“It was a dream,” she said, though she was describing my nightmare. “He’s an amazing singer and great with the kids . . . such a Pisces.”
I congratulated her on the promotion and the new man and admitted I didn’t think astrology was real.
“Probably not,” she said, examining the jeweled holly on her index fingernail. “But someone’s relationship to the idea of their sign is still interesting information to have. Plus, I blame anything bad I do on being a Cancer.”
I asked what traits made up a Gemini. She told me they were “the real psychos of the zodiac.” Amy said you could tell a man had been in a heavy-duty relationship if he knew what house his Venus was in.
Later that night I went to Simon’s, to drink cider and show off my sparkly new nails. We had been seeing each other often, grabbing coffee between my classes, eating for free at restaurants Simon was reviewing, texting each other where u at last call. Initially I’d worried he might be a bookish-presenting himbo, because of his face and hair and tidy little outfits, but he was smart and funny and didn’t even go on about “sous vide” despite being a bona fide Food Guy.
He was surprising, too. One morning, hungover and wearing sunglasses at brunch, I noticed him staring at me intently. I examined my scrambled eggs and flagged the server down for ketchup. She brought some, and I dumped a pile of it on the edge of my plate. When I looked back at Simon, he was still staring, a small, moony smile on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t not do this.”
He reached across the table and grabbed the glasses off my face. I steeled myself for whatever romantic bullshit he was about to pull, complimenting my eyes or telling me he wanted to be able to look—really look—at me, when he pulled a small square of white cloth from his pocket and started cleaning the lenses.
“These are disgusting,” he said, still smiling. “You’re an animal.” He blew on them and gave the bridge a final wipe before settling them back on my nose.
“You carry a shammy around with you?” I asked. “All the time?”
Simon smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
This slightly fussy thoughtfulness turned out to be his calling card. He once figured out I had used his cologne because I’d returned it to the shelf with its label turned inward. When he called me out on this, he gave me a small sampler bottle to keep in my purse.
“Relax,” he said, when I started stammering that I didn’t think we were at a gift-giving stage. “I got it for free when I bought my face wash.”
These incidents in mind, I took my shoes off in the hall when I got to his place. I walked in on socked feet and found him steam-cleaning his couch cushions, intently focused.
“What’s your star sign?” I asked. “Or like, what are all your star signs? Rising and stuff.”
Simon paused, steamer in hand. “I’d have to call my mom for my exact birth time,” he said. “But I’m fairly certain I have a lot of Virgo placements.”
We had sex and watched old episodes of The Simpsons, and he prepared a very simple meal with an almost impossible amount of concentration, like he was worried that if he looked the wrong way, the pre-made gourmet ravioli would take its moment to fall spectacularly and purposefully apart. He protested so long about me doing the dishes that it threatened to turn into our first major argument, then eventually relented and settled for hovering behind me with his hands on my hips while I cleaned two plates and a large pot with a strainer attachment.
“You smell good,” said Simon, nuzzling my neck.
I told him it was the funk of my hopes and dreams rotting inside my body （one of my lackluster essays had been rejected by a third academic journal that week）。
“Christ,” he said, pulling his arms away.
I turned around, bubbles on my hands: “What is this . . . what’s happening right now?”
“I wish I could say one sincere thing without you turning it into a joke,” he said. “Take the compliment, man.”
“Man? Okay, dude.”
“That’s exactly the deflective stuff I’m talking about,” he said. “Just let me be nice to you.”
I rolled my eyes. Over the past few weeks, Simon had been lecturing me with increasing frequency about my alleged “aversion to kindness.” He cocked his head with a pensive expression, and I could see that we were in danger of repeating the waterfall situation.
To sum up: Simon had a car. When he first told me this, I’d said, “Of course you do,” and he’d looked at me quizzically and I had not elaborated. It was an old, beat-up Volkswagen Golf in a subdued dark green, with scratchy carpeted seats and gummy cupholders. Occasionally he would pick me up and take me on a kind of drive-through buffet, hitting up Tim Hortons for a breakfast sandwich, McDonald’s for hash browns and coffee, and Wendy’s for a shake to dump our coffees into, something 6Bites had recently termed a “dirtbag affogato.”
Last week he had driven us to Elora, to look at a waterfall. It being winter, there was no swimming or anything, so we admired the partially frozen natural attraction for about thirty minutes, then climbed back in the car to drive home. On the way we scanned for local radio stations, listening to Moose FM and Canoe 100.9 as they pumped out easy listening songs I remembered from family road trips past. I hadn’t realized I was singing along until Simon chuckled quietly to himself. I stopped immediately, eyeing him with suspicion.
“What?”
“You’re always, like, four beats ahead of the lyrics,” Simon said, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. “It’s cute. Like you’re rushing to get to the part you’re most excited to sing.”
He laughed and I felt sick to my stomach.
“I don’t do that,” I snapped. I turned off the radio and we drove without speaking for a few minutes, both of us focusing too hard on the passing landscape. I knew I was being an asshole and wished I wasn’t. I couldn’t help myself when he got like this, all observant and dopey. I didn’t want him looking at me. I barely wanted me looking at me.
Simon sighed. “Do you like this, what we’re doing?” he asked, sounding a bit annoyed. “Because I do, and I thought you did. You’re always texting me, and calling me, and asking me to hang out, and I don’t know how else to read that.”
I muttered that I was enjoying it—obviously I was—but it was complicated. Simon asked if I wanted to talk about it. I turned the radio back on and rushed weakly into the bridge of a song about loving the nightlife, needing to boogie, etc.
Now in his kitchen I felt the same creeping discomfort, an outbreak of hives on the inside of my body. I wanted to tell him he was being a loser. I wanted to yell NO! I wanted him to understand that it was very stressful to experience this kind of thoughtful attention, knowing as I did how it could gnarl and twist into something unrecognizable, or disappear altogether. I wanted to tell him I had once woken up in his bed and thought in the dark that he was someone else, someone who had noticed all kinds of lovely things about me, and who more recently had said that being with me felt like drowning in another person’s need. On further reflection, I did not really want to tell him about that.