Last Girl Ghosted(8)

I hate that cold, stripped-down way we communicate now. I want voices, the nuances of meaning inherent in tone. Better yet, I want to look into eyes and touch skin, to feel connection. I wasn’t raised with technology, not the way others were. My father—he wouldn’t even let us have a television. No computers, no video games, no cell phones.

You’re an analog girl in a tech world. It’s one of the things I like best about you, Adam said when I confessed this.

So even though you would rather text, Adam, you call. Because you know that’s what I want. I like that about you, your consideration. On the nights we are not together, sometimes we talk for hours, lingering on the line even when we’ve run out of things to say.

Tonight, with the bright white sun tipping below the buildings, there’s something off about your demeanor. Instead of giving me the laser beam of your attention, your gaze is diffuse, eyes scanning the street all around us, like you’re looking for something.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

You focus in. Those black eyes in the textured landscape of your face—heavy brows, wrinkles at the corners of your eyes, stubble, a slight scar on your pronounced cheekbone.

“Just—a hard day. Sorry.”

Seems like there might be more to it, but rather than press, I say, “I’m starving.”

“Me, too. Let’s eat.”

We take a cab to Jersey City. Decadent.

Me? I’m frugal. Subway, not taxi. Chicken, not lobster. Macy’s, not Neimans. But you, Adam, you hate the crowds, the crush, the unreliability of our city’s massive subway system. You’ll walk if you can, cab it if you can’t.

From the quiet interior of our taxi, the crowded streets pass by in a crawl, then a rush, as we hit the tunnel. In the dark, we make out in the back seat like prom dates, everything disappearing but the voyeuristic eyes of the cabbie in his rearview mirror, the traffic noise, the hum of our speed through the tunnel.

And then we arrive to a neighborhood of low buildings. It’s one of those not quite gentrified areas, that funny blend of gritty and chic that places in the city are sometimes, trying to be one thing, but really something else underneath. Like all of us.

Inside the small, warm space, we order multiple pies just to get a sampling. Then we wait, chatting mostly about my day. I pretend not to notice that you are edgy in a way that’s new to me. That you keep looking behind me, toward the door as if you are waiting for someone to arrive. Finally, one by one the steaming pizzas arrive.

It’s heaven—dough fluffy yet crispy, creamy, oozing cheese, freshest tomatoes, a hint of hot honey. Divine slivers of prosciutto, explosions of garlic.

Oh, God. I’m in love.

“I like that you eat,” you say, watching me with a now-familiar intensity, like I’m a puzzle you’re working.

For a moment, I’m embarrassed, glancing down at the nearly devoured pie beneath us. But you’re right; I eat—passionately, unapologetically. We have a shared passion for great meals.

“Food is life,” I say. “If you don’t like to eat, you don’t like to be alive.”

Your smile, it turns your very serious, nearly brooding face boyish and bright.

“Amen.”

We eat until we can’t, ask them to box up the rest. Food, the sensory pleasure of eating art, for us, it’s a kind of foreplay.

Back in Brooklyn, we crash through the doors of my town house, tearing at each other’s clothes as we climb the stairs. We’ve been to your place a few times, but we generally default to mine. Your place in Chelsea is cold—all modern lines and stylish but hard furniture, like a museum. It’s elegant, well-designed, but void of personal details.

It’s like you don’t even live here, I said when I first visited you there.

I guess I don’t, you said. I travel a lot. I’m not here that much.

“Then where’s home?”

Something strange crossed your face, and I wondered for the first time and not the last if there were as many layers to you as there are to me. You tapped at your solar plexus. Right here, I guess.

I found that oddly sad but didn’t say so.

My place is the opposite of yours, messy where yours is neat, warm where yours is cool. Big furniture, bought for comfort, pillows and throw blankets for maximum softness. Like the fluffy white down of my comforter where we find ourselves now. It ensconces us.

Our lovemaking has changed over the last week. What was gentle, exploratory, considerate—is this okay? Are you okay?—has become urgent, hungrier. There has been a shift in its pitch, a change in vibration.

Your arm around my back is powerful, your breath on my neck a growl, deep and desperate. Then you’re so deep inside me that I let out a cry, half pain, half pleasure. You don’t stop. It’s wild and raw as we wrap around each other, and I come alive with desire, with pleasure.

You breathe my name. Wren. Oh, God. Wren.

I hear your passion, your helplessness; it’s an echo of my own. Each time we make love I feel like I know you better, as if you’ve revealed another layer of yourself without saying a word.

When we’re done, and we are only our breath and the darkness, I think you’ve drifted off to sleep. But then you shift, close your arms around me, and whisper, “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.”

Up to this moment, I’ve measured everything I’ve shared with you. I’ve given myself over in pieces, slivers of truth, layers of self, curated memories, only the most banal likes and dislikes. But there are things I’ve hidden. It hasn’t been necessary to bare all; relationships these days rarely last. I can’t afford to give all of myself away to someone who may ghost me without a moment’s notice.