“I still have time to decide, obviously, but I think pediatric oncology.”
“Oh, my god,” Ellsbeth said just as their salads arrived. “So you’re a saint. You’re, like, actually just a very good person.”
“No, god no,” Oscar said. “I just want to do my best to help people through tough times.”
“Do you foster amputee kittens, too? Volunteer at soup kitchens?”
“Well, yes to the soup kitchen, actually, but it’s a program through the medical school. You should come sometime! We all go to the big church downtown on Saturdays. It’s fun.”
Ellsbeth fake-tutted.“But no kitten fostering. That’s strike one, Oscar.”
“I’m allergic.”
“And that’s strike two.”
Oscar smiled, but Ellsbeth wasn’t sure if it was because he was nervous or because he understood her sarcasm.
The conversation wasn’t difficult—they chatted about the television show everyone was watching, and the movies coming out thissummer they were looking forward to—but Ellsbeth found herself feeling as though she was playing a part, reciting lines in the role of “polite, winsome date.” Did he feel it, too, the artifice in the way they said phrases like, “It’s going to be nice on campus once the weather becomes a little cooler”? It was more than just tentative first-date banter; it was like they were aliens in an improv scene pretending to be normal human beings. Or maybe Ellsbeth was the alien, only able to relate to this perfectly nice, normal boy through a pane of glass. Maybe, Ellsbeth thought, some people are justcontent.Able to exist frictionlessly in a world that makes sense, cheerfully building a life one socially acceptable brick at a time.
Oscar parked his car outsideher apartment to walk Ellsbeth to her door. “This was really nice,” he said when they reached her stoop, slumping his shoulders to shield her from the wind. “I’m glad we did this.”
“Me too,” she said.
“Hey, maybe we could do it again sometime,” Oscar said. “Catch a movie or something.”
“Yeah, for sure,” Ellsbeth said before she could think about the words.
“Definitely before I leave for Thanksgiving. I’m going back a few days early. My family always does a Turkey Trot the morning of. It’s a whole thing.”
“That’s almost cartoonishly adorable.”
“You should come to New Hampshire!” Oscar said. “I mean, obviously not this year, that’s weird, we just went out. But if you wanted. My parents would be thrilled to have someone to weigh in on the pumpkin-versus-cherry-pie debate. It’s been a dead heat for years.”
“That’s really, really nice,” she said. “But I’m going to be in the throes of working on my thesis, so I’m just going to stay on campus. Bring some pie back for me.”
Oscar cleared his throat and shimmied a hand into the pocket of his pants. He gazed at her, thoughtfully, through eyelashes so pale they were almost translucent. “I really want to kiss you right now,” he said,and all Ellsbeth could think at that moment wasWhy?And perhaps an even harder question:Why don’t I want to kiss him?
Ellsbeth could see herself through his eyes, how he must see her: a Newlyn graduate student who wears cardigans, the type of girl you can take to microbreweries and picnics before introducing her to his bread-with-the-crust-on New Hampshire family. But that wasn’t who she was. She could play the part—maybe for years. She could be a girlfriend, a fiancée, even a wife eventually. She could see a frictionless future play in which she became the thing that Oscar imagined her to be, in which his sheer normalcy communicated something to the world about her because she existed in his orbit: She was chosen by him, and so she was normal, too. Not the broken girl whose sister had died, who had seen it in a ritual, who had spent the previous night with her hand between her legs under her duvet imagining her professor tying her hands behind her back.
Oscar leaned in to kiss her then, a kiss somehow both wet and with no tongue at all. It felt like nothing, a purely mechanical exercise, almost scientific.Interesting,Ellsbeth thought. She pulled away. “You are a great guy,” she said. “I just think maybe I see you more as a friend.”
Oscar rolled his eyes. “Ihavefriends,” he scoffed, wiping his lip with the back of his hand. It was the first time all night a sharpness had crept into his tone. “But yeah, sure. Fine.”
They had split the dinner bill after all, but Ellsbeth still thanked him anyway before she turned the key in her lock, and listened to his car rev and drive down the street.
If Bertie were here, she would have thought Ellsbeth was crazy. “You went out with a cutefuture doctorwho actually liked you and rejected him…why?” The urge to call Bertie was so strong it felt like a compulsion, and Ellsbeth found that she had pulled out her phone and opened it to where her sister’s name still lingered on her shortFavorite Contactslist. Right after Bertie had died, Ellsbeth called the number habitually, almost ritualistically. Bertie had not recorded an outgoing message, it was just mechanical instructions to leave a message at the tone, but still, Ellsbeth called and called again. Sometimes she left a message, pretending her sister was still alive, and that she would be listening to Ellsbeth’s complaints about grad schoolapplications or landlords who wouldn’t fix leaky sinks. Sometimes Ellsbeth hung up as soon as the ringing stopped. She dreaded the thought that one day the phone line would be disconnected, or the number would be given to a stranger, and gradually the habit stopped, around the time Ellsbeth stopped instinctually expecting Bertie to pickup.
Her fingers hovered over Bertie’s number. She wanted to talk about what happened tonight withsomeone,to talk out loud in order to make sense of her own thoughts. The date hadn’t beenbad;there had been nothingwrongwith Oscar. But he had left her feeling removed and clinical. An evening out with Oscar making polite small talk had been a reminder of how much more she enjoyed her time spent with Rawlins, their knees just far enough apart that the static electricity of their skin made her hairs stand on end. She was herself with him, a better version of herself—smarter, funnier, quicker, able to make any joke, any reference, and know that he would understand. It was a strange and rare intimacy that she didn’t know she had lacked until this moment: the peace you feel when you’re able to be completely yourself with somebody else.
The only person she wanted to talk to was Rawlins. And so instead of dialing Bertie’s number, she opened her email app and began clicking out a message to Professor Rawlins.
From:Storer.Ellsbeth
To:Rawlins.T.M.
Subject:(No Subject)
Are you home? Can I come over?
