The cursor blinked at her for what felt like an hour as she stared. Did he know how painful it was to speak to him? Slowly, her body telegraphed an awareness to her brain about the tenseness of her hand, the cold that crept into her fingers as she held her phone out, fingers ungloved all just so she could share an old joke. The reasoning was two-fold and not humble, but she knew she’d convince herself it was. She felt alone in the car and afraid to get out and go inside; it was warm in there and she could see her beige cat glaring at her on the other side of the sliding glass door, but going inside also meant the day was over and she would spend the next few hours trying to decide what part of the house to re-organize, what nearly expired food she would eat out of the fridge, and then, in approximately forty-five minutes time, she would climb into her unmade bed with her clothes on and peer into the world from the portal of her laptop. She’d find something mundane to obsess about for the next few hours, most likely fall into a rabbit hole of pointless research about how toothpaste is made or the details of a long-severed relationship between Hollywood celebrities from the 90’s, and then the panic over her wasted time would set in and she’d find a few encouraging quotes about being inspired and making yourself happy right here, right now— finally, she’d catch sight of her long face in the mirror on her dresser, turn the light off, brush her teeth if she remembered them, and roll the heavy covers over her shoulders, but not without reaching out to touch the small stack of large books on her nightstand. “I’ll get a fourth of the way through with one of you tomorrow, probably,” would be her meaning, and then she’d be done. She knew all of this was waiting for her behind the sliding glass door, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
Her other reason for sending her words out to find him was to prove that she had never lied about anything. This was the opposite of humility, and probably why her thumb only hovered over the threatening “send” button. There had been no words from his Washington coded-number in over a year, which wasn’t fair at all, considering. She tried to remember the feeling of it, now, how her body had physically ached as if it struggled to beat a virus that lined every single one of her bones, a sickness that could only be purged by seeping its way out through her skin. It wasn’t heartsickness in the sense that she had ever been in love; more like a pain caused from having one purpose and that purpose being denied. It was thinking you could do one thing for someone else, and then proving yourself wrong. It had been worse than all of the hangovers and fever-shakes she could imagine— reaching out to catch someone who has flung themselves from above you, and not only failing in the rescue attempt but being snared by their flailing on the way down. All the way down. Still, she sent happy birthday texts. She let him know she was happy to hear from a friend that he had gone to what he used to call “therapy camp.” All messages were emotionally removed, polite, like how you might communicate with an old college room-mate that you follow on social media. She didn’t do this because she missed him, because she didn’t think that was true anymore, she did this because she was well-aware that his security blanket was the reverse of everyone else’s— that no one cared, that she didn’t care, that by moving on it proved that she had never tried or cared or really really listened in the first place because NO ONE LISTENED. No one asked questions. No one really talked, and he certainly didn’t talk to her anymore, as if she was the one that deserved to be peeled away. Well, she decided, she would show him. Just because they didn’t speak didn’t mean she was about to stop outwardly “caring” because she was a caring person, dammit. She sent Happy New Years messages because if she didn’t he might assure himself that the world was as he had predicted, and that she had never been really bruised by anything that he had done— he was fine, he was right, she was wrong, she must be penned into the running annals of people who proved his point.
But this old memory-sharing thing, this was not something she had even wanted to try in a long time. She couldn’t begin to climb back into the headspace that prompted her to crave his responses, so that wasn’t it. It was just something that popped into her head and she had cowed to the command. Her thumb hit send. She clicked the device off and stretched out her forearm, her grandmother’s uncharacteristically large ring clinking against the steering wheel. She still wasn’t used to wearing it, but she felt like she needed a hobby to keep her connected to someone. Her cat continued to cast withering stares from within the house, had he been in a cartoon he would have pointed at his food bowl, then at himself, then commenced drumming his claws like nails on the tile. As you do.
She jumped at the buzz of the phone, now resting on her discarded scarf. The peculiarity of seeing his name flash across the phone’s display was almost unsettling. For a second she almost tapped into how that used to make her feel— that feeling that maybe someone who got what she was talking about when she explained how much she loved feeling okay enough to clean her kitchen or that she loved the word “plastic” to a strange degree was reaching out to her and maybe that was a good enough excuse to put on shoes that day. Of course, she was better about putting her shoes on now that she lived in a place with cooler weather, she was good about cleaning her kitchen, and she certainly couldn’t remember what it was like to be deeply sad. That was done, and that was good, but there his name was anyway. This was funny, the quick response time. Even way back when, she’d usually catch him when he’d be in one of his self-induced comas (the result of being awake and jacked up on prescribed medications for five to seven days straight), and he’d respond to her around 24 hours later. You never knew when the crashes were coming, but you never knew how wired he was, either, or how many pills he had taken on any given day.
His text asked how she was. The first text in over a year dared ask after her well-being. She laughed. It was his favorite loaded question. “Not great, but pretty good, you?” she responded.
It was four hours later when he followed up, and she was already in bed, reading about the importance of kiln safety in the pottery world (though she had no interest in pottery, the words “kiln” and “ceramic” felt nice rolling around in her mouth). “You should tell me about it if you want. You know how much I like listening to problems.” She laughed. Her eyes, already irritated by the gusts of her unexpectedly strong space heater, felt their dryness washed away. She summoned the energy to click out a response. “That’s ok. I’m good. You?”
