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Every time I see him, it gets a little stronger.
The first time I saw West after he came back, he was outside the art building, and I was walking with Bridget to my seminar. A clutch of smokers gathered by the door, West off to the side by himself, blowing a white cloud into the air.
He didn’t greet me.
I knew to expect it. He’d done it to Krishna already. He’s doing it to everyone.
West works and goes to class and stands off by himself, because that’s how he wants it.
I spot him out windows, passing by the giant phallic sculpture at the center of our campus.
I see him in the library at the circulation desk, waiting to be helped.
I go out for groceries and discover the shape of his head, the curve of his shoulder, as he holds a package of cold ground beef in his hands by the butcher’s counter and studies the label instead of turning around to say hi to me.
When I close my eyes, there’s his defiant, arrogant face as he opens the door of the truck after he finished eating Mrs. Tomlinson’s pussy. He wipes his mouth, even though he never did that. He tilts up his chin and says, How about that, Caroline? Am I good enough for you now? Still want to rescue me? Still think you can love me? Huh?
When I sit on the bed in my rented room and look out at the alley behind the house, an apple core three feet from the garbage can, I see West resting his forehead against the steering wheel of Bo’s truck, shuddering by the side of the road.
None of what I feel is as simple as anger or betrayal or disgust, because there’s always this other thing.
The thing that makes me do a U-turn when I spot his truck.
The thing that pulls me out of my car when he emerges from the store with a carton of cigarettes, free arm swinging, keys glinting in the bright light of this sunny September day.
I can see how angry he is from twenty feet away.
He can be as angry as he needs to be, and I’ll still feel like this whenever he comes near. I can’t help it.
He stops when he spots me. I don’t wave or speak or beckon to him. All I do is watch. Witness him.
You exist. I exist. Here we are.
He gets in his car and drives off toward campus, and I track his progress until he turns the corner.
I’m smiling for no reason.
I just feel so alive.
Some things can’t be unseen once you’ve seen them.
This is what I’m thinking the next morning, standing stock-still on the threshold of our kitchen, clutching a water bottle in my hand and transfixed by the unexpected sight of Bridget and Krishna making out.
It’s seven-thirty in the morning. I was, prior to this moment, barely awake.
Now I am so awake.
Awake enough to notice a lot of things other than the obvious thing, which is my teeny little freckled redhead best friend tongue-wrestling with the resident campus manwhore.
Like, I notice that they’re both in their running clothes, and they smell ripe. After two years of rooming with Bridget, who runs track, I’m more than used to the odor of warm armpits and high-tech fabric, but this time it’s coming off both of them together.
Their mouths are making this wet smacking sort of noise. Krishna is owning Bridget. One-hand-on-the-back-of-her-head, one-right-above-her-ass, bending-her-backward-over-the-counter owning her.
His hair and shoulders are wet. Her thighs. Their arms.
Rain. It’s raining out there. The rain is drumming against the house, and Bridget is kind of … squeaking? She’s making a noise that’s so obviously compliant that it makes me think of animals, mating animals—like, hamsters, maybe, which I wish it didn’t because I once actually saw hamsters mating and it isn’t something I want to see again, or think about, and Jesus, neither is this.
And yet I can’t move.
