Really Good, Actually(55)
We demolished a final round of fries for the table and called it a night, complaining already about how bad our headaches would be tomorrow. Because it was winter in Toronto, the decision to leave meant extensively preparing ourselves to be cold. Base layers were supplemented with scarves, hoods pulled tight around faces, mittens layered on top of gloves, and then we were outside, the frigid air hardening the snot in our noses as we discussed the merits of various bus routes versus the streetcar.
Street mush was already seeping into my cheap winter boots; my toes would be damp when I got home. Amy, whose sublet was nearby, skipped away after putting her number in Emotional Lauren’s phone and promising her “mimos, on demand, any time.” Tom was holding Amirah close to him, his hands in the pockets of her big down coat. Lauren was trying to use the tip of her nose to unlock her iPhone, unwilling to take off her gloves. Clive took in the scene and yelled, “Fuck this, XL for the girls,” ordering a van to whisk everyone to their respective homes. After a quick head count, I offered—gallantly, I thought—to give up my spot. Nobody protested.
Three minutes later, a gray van pulled up. Everyone piled in, and Amirah said a stilted goodbye and tried to hurry the automatic door closed, which made it fully open again, then judder and glitch when she tried to pull it back, which she did several times, until the van’s driver yelled at her to stop touching it. They looked out at me, unspeaking, as the door inched shut incredibly slowly, emitting a high-pitched, whiny beep. When it finally closed the van pulled away, and Emotional Lauren did a tentative wave at Simon and me out the back windshield.
I reached for Simon’s hand and said, “Shall we?” in a sort of Cary Grant voice. He put his mitten on mine, and we set off down Dundas. Snow started to fall in fat, thick flakes.
“Sorry about tonight,” I said. “They’re a lot more fun than that, usually.”
“They seemed fine to me,” said Simon.
When we got back to mine, he was quiet in a way that indicated he was mad.
The Fight (Abridged)
He said, “is everything alright” and I said, “everything’s great” then ranted for several minutes about how nobody made bathing suits with the back and sides on them anymore, and how were you supposed to go on a family holiday with most of your ass and part of your labia hanging out, a bit of majora at minimum. He said, “did you tell your friends I was coming” and I said I didn’t need to, and he said, “people like to be told if you’re bringing someone somewhere” and “I wanted to make a good impression.”
At this point the fight had not started in earnest and was more of a light tension somewhere around my lower back. I returned to the bathing suits, and he said, “you called me your boyfriend earlier,” then explained that he wasn’t against the title necessarily, but was surprised because we had not talked about it, and maybe that was something to—
I interrupted to tell him he could still sleep with other people if that was his concern. He said it was not, and the tension crept up my back and into my shoulders. “You can do whatever you want,” I said, “but everything is easier if I can say, ‘This is my boyfriend.’” He asked why, and I sighed and described in great detail an orange-brown powder I often mixed with water and spread on toast in place of peanut butter.
When he did not understand what I was getting at, I picked up a dark chocolate and almond butter treat and showed it to him. “I pay extra to eat this instead of a Reese’s,” I said. “Like, what the fuck is a Snacking Cup?” He still did not get it, and I saw that the moment had arrived. I was being forced to take him on a tour of my insanities, to show him their contours and detail their depths. We were going to have a fight and he was going to hate it.
I explained to him that I was busting my ass every day to stay just a little bit beautiful, like maybe seven out of ten, because everyone was looking at me and feeling sorry for me, and I could not deal with their pity about my body or my face as well. “Do you remember when we ran into that girl Liz on the bus?” I asked. I told him Liz had given me a particular look when she realized I was with him, a look people used to give when they heard I was engaged, like they were proud and happy and, most importantly, not worried.
He was sitting in a chair by the window and had been jiggling his left leg up and down since I started talking about Liz. My head and ears were hot, and he said, “is this why you were talking about my coming to that wedding like I could have been anyone?” I said I liked him a lot, but it was complicated, and he sighed. The conversation had gotten away from us and now could only be as bad as it was or worse. We slipped into cliché, and he said maybe we needed some space, and I said it was a Me thing, not about him at all, and he said he wanted me to “let him in,” which unfortunately was the last straw.
I yelled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about” and he yelled, “why do you cry every time we have sex” and I screamed, “it’s BIOLOGY” and he quieted down and said he knew breakups were hard, that his had been the darkest period of his life, so he understood if I was struggling with my divorce. He got up from his chair and looked at me with almost comically sympathetic eyes, and I felt sick to my stomach and started saying things I didn’t mean.
Things like: “you don’t even know me” and “I’m completely over Jon” and “men who are obsessed with therapy are always the biggest psychos.” I said, “I looked up your ex and she’s so thin,” and he said, “so?” and I said, “so what are you doing with me” and he said, “why do you keep asking me that?”