-----
She was instantly in his car, that one late spring, a few days after a pounding rain had settled into small lakes in every pothole-infested parking lot. It might have been a little chilly if there had been any wind left in the air, but it was as though the weather was tired, it had already displayed its little fit and could not be bothered to summon anything more. The air was aggravatingly still, like a hand on your shoulder that lingers too long for no reason, and it felt as though it had things still hanging in it, and the sun had checked in but it didn’t seem up to fully committing just yet. The car was uncomfortably warm, probably because its driver rarely ate and therefore the slightest breeze felt to him like an icicle stabbing. She was shifting in her seat, trying to see him better, noticing he was doing that thing where he pressed himself into the door, a warning to his audience that you might see him slip away at any moment, and whatever you said next had better be good because he could lose interest and pull the handle. He was accusing her of being negative. Again.
“Remember what we talked about yesterday? You know there’s no shame in not understanding. I’d rather be around a stupid person than a smart person who’s afraid to admit they’re wrong.” She hoped he wasn’t insinuating that she was stupid, but he probably was. She stuck the tips of her fingers into the weirdly-shaped vents on the dash. “Don’t do that, that’s weird to watch,” he mumbled, lighting his fifth cigarette since they had gotten into the car two hours ago. She jokingly continued to mess with the vent until surrendering. “Either you didn’t understand it or you weren’t listening, which is okay,” He cracked the window only slightly and waved a few smoke fragments away from her face in a display of thoughtfulness. “We can go over it again.” He had said so much the night before, but she guessed he was talking about emotional honesty and saying what you mean, even if you’re afraid that you’re empty or that you might insult the other person, because how could you do that if you were saying what you were really thinking? “No, I think I got it.” “Really? Cause we can talk about it more, if you need to. Or, you know what, no, there’s only so much talking we can do.” He said this all the time, after he had waxed poetic about Radiohead for hours or explained for the 500th time the intricacies of People Who Don’t Understand Themselves—usually, it was before she could say anything on the subject, minus her assurances that he was not alone nor crazy, which he seemed to find worthy of his ears.
“I just hear you slipping into that negativity thing, and we talked about that.”
“Well, you’re pretty negative sometimes.”
“I’m fucking depressed to the point of madness, but I’m never as negative as you are. You know negativity is what boring people do when they can’t think of being open. Being open just solves things, being negative shuts things down. You dig?”
They had talked about this about four times.
“Yep…” Without thinking, she flipped the vent latch a few times. He sighed.
“You don’t always have to be right, you know.”
She wracked her brain to think of something she could say about her feelings or thoughts or being that would make him feel better and stop harping.
“I can’t say I don’t think I’m always right, can I? That’s like walking into a trap.”
His eyes nearly popped out of his head in frustration with her, even though she tried to say it playfully.
“I’m NOT trying to TRAP you. God.”
“Sorry.”
“You can’t fucking make fun of yourself. Okay. Right now. Make fun of yourself. Tell me a hilarious story about how you embarrassed yourself or something. Anything self-deprecating.”
“I can’t think of anything right now.”
“So you don’t have any stories like that?”
“No— I think I’m actually pretty self-deprecating most of the time, actually. Makes people comfortable.”
“So you do it because it can be socially effective.”
“No— not, well—“
“Well, that’s what you just said.”
“Okay.”
“Are you going to tell me one?”
“I can’t think of one.”
“I can think of a MILLION stories myself.”
“I could tell you another story about something that happened at work—“
“I don’t want to hear that.”
He inhaled what was left of his cigarette and let it go. It reminded her of a parent’s irritation passing through exhaustion. Was it that she had no idea what he was really asking for? Or did this sound like an owner demanding tricks from his dog? Can you command someone to be self-deprecating? And there, in the finishing of his cigarette, hid the ultimatum— be what I need you to be, or I won’t light another one and we’ll be done here.
“I’m sorry, that’s all that comes to mind right now.”
“You’re off today.”
“I’m worn out.”
“What’s wearing on you?”
His massive eyes blinked back at her from behind the glasses that changed his entire face when he put them on. Without them, there was an almost pleasant sadness, but with the dark lines around the lenses resting on his nose, he was sharp.
She wanted to say “you are.”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m still turning over our last conversation.”
“Well, what’s left to turn over if you understood it? Either you’re lying about what’s bothering you or you didn’t understand. My god, am I going crazy? Those are the choices, right? That’s logical?”
His voice was getting high-pitched now, but thanks to all the smoking it was a little strained.
“That’s— no, you’re right— I’m sorry. I’m kind of disordered in the way I think, and the black and white way you see things is maybe not how I process sometimes.”
He waved her response away with the rest of the hovering cigarette clouds.
“So what the fuck is bothering you? How are you?”
-----
Finally, her phone buzzed, this time nearly muffled by the plush blanket that she kept beside her just in case her cat decided to settle in. His text disregarded her inquiries and instead responded with “What’s bothering you?”
She attached her phone to its charger on the floor, looked at her face in the mirror that squinted back at her from across the room, switched off the light, brushed her teeth in the dark, touched her small pile of large books as she made silent promises to them, and slid into the bed that remained pleasantly warm thanks to the space heater by her feet.
Her phone buzzed a few more times, but she didn’t hear it.
