Yolk(92)

I’m embarrassed to hear myself characterized like this.

“Then you puke, not on the sidewalk but in the literal street, almost getting decapitated by a moving vehicle, and then, just as I’m wondering what exactly I’ve gotten myself into, you announce that you’ve got nowhere else to go. Honestly, Jayne, if you were literally any other woman in this city, that would’ve been it. Actually, no, none of this would’ve happened in the first place. I would have tapped out a solid seven moves before that. But you’re you. I know your family. I’ve met your mom. I foster a healthy fear of your sister. I wasn’t going to leave you falling-down wasted in the gutter. So I loan you my clothes. You use my shower. I cook for you. I act like a fucking gentleman and give you the bed. We hang out the day after. I thought it was chill.”

He sighs. I can see his breath. His eyes are hard, then soft.

“Jayne,” he says. “I would have told you about Aliyah at any point had we seen each other again. I should have told you that first night. I knew it was fucked up. But it’s why we didn’t hook up. Why I stopped. But I also didn’t want to seem presumptuous and call you, like, I have a girlfriend. I was dating a lot of people, and I don’t know anything about your situation.”

“You were dating a lot of people?” My voice is anemic and pitiable.

I stare at him, face completely numb.

I glance up at the gleaming building, trying to see which unit is hers.

“They’re not done,” he says, reading my mind. He breathes into his fists and scowls.

“Here,” he says, nodding across the street. It’s a delivery entrance with a glorious recess and nice thick walls to block the wind. There are even stairs on a stoop.

Without hesitation we run-waddle and sit side by side, huddling close. “We had an open relationship because she wanted one,” he says. “It wasn’t working. So we broke up.”

I’m doubled over with my hands shoved in my pockets, and my breath warms my knees. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.”

“We were together for two years,” he says. “Living together for six months. She didn’t tell me she applied to the Peace Corps. Meanwhile, I thought we only had to navigate grad school.”

It takes me everything not to ask where she applied.

“Instead she told me she was going to Peru for two years.”

“Jesus.”

“She slept with some rando a few months ago, but we talked about it like adults. We said we’d try an open relationship, and that’s when I met you.”

I tilt my head to look at him. He’s hunched over too, with his head turned toward me, temple to knees. It’s strangely intimate. Like we’re in a blanket fort.

“But then why break up?”

He sighs as he grinds the sockets of his eyes into his kneecaps. “Because I’m not built for this. I tried it. I did all that Tinder shit. Raya. Bumble. Whatever the fuck, Hinge. I thought maybe it was a good idea. I’ve had a girlfriend from the time I was fifteen. It’s like in high school, Asian dudes were one thing, but a decade later it’s like suddenly we’re all hot. It was ridiculous. I felt like such a trope, like one of those tech bros who gets all cut up and gets Lasik and acts like a totally different person. At first it was a laugh. I liked meeting all these people that I’d otherwise never know. Especially in New York. But having sex with strangers is fucking weird. I think I hate it.”

Recognition knocks at my heart.

“I felt so fucking emo.” His shoulders shake a little as he chuckles. “Like, I was getting offended that no one seemed to want to be friends with me.”

I can’t stop a tiny, sympathetic whine from escaping. I clear my throat. Fuck, he’s cute.

“It all started to blend together. The drinking, partying, random hook-ups. The shit freaked me out. When you’re fucked up, you’re not always as careful as you need to be. I started to get tested for STDs, like, every other day because I’m a total fucking hypochondriac and the anxiety was making me nuts.”

“Are you okay now?” Reluctant compassion wells squishily in my chest.

He nods. “When I saw you in the bar, man, it made me happy. I wanted someone to talk to, to just spend time with. You seemed a little messy, but the last thing I expected was that we’d hook up. Look, I’ve met girls like you. Shit, I’ve been curved by girls like you. And honestly, and I don’t know if this is fucked up, but you ask me to meet you at a hipster dive bar, high-key looking like the type of Asian fashion chick who drinks bubble tea but only dates white photographers who speak conversational Japanese, so I had zero expectations.”

I sit up. “What the fuck?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, Jayne. But, that’s the vibe. Like, how many Asian guys have you dated?”

Malcolm Ito.

“I haven’t even…” I’m embarrassed to continue, but I hate that he’s turned it around like this. “I haven’t even had a real boyfriend.”

“But you’ve hooked up with guys?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Well…” I scoff. I glance across the street. I stare at the pavement, disappearing into myself. I wonder if he’s going to ask if I’m obsessed with white-people things.