“I just… I can’t breathe in places like this. I hate elevators, hate them!”
“Maybe if you sat down?” I asked. She stopped pacing and looked down at the marble floor. I could tell she was sizing it up, weighing the steadiness of sitting down versus the germ factory that was that floor. “I’ll sit down with you if you want.”
“No,” she snapped, then she held up one hand and took a deep breath, lowering her voice. “I’d rather stand, thank you.”
“While we wait, maybe we should talk.”
“Not about us,” she said, shaking her head vigorously.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s literally anything in the world I’d rather discuss.”
“How about zombie attacks?”
“What? Why would I want to talk about that?” Her voice cracked as she spoke, and her eyes welled with tears. She was terrified. I wanted to distract her as best I could, and if we weren’t going to rip off the band-aid and talk about how fucked up we’d been to each other during the last day, then I had to think of something crazy, something to make her laugh.
I was failing miserably.
“Fine, bear attacks.”
She pressed her hands into her eyes,. “I don’t want to think about blood and gore, for God’s sake!”
“Okay, what else?” I asked, tapping my chin in an overdramatic way. “If you had to choose one food to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?”
She paused for a second, and I knew I’d finally distracted her. But how long it would last, I had no idea.
“It’s the only thing I can eat?”
“Yep, nothing else. For me, it’s easy—khichdi.”
She looked perplexed. “What is that again?”
“Indian dish—rice, lentils, total comfort food deliciousness. Now, what about you?”
“Uh…um…I, uh…bananas.”
“That’s it?”
She shrugged, her eyes vacant. “I like bananas.”
I tilted my head to the side as I remembered an article I’d read in National Geographic. “You know, I read once that there was this man living in the jungle who lived almost completely on bananas. He was really old. You may be onto something.”
She didn’t look amused.
“But what about something else? Like a dish that means something to you, something special that your mom makes or something?”
“My abuela,” she said, her expression softening. “She taught me how to cook. Her enchiladas will change your life.”
“I’d like to try them sometime,” I said with a smile.
Something about that sentence struck a nerve. And a bad one at that. “What are you doing?” she asked, looking suspicious.
“I’m trying to distract you. You know, because of your panic attack. It’s working, right?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I would.”
She rolled her eyes and went back to pacing the small space. Silence hovered around us for at least a minute before I cleared my throat.
“What about us?”
“Dev, stop it. There is no us, not anymore.”
“We have to talk about what happened. We can’t run away from it.”
“Why not?” She glared at me. “You’re the one who wanted to pretend it never happened!”
“I was pissed. Maybe I overreacted.”
“Maybe?” she yelled, throwing her arms out to the side. “And what the fuck was that downstairs in the lodge, huh? Sheila the nurse? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I talked to her for, like, five minutes.”
“Doesn’t matter. You didn’t get what you wanted from me, so you moved right on to someone else. Let me guess, you’re meeting up later for drinks.”
“Um, I think you’re thinking of you and Craig, not me and Sheila.”
“Don’t do that. Craig has nothing to do with any of this, and you know it! I ended that date to take care of you. God, I wish I could go back and stay the hell away!”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Like you have any idea what I mean or what I think or what I feel! You’re an asshole, Dev, who treats women like...like…”
“You have no idea how I treat women! You have no idea how I would’ve treated you if you hadn’t been so fucking embarrassed to be seen with me! So don’t you stand there and pretend to know, okay? You don’t get to do that, Lyra!”
“And you have a girlfriend! None of this even matters, right? Tomorrow you’re going to go right back to Trupti, so why are you even wasting my time?”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d already made the decision to break things off with Trupti, but to tell Lyra before ending things just felt wrong. I could tell my boys, sure, but to tell the woman I was interested in felt like a betrayal to Trupti. And besides, I was too pissed at her for calling me an asshole, for insinuating that I was a dick to women.
“That’s what I thought.” Lyra turned back to the buttons, pounding on the red call button again.
“Yes, we are doing all that we can,” the voice said.
“Listen to me! I’m in this death box with the person I despise most in the goddamn world. Now get me the hell out of here! Now!”
And for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Lyra offered me a painful punch in the gut. And I was wrecked. Completely and totally wrecked.
“Lyra,” I said, feeling all the blood drain from my face, no longer trying to hide my vulnerability, my pain. She stared at me, her mouth hanging open.
“I-I didn’t mean it, Dev.”
“Save it. I have no interest in hearing another word you have to say.”
And just then, the door opened. Sheepishly, Lyra held it open for me as I stumbled out of the elevator and made my way to the door. She walked ahead of me to open the door. I walked through and went straight for my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.
A few hours later, after I’d taken a nap and popped a few more Advil, Peter knocked on my door. “Hey, man, the girls have decided to have a girls’ night. Wanna grab dinner downstairs with Scott and me? Game starts in ten.”
Filled with relief at not having to break bread with Lyra, I jumped at the chance to have dinner with my boys. “Yeah, gimme five and I’ll be ready.”
We were able to grab a booth with a perfect view of the TV, and I was able to rest my foot on the soft leather bench across from me.
“Geez, Montgomery’s a beast this season.”
“Seriously, dude,” I said between bites of mozzarella sticks. “This team would be shit without him.”
“Agreed,” Scott said, tapping his beer bottle to my glass before clearing his throat. “So, what’s going on with you and Lyra? Allison said you asked to talk to her privately. And the next thing I know, you’re all camped out in your room and the girls are planning a men-less dinner. Did something happen between you two?”
“Not exactly,” I said under my breath, stirring my Tito’s and seltzer with the tiny red straw in my glass. “She just gets under my skin, ya know? She drives me crazy.”