It’s so nice, and it punches me right in the gut.
The old me, the shadow self, peers up at me and whispers, Too far. Don’t expose them to you. You’ll only hurt them.
But I know better now. I’ve had Ophelia and Diego. I’ve had Michal herself, this whole summer.
So I smile and throw both arms around Michal’s shoulders, hugging her tight. “Thank you,” I say. “I will.”
When I get back to my own apartment, I shut myself in my bedroom and dig out a candle. It’s not a classic Shabbos taper, just a grapefruit-scented votive I bought in Long Island City last weekend. But it counts. As I light it, I murmur the blessing under my breath: “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha’olam…”
It’s not much—it barely qualifies as observing Shabbos—but it’s something.
And it counts.
35
WYATT
“That’s a big story,” Ava says once I’ve finished explaining the whole Ely thing to her. It reminds me of what Marcus said when I texted him after we got back from North Carolina: that’s a lot, Wyatt. What are you gonna do about it?
Is everyone on planet Earth reading from the same script or something? “How to respond when you find out your friend/colleague/sponsee has fallen in love with someone totally inappropriate.”
Maybe Ava is running through the faculty-staff handbook in her mind as we speak, trying to remember if she needs to report me.
No. That’s mean. She’s my friend. I should trust her more than that.
But these past two weeks since coming back to the city, my brain’s been an anxious minefield. I keep trying to shut it up with offerings of cheese, long photo editing sessions, and Haze cuddles, but no good. That little ticking time bomb has started up in the back of my brain again, whispering, Drink, drink, drink. Oblivion is the only answer.
I’ve been trying to catch Ely alone and find a moment to apologize. To grovel if I have to. But the worst part is I don’t even have the luxury of angsting over how you can ruin a good thing with a simple, childish mistake. I’ve been ruining Ely and me over and over, repeatedly, for two months straight.
“Pretty much,” I say in answer to Ava’s comment. What else do you say, anyway? Punch me in the face and throw me in the Hudson so I can worry about not drowning instead of all the relationships I ruin?
“So how long until you realize you’re being an idiot and get back together with her?” Ava asks, in the same tone of voice she uses to ask if I’m done with the developer in the darkroom.
I stare at her. “Wait,” I say.
“I’m serious!” She shrugs, spreading both hands out. “The program is almost over anyway. And you’re clearly deeply invested in this girl. I hate to watch you ruin a good thing out of a misguided need to play white knight. It sounds much deeper than all that.”
Well, when you put it that way.
“Rude,” I say.
“Yeah, okay, Mr. Man. She was right and you know it.”
So, I’m a moron. I built this whole conversation with Ava up in my head, and that’s it. I should have known better. Ava’s my friend, after all.
I seem to be full of assumptions these days. About Ava, my mother, my brother.
And maybe I made some assumptions about Ely too.
I mull over what Ava said for the rest of the day. Her voice gets louder every time I see Ely in the halls. She won’t even look at me, just clutches her bag closer to her chest and scurries by with her gaze fixed furiously on the ground. She’s still angry with me. Or upset. Both, probably. One afternoon I find my Hannah Wilke book on my desk in my office, and the weight in the pit of my stomach is like a bullet never extracted.
She should be angry. She’s right to be. I could have told her from the start, Let’s talk about this in the fall, and it would have been fine.
Instead I pushed her away, then pulled her in, only to push her away again, and I hurt both of us.
That thing she said about me using her for emotional comfort, then shoving her away—it’s the worst thing anyone has ever said about me. Even with every awful thing I’ve done, all my past crimes, her words hurt the most. They feel the most intrinsically true—like Ely has identified my worst fault: That I’m selfish. That I only care about other people as long as they can make me feel safe and wanted, two things I never was growing up.
And then I never bother filling their cups in return.
But knowing I should talk to Ely—that Ava agrees with Marcus on this point—isn’t quite enough to overcome the awful heat that seethes in my gut every time I think about the prospect of actually doing it.
Piece-of-shit wannabe man, my father’s voice sneers, and I down the rest of my seltzer in one gulp. The carbonation makes me gag badly enough that I almost run to the sink, just in case.
So instead of being a decent person about it all, I just steep in my own misery and try to get work done…even if my work seems particularly shitty as of late.
“This is worse than a total beginner’s,” I say, showing Haze the best of my latest projects. I was doing better art when I was high. Which is saying something, considering one pleasant surprise about getting clean was that my creative eye improved dramatically.
Haze stares back at me with his big round judgmental cat eyes.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “This can just be a first draft. Starting over.”
I work until even the bar across the street shuts down for the night, the music and the laughter fading until the only sounds are light traffic, the hum of my window air conditioner unit, and Haze’s soft snores.
Liam has started texting me. That’s a highlight, at least. He seems to be a night owl as well, so I get messages from him half the night and usually wake up to one (or more) in the morning. He’s working as a lineman, which you would think would be a physical enough job to make him sleep like Haze during a dead nap, but apparently not.
It’s weird to be in contact with him again. I still feel like I have to put on a front of sorts, like I’ve got to impress him or he’ll decide I’m not worth his time after all. One night I confessed this to him, and he replied: dude I’m your brother, brothers are forever.
Embarrassingly, I screenshotted that text and added it to my photo Favorites album on my phone.
A sick part of me is still jealous of my brother. He grew up to be happy, and I had to fight to find my happiness.
Then again, I guess I don’t know his whole story. Maybe he had to fight too. Maybe the happy I see in him came hard won.
But even Liam isn’t immune to asking about Ely. How’re things going with the girl, he says, and my dumb ass lies to him and says, great, because I can’t bring myself to tell him the truth. Or maybe just because he’s the only person who doesn’t know any better and can’t prove me wrong. In his world, Ely and I are an item. We still have coffee in the park and talk about photography. She still borrows my books and insists I don’t need to sleep on the couch, beckons me to join her on the bed. She still wants anything to do with me.