You Love Me(You #3)(18)

“Look,” I say. “The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.”

“I know,” you say. “I feel the same way.”

I don’t speak. You don’t speak. You told me so much last night but I am getting that sick feeling that you didn’t tell me everything, that what you told me isn’t the whole story, but only part of the story. You are looking at me as if you are warming me up for the news. The bad news. The worst news in the world.

And here it comes. Those treacherous words: “Joe… we can’t do this. You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”

“Of course not, Mary Kay. You know I’d never do that…”

You are too relieved. “Okay, good, because if anyone here found out… if anyone said anything to Nomi…”

“Mary Kay, look at me.”

You look at me. “I am a steel fucking trap. You have my word.”

You calm down a little, but you’re still flinching, looking over your shoulder, a paranoid inmate on Crucible Island. You don’t let me talk. You say that last night was a drunken mistake—no—and you weren’t thinking clearly—yes you fucking were—and I tell you that you were perfect and you shudder. “I am anything but perfect.”

My words are coming out all wrong and I know you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect, but it would be too cheesy and needy to tell you that we are perfect together.

You purse your lips, those lips that are puffy from my kiss. Me. “Can we just go back to normal? You know… how we were?”

I bob my head like a trained seal that couldn’t make it in the wild. “Absolutely,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting to rush into anything with you. We can take it slow. I want to take it slow.”

It’s a big fat lie and you cluck. “That’s the thing, Joe. There is no ‘it.’ There can’t be an ‘it.’ I have a daughter.”

“I know.”

“I can’t be getting home drunk after midnight. She has to come first.”

“Of course Nomi comes first. I know that.”

You hide your face behind your hands and tell me that you’re not emotionally available right now and I want to take a sledgehammer to the chip in the windshield and smash the glass because you’re making our kiss about your daughter. You pull your hands away. “It’s her senior year, Joe, and I don’t want to miss any part of it…” Then don’t spend two nights a week at a fucking wine bar with Melanda. “She needs me. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.” You raised an independent daughter who likes to read and so what if she’s not a minisocialite the way you were? Neither was I at that age. “To you she’s halfway out the door, all grown-up… But time flies and it’s almost Thanksgiving and in a few months, she’ll be away. And I just can’t make any big changes when change is already coming.” Ha! As if life is ever that predictable and you should let me in now, right now, so that I’m carving your turkey next week and you are wrong, so wrong and you sigh. “Do you get it?”

“Of course I get it, Mary Kay. You’re right, there’s no rush. We can put this on hold.”

You smile. “What a relief. Thank you, Joe.”

You win because you built the boxing ring—Me vs. Nomi—and I can’t hit above the belt, in the womb. That said, you came to see me and you wouldn’t be justifying yourself to me if you didn’t care about me, if you didn’t want me eating your mashed potatoes and your Murakami. Yeah, there was something off about your little speech, Mary Kay, because deep down, you know you belong with me now, right now.

Our chairs squeak when we stand and you hang your head. “Do you hate me?”

You’re better than that. You don’t ask stupid questions. But I give you the stupid answer you deserve right now. “Of course I don’t hate you. Come on. You know that.”

Then you bite your lip and say the worst word in the English language. “Friends?”

You cannot shove me onto a tufted sofa with Seamus and Melanda and we’re not friends, Mary Kay. You want to fuck me. But I shake your hand and repeat your hollow sitcom of a word that does not apply to us. “Friends.”





6





I go outside. I walk and I walk and my pinky toes burn—these sneakers are for show, not for this—and I walk away from your house and I want to walk into your house and I really did fuck up last night, today. I should have torn off your chastity tights. I should have brought you home or I should have gone home with you and there is no going back and I am the man. Bainbridge is safe, but did I text you to make sure you got home okay?

Nope.

You’d been drinking and did I insist on being your escort?

Nope.

I walk into Blackbird and the whole fecal-eyed family is in here—even the grandfather—and this island is too fucking small and there are so many of them and there is only one of me and I get a coffee and sit outside on a bench.

I go on Instagram. Bad Joe. Bad. Night is falling and Nomi posted a picture of you on your sofa and you are asleep in your clothes.

When mom is “sick.” #Hangover.

I wish I could like this picture, I wish I could love this picture but I don’t feel the love right now. My toes are on fire, my whole body is on fire but you’re out cold, dead to me, to the world. I take a screenshot of the photo and examine every corner, every centimeter. I’m not invading your privacy, Mary Kay. We all post our photos knowing that our followers will zoom in to grade us. I zoom in. My heart beats.