Page 31 of Given Our History

“I pride myself on being out of touch, thank you. Hey,” I rush to add as she turns to leave. She spins on the heel of her chunky boots to look at me, her face fixed into the very picture of patience. “Stay safe. Don’t leave your drink with anyone.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Child,” I call after her before returning the phone to my ear. “Sorry. Reagan’s taking off to some party.”

“Six years,” Izzy laments. “Six years without that flat iron, and I’ve never found another like it. They just don’t make ’em like that over here.”

“I’ll tell her to mail it to you.”

“No. International shipping prices are highway robbery. And I’d have to use one of those adapter thingies with it, and I’m not sure it’s the right voltage anyway.” The price you pay when you throw caution to the wind and run away to Europe, I guess. “Maybe I’ll hit her up on Instagram. Ask her to Zelle me.”

“She probably wouldn’t see it,” I point out. “I’m pretty sure she has like two thousand followers.”

“Yeah, because she went to public school. That’s normal for them.”

“Speaking of Instagram”—I’m eager to steer clear of any more questions about Teddy—“I saw you deleted all the pictures with Margarida.”

She heaves a loud sigh. “I dumped her ass after I caught her riding around on her moped with some little exchange student. She said she was just giving her a ride, but the girl was clinging to her back like a spider monkey.”

“One girl’s heartbreak is another girl’s Lizzie McGuire Movie.”

“At least I’ve had my main character moment,” Izzy shoots back. “When was the last time you went on an actual date?”

“Why has everyone picked today to bully me about my love life?” I ask, dodging the question because I genuinely have no idea when my last date was. “Reagan was on my case all morning about ‘getting laid.’” I throw air quotes around the phrase like it’s some kind of hip new slang—which is maybe proof that I do, in fact, need to get laid, but I shove the thought to the back of my mind. Archive it, catalogue it. I’ll get back to it later.

“Maybe because you live like a freaking monk. Irving doesn’t require its professors to take a vow of celibacy, last I checked.”

“I don’t live like a monk,” I protest.

“Do you even own a vibrator?”

“Yes, actually.” A little silver number I ordered off a late-night infomercial while wine-drunk on the couch after spring finals.

“When was the last time you used it?”

I haven’t touched it since the unboxing. “That’s personal.”

Izzy laughs in my ear. “Right. So it’s been a while.”

“I just—I’m super busy,” I sputter. “I mean, what would I even fantasize about?” I leave the underlying concern unspoken—not a question of what, but who.

“Read some smut, maybe. I have a whole reading list I can send you.”

“Anything with vampires?” I ask through a mouthful of potato chips.

“No, but I do have a bunch of dark romance. Oooh, there’s this one book where the guy chases the girl through the woods. I’ll mail you my copy,” she says proudly. “Actually, no. It’s kind of a big book, now that I’m thinking about it. I’ll gift you a copy on Amazon.”

I pick at what’s left of my sandwich, my hunger sated. Other things not so sated, if I’m being honest. “That’s part of the problem. I don’t have time to read four-hundred-page novels. If I’m reading, it’s always research. Otherwise I’d never get any work done.”

“Then maybe you should fantasize about Napoleon or something.”

I snort. History never was Izzy’s strong suit. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

It’s been a long week, so I take the evening off from grading reading responses. I permit myself exactly two episodes of True Blood—in my search for good vampire shows, I find myself returning to all the stuff I watched when I was younger—and then I peel myself from the couch and head to the shower. Afterward, I throw on my robe and shuffle into the bedroom, where I remove my coin necklace and place it in the little dish on my nightstand before flopping into bed. It’s only then that I allow myself to access the day’s archives, the thoughts I’ve stuffed into the deepest and darkest filing cabinets of my brain. It’s something of a nightly routine: review every social faux pas, every awkward conversation, before I drift off to sleep.

In today’s news: apparently, everyone’s under the impression that I’m some sort of sex-starved hermit.

They’re not wrong. It’s been at least—actually, no, I don’t want to think about how long it’s been, because I’m pretty sure the last encounter was toward the end of grad school. It’s not the lack of sex that bothers me so much as the lack of desire. I haven’t wanted to have sex with anyone in particular, so I’ve been content to just go about my life without really dwelling on it. But now, lying here with my damp hair in my decidedly unsexy robe, I think maybe it would be nice to want someone. To actually care. To dwell on a living, breathing person, and not on people who have been dead for nearly five hundred years. Even Teddy has put more time and effort into adult romantic relationships than I have.