever having to see your friends and that’s one good thing about today. One.
* * *
I did it. I survived the longest most mind-fuckiest day of the year and my mind is clear again. I’m calm. I’m not gonna let one stupid bottle of beer get in our way. All that matters is the kiss, Mary Kay. You broke a rule for me. You swore that you would never get involved with some guy while your daughter lives at home and you did.
And you know what? I need to bend a rule too.
This is a scenic island and I’ve barely done any exploring—I will not go to Fort Fucking Ward without you—and okay, yeah. I went on a couple of nature walks in the Grand Forest when I first moved here, but I was too raw to really breathe any of it in.
I tie the laces on my running shoes—my toes won’t hate me today—and I zip up my hoodie and I put on my headphones—Hello, Sam Cooke—and I lock up the house and do what all the well-rounded motherfucking men around here do every day, some of them twice a day: run.
I could run on one of the beaches but the coast is rocky and mottled by McMansions. I could run on the sidewalks but why should I waste my time on pavement when I can run in the woods? I didn’t design the island, Mary Kay. And it’s not my fault that your house is in a development. It’s not my fault that you chose to live in a waterfront home where the only thing that separates your backyard from the sea is a two-foot-wide trail that is open to the public.