Page 4 of Kiss Slay Replay

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Maybe he’ll come to me if I’m patient. I abandon my ramen, let it congeal on the counter, flop down on my mattress and skim through movies on Netflix. Again on Cassie’s recommendation, I try the first installment in a famous horror franchise. A dumb slasher where pretty teenagers get eviscerated by some masked assailant who, from what I gather, is an interdimensional grim reaper. I half watch while scrolling on Bumble, which is honestly scarier than any horror movie. These dudes…The audacity. The delusion. The deranged hatchet-wielding teen murderer is a more eligible bachelor.

I drop my phone, slam my laptop shut, and roll out of bed. I pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Grab my purse, my life crisis cigarettes, and step into my boots. I leave my phone and take a book instead.

The sticky summer heat is overstaying its welcome, and it makes me ache for fall. There are no leaves on the ground yet, only trash. I kick through it on my way to the bar around the corner. They don’t know me there, but they will.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asks, cool as can be with blue hair and a septum piercing.

“Whiskey sour, please.”

They nod.

Across the bar are two women seemingly on a date. They sit close, elbows on the counter, faces almost touching. They look so happy, breathing in each other’s air. Their drinks are near-empty, glasses sweating, soaking the cocktail napkins underneath. I inhale, hoping for a contact high. New crush, young love—the best drug on earth. And maybe the most dangerous.

So many years I spent on the couch next to someone I loved more than myself, someone I made the center of my universe, my whole life, distance growing when we weren’t paying attention, the chasm between cushions sucking up loose change and lint and romance and connection and we were just sitting there, fucking around on our phones or computers or watching TV, none the wiser. Now I sit alone witnessing lovers, with my love lost, my universe laid to waste.

Now I sit crying in public at this bar I was hoping I could frequent. I wipe my tears on the backs of my wrists and open my book, pretend to read.

The bartender slides my drink across the counter.

“On the house,” they say, winking at me.

The kindness is too much, and I can’t be subtle about this. About the crying.

“Thank you,” I whimper.

They salute me and turn their back.

Now the lovers watch me. Probably full of pity. It’s easy to be smug when you’re newly in love. They must be thinking, Not me. Never me. Never us.

I know because I thought that once, too. Kissing Ravi’s hands on our first date, as we walked through the West Village on our way to eat at a hole-in-the-wall place that served exclusively chicken fingers. I remember picking our dipping sauces with such glee, discovering a mutual love of spicy mustard. The establishment literally blew up a few weeks later thanks to an illegally installed gas line, killing two people and injuring many others, collapsing the building. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

I left Ravi thinking it was the right thing. I left hoping to feel something again, but all I feel is pain. And those two women, their legs tangled under the bar, hair spilling over each other’s shoulders, I envy them. God, I envy them. For the joy they feel in this moment. But it’s inevitable. If they feel sorry for me, I feel sorry for them. Because love cannot be kept, cannot be sustained. It cycles through. With the euphoric highs follow the brutal lows. They will be me, someday, as I was them.

I down the rest of my whiskey sour and leave a twenty on the counter because I can’t accept the generosity of a free drink. I don’t deserve it. I smoke half a cigarette before going up to the apartment that is now mine. Archimedes is on the bed but evacuates to the closet when he sees me.

On my mattress, on the floor, I open my laptop and resume the movie. Watch a bunch of beautiful young people meet horrible fates. A hatchet to the head. An unfortunate fall into a sawmill. They run, they scream, they cry. They fight for their lives.

When the girl with hair almost as red as mine gets her hands hacked off while attempting to rip the mask off her assailant, I lean close to the screen and whisper, “Could always be worse.”

2

“You have sufficient food and water for the next forty-eight hours,” I tell Archimedes, who glares at me from the closet, his eyes glowing neon with disdain. “Your litter box is clean. And I’m leaving. You should be thrilled.”

I almost tell him that I’m going to see his father, but I fear that would only intensify his loathing. Archie is technically my cat; I adopted him a few months before Ravi and I got together. They sure took to each other, though. Best buds. While Ravi was around, Archimedes tolerated me. I’d get the occasional cuddle. Some charity purrs.

When we split, I offered for Ravi to keep the cat, not wanting to separate them. To cause either of them more hurt.

“He loves you more,” I’d said.

“I’m not taking your cat,” Ravi said. Then shook his head, softened his tone. “He reminds me of you.”

A power drill straight to the heart. I failed to muster up an argument, to insist as I probably should have. Which is how I ended up here, cooing to a creature I adore, who happens to dislike me almost as much as I dislike myself.

My suitcase is packed. The dress for tonight. A daytime look for tomorrow, a nighttime look for tomorrow. A backup dress. Comfy pajamas. Multiple pairs of shoes. A genuinely unsettling amount of makeup. Travel toothbrush, mini face wash, et cetera. It’s too early to leave, but I’m not doing anything now except waiting around anxious. I somehow managed a full day of work before ten a.m., finishing an entire pitch deck for a new client—an actor’s tequila brand, because what the world really needs is another celebrity spirit. I thought breakups made you useless, inefficient as a result of excessive wallowing. But I’m incredibly productive. Desperate for distraction. It’s when I run out of things to do that it all falls apart. That I begin to look around and wonder if this is it, if this is what I blew up my life for.

It’s a waste not to wonder.