The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(22)

During intermission I went outside to sit in the car because I didn’t feel like talking to the lobby and its circles. Part of me probably knew it was coming because as soon as I shut the door, I started crying. I let my head hang forward and press against the steering wheel but after a few sobs I sat up and stopped. I texted five or six friends from the city. Small things like “hey how’s work?” or “ugh I want to kill this girl in Dan’s play.” I do that sometimes when I’m feeling lonely; it’s a strange and compulsive habit, but it usually works. I waited for a minute before anyone responded. Flipped down the mirror and rubbed my knuckle under my eyes, exhaling. My sister and my friend Tara texted me back and I responded to both immediately. I spent the second half of the play reminding myself of particular ways in which I was better than Olivia: I was thinner, I had nicer eyes, I went to a better school.

I didn’t know what my problem was. Danny had been a (struggling) actor since the day we met and I’d seen him kiss girls onstage before. I guess the summer had been hard; the cell service in northern Cape Cod wasn’t great and I’d wonder about him all day as I sat in my office. The envy was twofold: jealousy of the girl he was spending time with and jealousy of how he was spending his time. Playing around all day doing stretches and dumb acting games, getting wasted at night at the Beachcomber, the local bar he raved about whenever we talked on the phone. “It’s so fun,” he’d say. “There’s this group of local alcoholics who are too freaking funny. But they have these bands that come and everyone just sort of goes with it, you know? None of that too-cool bullshit.” “Yeah,” I’d say, in bed with my salad. “It sounds amazing, you’ll have to take me when I come up in August.” “For sure,” he’d reply. “I can’t wait.”

We got dinner together between shows and had sex again on these inland dunes. Danny parked the car on the side of Route 6 next to a beach pine marked with an orange plastic flag.

“This way,” he said, leading me up a path through scratchy trunks growing sideways out of sand. “I’m telling you, this place is unreal.”

It was. We emerged from the cropped forest into an expanse of craters, dune grass waving from the tops of their peaked edges. The sun hadn’t quite set but the crickets were pulsing—chirping from the green patches with astonishing volume. It was windy, and strips of hair blew out of my ponytail and across my face. Danny stretched his arms up and leaned forward into the wind.

“Isn’t it amazing?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling on a sweatshirt.

“We come here a lot at night.” He jumped forward and down in massive leaps, sand sliding in chutes behind him. I leapt after, shrieking, and landed in a heap at the bottom, rolling next to him.

We had the idea at the same moment and kept our clothes on the whole time. When we were done, I lay down beside him and looked up at the thin clouds. I thought about how funny we must look from above—lying in the center of a bowl-shaped hole in the world. I imagined what it would be like if every crater had a couple at its center, looking up.

“Do you ever come here with Olivia?” I asked. Cupping sand in my hands and letting it sift into a pile.

“Sure,” he said. “We all come here.” I knew my jealousy was unattractive, that Danny would think I was insecure, but I couldn’t stop.

“Yeah, but do you come here with just her?”

He rolled over to face me.

“Olivia and I are friends,” he said. “We do shit together.”

“Like kiss every night.”

“Onstage. In a play.” I didn’t say anything. He sat up. “You’re not serious, are you?”

I reverted, pulling my head inside my sweatshirt in mock retreat.

“I hate her!” My voice came out muffled. I popped back out. “I hate her, I hate her.” I smiled, and it worked: the intensity of the moment vanished as fast as I’d created it.

We lay there in silence for a while, but it was ruined. I knew the way Danny thought and I knew this only made him like me less and like her more. For the second time that day I wanted to hit something but I still couldn’t help myself. I rolled over and kissed at his neck.

“Remember that T-shirt she was wearing yesterday?”

“Who? Olivia?”

“Yeah.” I paused. “Did you give it to her? I thought you had that shirt.” He sat up again, serious this time. Cupped my hands in my lap.

“Listen,” he said, his eyebrows raised. “I love you, okay?”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to convince you.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” The crickets droned and I stood up to shake sand off my back. “I just—love you.”

He looked at me and tucked my loose hair behind my ears.

“I love you too,” he said. But I never got my answer.

The Yahtzee happened that night. After the play. I went for a third time despite Danny’s genuine suggestion that I sit this one out. In the hour beforehand, I walked to the Penny Patch, the old candy store in the village by Wellfleet Harbor. I ate a small piece of chocolate fudge, a small piece of penuche fudge, and three saltwater taffies and decided I was being ridiculous about the whole thing. Danny and I had gone out to dinner. We’d had sex in the bottom of a romantic dune crater. We’d been dating since we were twenty-four. I’d gone to Minnesota with his parents; he’d come to my grandfather’s funeral. Olivia was strange and loud and a tomboy and they loved her because she was one of them, drinking beers and wearing dumb hats. Tomorrow I would pack Danny inside my car and we’d zoom off on the freeway and back inside the walls of New York.