Before she knows it, she’s confessing other things: I’m actually not very good at anything in particular. I’m not really very smart. People don’t know it right away, but eventually they sort it out. Sometimes I think: No wait I’m lying, all the time I think: Everyone else is right about me. I am the common factor, aren’t I? So that must mean everyone else is right.
He doesn’t say anything at first, strokes her cheek the way he does when he’s thinking about whatever it is he’s thinking about （she doesn’t expect to understand it, time or anything, nor does she want to; really, she’s fine with mysteries） but then he says again: Why did you do it?
He means, Why did you, a person with plenty of money and talent and by all accounts a promising future, decide to throw that away for a crime?
Her psychiatrist, the doctor, says it’s because she wanted to fail. Because she was self-sabotaging.
Fine, that’s a theory, but he didn’t ask what her psychiatrist thought.
Well, who says she even knows herself? If she’d known she would eventually get caught, wouldn’t she simply not have done it?
He thinks that’s an excellent question.
Well, she’s glad he thinks so.
He means she should answer the question, or try to.
She thinks he’s commandeered secret time.
He has, but he’s fine with it.
She wants him to kiss her. （She places his hand between her thighs.）
He’s not letting her get away with that.
Well fine, maybe she’ll just leave then, she has her own apartment, she hardly needs to sleep here, and besides, maybe he’s being nosy.
Maybe he is but she started it, and she can leave any time if she wants to, so long as she comes back.
Fine, but only because he said that last bit. She’s tired of people telling her she’s free to leave, she hates it.
He doesn’t want her to leave at all but there’s a whole thing in the rulebook about letting people have agency. ‘If it’s meant to be’ and all that.
She thinks that’s bullshit, can’t people just hold on?
He agrees.
Okay fine, she doesn’t really know why exactly, but she thinks part of it was about taking hold of a sinking ship and steering it somewhere, anywhere. Even the prospect of a crash was better than floating aimlessly.
Why was her ship sinking?
She was just being needlessly metaphorical, it’s a habit of hers.
He notes it, asks again: Why was her ship sinking?
Her ship? It’s always sinking, she hates it, it’s either sinking or it’s exploding, either way it never seems to be going anywhere.
He doesn’t think that’s true.
Well, he doesn’t really know her that well, does he? He’s only had x amount of conversations with her and fucked her y times.
No no, he wants to be very clear: that’s not how math works.
God, he’s doing this now?
He’s very interested in accuracy, he sits up to graph it for her: x is how long you know a person, y is how well. Maybe he has only known her for x, but look at all this exponential growth in y. Look how steep this curve is, does she see what he means?
Yes, grudgingly she sees it. What’s his point?
He doesn’t have a point, he just wanted to tell her.
She thinks he’s incredibly weird.
He knows. Is she okay with it?
Okay with it? Fuck, he has no idea.
He reminds her they haven’t talked about how she’s doing, what with her pills and all that.
She doesn’t want to take them anymore. She doesn’t like what they do to her, how lost they make her feel. Maybe that’s the big secret, that even though she hates her feelings, she’d still rather have them than not. Maybe the enormity of it all is that she hates the highs and the lows and she knows they’re Bad, that they’re Not Supposed To Happen, but she is not herself without them. She misses herself. She doesn’t really know who she is but she wants to know, she wants to find out, and she can’t do it with pills. She understands that might be hard for him.
Why does it matter what’s hard for him? He has nothing to do with it.
Of course he does, he has to, because he’s signing up to share her brain-space, her thought-space. Like it or not, the fight they just had? It’s going to happen again, and he’s going to get sick of her and then she’s going to get sick of her but she’d rather get sick of all of her than get sick of the half-her the pills make her feel.
Of course he signed up for it.
What?
Of course he signed up for it, it’s what he wants. Why should someone else get her highs and lows? He wants them all, selfishly, possessively. He wants to have them, he doesn’t have any highs or lows himself, he’s been … stuck.