Don't You Cry(69)

But there’s also a part of me that wants to run.





Quinn

In the morning, we dance the two-step in my tiny apartment kitchen, going this way and that, for coffee and mugs. We step on each other’s toes. We both giggle and blush and say, Excuse me, at the very same time, and again we laugh. I pour his coffee; he retrieves the sugar from the canister on the counter. It’s as if we’ve done this a thousand times before.

Poor Priya, is what I should be thinking, but instead: Yay me!

We didn’t sleep together. Not in the way that is often intended by those two words. But we did sleep together. And by that I mean two bodies sound asleep in nearly the same space, me on my bed, he on my bed, head to toe, toe to head. There may or may not have been a kiss. But that’s hard to remember, thanks to the wine.

And now, in daylight, standing in the kitchen, I ask, “Do you want cereal for breakfast?” opening the refrigerator and then a cabinet door. There’s not much to be seen: Esther’s Frosted Flakes, some instant oatmeal, a gallon of milk that may or may not have expired.

“No,” Ben says. “I’m not a breakfast person,” and so he sticks with the coffee as I pour myself a bowl of Esther’s Frosted Flakes and eat them dry just to be on the safe side. Certainly Esther wouldn’t poison her own Frosted Flakes.

Or would she?

I take a bite and spit it out posthaste, deciding maybe I’m not such a breakfast person after all, either.

“I should go,” Ben says then, speaking in one-word sentences. “Shower,” he says, and, “Work.”

And that’s where things get awkward.

Most men who spend the night with me end up disappearing before the rise of day, usually at my request. I know how the story goes. They say they’ll call, but they never call. I sit around waiting for the phone to ring, feeling sorry for myself when it doesn’t, and then angry with myself for getting my hopes up. For even thinking that they’ll call. I should know better.

These days I’m the first to say goodbye, and so at daybreak, before the sun has a chance to accentuate his latest mistake, I tell my dates to leave. It’s far easier to be the one in the managerial position telling some man to go, rather than the one who gets left behind.

My roommate, I hear myself say, is awake. You have to go.

But with Ben it’s different. With Ben, I don’t want him to leave. I don’t want to say goodbye. I want to thank Ben for coming to my rescue, for keeping me safe, for bandaging my injured hand. For getting me through what would have otherwise been a terrifying night. For the food and the wine and the company, and maybe, just maybe, for the kiss. If there was a kiss. I’d like to pretend that there was, just to get that awkward first kiss out of the way. The next one, I tell myself, will be far less thorny and fraught instead with romance and passion. That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as I watch Ben slip into a coat and then into his shoes.

But instead all I manage is a stiff, unconvincing, “You’re the best,” and he says, “You’re not so bad yourself,” and then he goes and I’m left overanalyzing those five elementary words of his—You’re not so bad yourself—until it’s enough to make my head explode.

I run to the window to see him leave, drooling out the window like a dog watching its owner go. Once he’s gone, around the corner and out of sight, I peer at the clock on the microwave: 7:58. I peer down at my attire: pajamas. I have seventeen minutes to get showered and dressed for work. Shit.

I grab the dirty dishes and toss them in the sink; the last thing I want is the apartment looking like a sty if Esther decides to come home. I don’t need to give her any more fuel for the fire, another reason to want to do away with me. I open a window a crack, hoping to air out the stench of last night’s crispy sesame chicken, now hardening on a plate on the coffee table. I grab that dish, too, chuck the chicken in the trash and set the plate by the sink. It’s just as I’m about to head into the shower that I hear the sound of my phone, set on the countertop beside the now-empty bottle of red wine, ringing. I grab for it and pick it up, not bothering to look at the numbers on the display screen.

“Hello?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear. I will it to be Esther. Please let it be Esther.

But it’s not Esther.

On the other end of the line, a flinty voice asks, “Is this Quinn Collins?” and I say that it is while listening to the sound of neighbors in the hall scurrying off to work, the slamming of an apartment door, the jingling of keys.

“This is Quinn Collins,” I say, my mind predicting I’m about to be suckered into buying a new cell phone plan or donating to breast cancer research.

“Ms. Collins, this is Detective Robert Davies, following up on a missing-persons report you filed,” the flinty voice says, lacking all the charisma I’d expect of a salesman. He isn’t friendly; rather, he’s curt and intimidating, and my first instinct is that I’ve somehow done something wrong, that I’ve overlooked some missing-persons protocol I should have known about. I’m in trouble. I’ve screwed up, again. I’ve heard this tone before from my father, from a teacher, from an employer before he fired me for some wrongdoing, or for just being plain lazy. Seems I’m always letting someone down.

“Yes,” I say meekly as I press my back to the popcorn wall, the phone to my ear, and admit sheepishly, “I filed a missing-persons report.” Though I can’t see it, I’m certain my skin turns red.