Page 103 of Bad Words

Before I could think myself out of it, I hit Send.

My pulse began to sound in my ears. My gaze flicked from the phone screen to my darkened bedroom window, which looked out the back of the building, past the fire escape. Telephone wires laced the stars. It was almost eleven o’clock, and I hadn’t texted her for more than two weeks. She would probably reply in the morning, if at all.

The phone buzzed in my hand. I felt a hit of energy like a pistol had just popped at a starting line.

Hard to process the imaginative power of a 21-year-old writer who somehow seems to know everything about being alive.

I know, right? I wrote. I’m so glad I didn’t read this when I was 21. I would have broken in half.

Agreed. Thanks for the loan.

The ellipsis appeared as she kept typing. Then it vanished.

I waited. Nothing.

I said, No problem.

I paused, then typed, But you didn’t come over on Friday to borrow that book, did you?

My neck was prickling. I shifted between my sheets, overwarm. I hit Send.

No, she said.

Then why?

Her ellipsis appeared. My eyes started to burn; I didn’t blink for twenty seconds, thirty. She was going to say something mundane, I told myself, something impersonal. Don’t anticipate. There was nothing to anticipate.

A wall of text appeared, and adrenaline shot from my chest to my extremities.

I came by to apologize for not pushing back more forcefully against City assigning me High and Dry to review. To tell you the truth, when my editor assigned me the book, I expressed my doubts multiple times because of the way my previous review had been received, but he overruled me. That said, I suspect I could have argued with more conviction and passed the review on to one of my colleagues. I’m sorry I didn’t take that step. It would have been more ethical, more professional, and a kinder thing to do.

The adrenaline faded. I felt as though I were sinking into my mattress, the comforter weighing me down, the darkness of my bedroom pressing in on me and my phone.

I was filled to my farthest reaches with absurd disappointment.

I closed my eyes and turned off the phone screen and rested its warm edge against my forehead. How could I be unhappy with an apology, the thing I’d craved since the first time we’d met?

The disappointment curdled into shame. I knew why. I’d wanted her to have come over for another reason: just to see me.

Like a masochist, somewhere between the hundredth email and the walk home on New Year’s, I’d begun to want this from her. To want her.

But why would she want me? Some writer whose work she didn’t even respect? Of course she’d been focused on the things she’d always cared about so passionately: critical professionalism, moral correctness. Meanwhile, some self-important part of me had wondered if she’d seemed off-balance because she’d seen Emily and me together.

Obviously Selina Chan didn’t care who I was involved with. On New Year’s, the instant I’d said something borderline suggestive—about what she might want—she’d left. She’d probably been embarrassed that I’d been drunk enough to say something like that.

I turned onto my back and stared up into the dark. I saw Selina, hovering ghostly against my vision, the shine of navy blue silk against her thighs, the set of her chin and the wine-reddened creases in her mouth. I closed my eyes and the vision clarified, and then, in my mind, I was sliding my hand over the side of her neck and leaning forward and tasting her lower lip. Drawing her through the door.

I rocked onto my side again. I turned on my phone and tried to focus. Selina had obviously put a lot into this message, this message that represented such an astonishing disappointment.

Thanks, Selina, I typed. An apology is a valuable thing, coming from you. I should also say I’m sorry for cornering you at the Maynard-Roth party to yell at you.

Oh, it’s nothing that every author hasn’t fantasized about.

Fantasized about. And now I was seeing her in the glimmering green dress she’d worn that night. I was feeling her fingertip impact my chest, remembering how, even then, I’d wanted to run my hand through the dark silk of her hair.

I’m a lucky man, I said, hating myself.

You are. I saw your post with the Anna’s Book Club special editions yesterday. Has your hand recovered from signing all those tip-ins?