You (You #1)(94)

“Phew,” he says.

“It’s only gonna get better.”

He goes to help a customer and the what-ifs crawl into my ear, right out of Shell Silverstein in Poetry. I text you:

Hi

And I tremble and sweat. What if Ethan is right? What if you don’t write back? What if you don’t miss me anymore? But you text me immediately:

I love you.

I could fall off the ladder and crack open my skull and it wouldn’t matter. Like Elliot says in Hannah, “I have my answer.”

My answer is you.





43


IT’S a good thing that I took a screenshot of your I love you text. Something changes after that night and it’s like I’m standing so close to a pointillism painting that I only see the dots, not the picture. You are still my girlfriend—you are. But . . .

You don’t e-mail me back right away, which would be fine if you weren’t making excuses:

Sorry, I was in class.

Sorry, I was on the phone with Chana. . . .

Sorry, do you hate me?

I try every kind of response:

No worries, B. Did you want to get dinner?

No sorries allowed. Unless, of course you’re not wearing your robe . . .

Hate you? B. I love you.

But no response is the right response because as soon as I hit SEND, the wait begins again. My thoughts turn dark and my mind wanders into Nicky’s beige den of rock ’n’ roll and lust. But you’re not seeing him. Were that the case, you’d tell someone or write to him and you don’t. I still have your old phone and I still check your e-mail and your Facebook. You love me. And one of these days, I’ll find a way to get you to admit that your mother still foots the bill for a phone you lost months ago. We’re getting there. But I love you so much that I can’t willfully close down my portal to your communications. When I worry that you’re drifting—and I do worry—I hold your phone and will you back. It sounds crazy, but I think it works. We need all the help we can get right now. Relationships get like this; I know that. But I’m allowed to be frustrated. Your word is sorry and my word is no and what happened to the time when our word was everythingship? Ethan says not to worry.

“She’s nuts about you, Joe! Blythe says she’s practically writing pornos in class, you know.”

Only Ethan would call it porno and Ethan doesn’t have to wonder where he’s eating dinner or when; Blythe is in it with him and since when did that relationship seem stronger than our everythingship?

My toothbrush is dry. You’re not using it anymore and I can pinpoint the moment you stopped. When I want to watch Pitch Perfect you are tired or you just watched part of it on the train. When I want to go out for pizza you had pizza for lunch—once upon a time, I knew your lunch at lunchtime—and when I want to have sex you want to wait just a little while longer.

“Just let me finish writing this paragraph. I am so late. So bad, I know.”

“Just give me a few minutes. I ate falafel and I think it was not a good idea.”

“Just wait a little while. I put our robes in the washer at the Laundromat and I should go back sooner rather than later.”

I bring you A River Runs Through It and The Things They Carried because you never knew that both books have more than the title stories. I write inscriptions in each and I don’t tell you. Four days go by and both books are still on the counter. There are no loving chocolate smudges, no highlighted paragraphs, no pages marked. You don’t love them, you don’t know them and at times I feel like an intruder.

Me: I was just looking at that picture of that place on your thigh.

You: Ack, hang on. Bad signal.

Me: Do your thing. I’ll catch you later.

And then you don’t write back to me and I slowly descend into insanity because

What

The

Fuck?

You’re not talking smack about me to Lynn and Chana. You’re not cheating on me; you’d never be able to pull that off with my access to your e-mail. I know. I know that you don’t have a lot of work at school and setting Ethan up with Blythe really was a bad idea because he comes into work telling me about the fun they had last night at the golfing range—I shit you not—and I can’t even get a response from you when I write to discuss the odd coupling of Ethan and Blythe.

It hurts, Beck. I don’t know what to do with your absence. You’re not mad at me. I know you well enough to know when your tail starts pounding the floor, and you’re not happy at me, either. I ask you if you want to get into our robes and you kiss me and tell me we’re beyond robes. You wrap yourself in me and hold on to me but what does that mean exactly?

Beyond robes.

We still have an everythingship because you still do things. I wake up with my dick in your mouth at least once a week. You still let me know when I’m on your mind for no reason:

Solipsistic (n) thinking of you and your hot bod

And you rave about me when you write to your mother:

This is different, Mom. He’s on my level. And yet he shouldn’t be technically because our lives are so different. But when it works . . . it works. You know?

Your mother can’t wait to meet me and I close my eyes and see us in Nantucket, in love. I even ask you about it one night when you’re laid up with cramps.

“So you think this summer we’ll hang out in Nantucket?”