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“Why the sudden curiosity with my love life? Wouldn’t you rather know why I’m afraid of heights?” I slowed at the next red light, able to now drag my stare to him for more than a split second.
“Oh, I’m sure it has something to do with a lack of control,” he said, guessing correctly and writing that topic off as completed.
“I don’t know. You’re so…” He struggled for the right word.
“Cold, distant, unfeeling…” I supplied, having heard those attributes used to describe me before.
“No,” he said, considering me. “And if anyone says that, then they haven’t been paying close enough attention. Maybe in most instances you’re a man of few words, and the words you do say can be sharp, but your eyes say a lot.”
He cocked his head, as if searching through his mental vocabulary for something to sum me up. “You’re formidable,” he decided. “I can see how that can be daunting and intense for someone who doesn’t get you. It makes me wonder what it’s like to be loved by you. If you’re different when in love.” He turned back to the sun just as the light turned green.
“I am different when in love,” I said, thinking long and hard. “Softer, maybe. But I don’t know if that’s by choice or out of fear.” That last part had been meant for me, as it wasn’t something I could even begin to explain, nor had the thought ever crossed my mind until then. Through the astonishment of my reveal, a fire I’d known was there but had never tapped into before began raging inside of my core. It only ever simmered below the surface, as I tended to hold that piece of myself back when in love, even while making love. I was too afraid that whatever it was would consume me if I gave into it. Too afraid it would make me even more unlovable.
“What about you?” I asked, circumventing a follow-up question from him. “Ever been in love?” I drove two city blocks and Leland still hadn’t answered. I had no intention of prompting him to. Just because discussions of love weren’t a trigger for me, at least not when talking to him, didn’t mean they weren’t triggering for Leland. The person who should’ve loved him most did try to end his life, after all.
“My mother had an addictive personality,” he eventually said. “If she found something she liked: cake, candy, a particular brand of diet pills… You name it, she’dgorgeherself on it until she became physically ill.” He dropped his feet to the Jeep’s floorboard, then raised his seatback, putting an end to his relaxation. “Our neighbor had won a thousand bucks once on a scratch-off. Seemed like big money to me at the time. I would daydream about being old enough to buy a scratch-off. I had big plans for the money I would no doubt win. On my eighteenth birthday I won five dollars on my first try. I ended up blowing that month’s rent in one hour. I just kept playing and playing and playing.” He hitched his elbow on his door, rubbing a finger over his top lip. “Noon had to come haul me out of that gas station convenience store by my collar.”
I got to the fourth light and made the left, and he pointed for me to pull into a vacant parking spot in front of a rundown night club that hadn’t yet opened for the day. I turned off the engine but didn’t make a move to get out.
“The one thing she couldn’t get enough of was love. She fell into it easily. Obsessed over it, lost jobs over it; the highs were so high, and the lows were fucking scary, Franky.” His eyes were so wide they trembled from the strain. I removed my sunglasses, needing to experience the full scope of what this recollection was doing to him.
“She’d dance with me in the rain after finding a new guy, completely euphoric. And she didn’t hesitate to throw me from a fourth-floor window when he decided he’d had enough of her smart-mouthed kid.”
A loud crack echoed around us, and I looked down to see my glasses snapped in two, a piece in each fist.
“And that’s only the half of it. Wanna know what my worst fear is, Franky? Ending up like my mother. So, no, I’ve never been in love. I’ve actively avoided it.”
I felt compelled to say something, but I’d never been good at saying the right thing in the face of someone else’s pain. And when it came to my own pain, I’d shut down, go inward, and often stay there for way longer than what was acceptable for the people around me. But the deeper I allowed myself to sink, the harder it was to dig myself out of whatever hole I’d plunged into. I’d been told it made me come off as frigid, indifferent. I didn’t want to be either of those things right then.
Leland had already moved on to staring out of his window in thought by the time I reached over to uncurl the fist he had planted on his thigh. He turned back to me, brows drawn together in question. I squeezed my hand around his and said, ‘“Everything’s better when holding hands.’”
“I believe it’s: ‘Things are less scary when holding hands,’” he corrected.
“Same thing, smartass,” I said, snagging a chuckle from him.
***
“Quit acting like you’ve never seen a crummy apartment building before,” Leland muttered as he flipped through his set of keys. I’d already walked the length of the third-floor landing, examining the discolored paint on the patchy walls, peeling it back like a child, and then moving along to see what other trouble I could get into. “You’ve at least seen them in movies. Bad plumbing, the heat and hot water doesn’t work half the time, and there’s even the occasional mouse.”
I got the impression he wasn’t speaking in general, and that he was preparing me for what to expect once we got inside. He only had three keys on the ring, so we should’ve gained entry to his apartment already, yet he was flipping through them for the fourth time.
“Did you want me to wait in the car because you thought I would negatively judge your home?” I asked. He’d wasted five minutes trying to convince me that he didn’t need an escort upstairs.
“Maybe,” he said. “This isn’t exactly ‘estate’ standards.”
“This is the first time I’ve been over to a friend’s place. Well, the first time in around three decades. I’m excited,” I said.
He gave me an odd look. “You’ve never been to someone else’s home?”
“Sure. Family, business acquaintances, my investment broker…” I stopped there, but the list of people I’d had to sit at a dinner table with over the years and pretend my interest in being there went beyond quid pro quo was endless. “This is different. I actuallywantto be here.”
Leland finally inserted the correct key into the lock’s cylinder, appearing less anxious. “You first,” he said after pushing the door open, then bolted it again once we’d both made it into his narrow hallway.
“It’s really a one-bedroom,” he said, brushing past me to lead the way, “but the previous tenants put up a door, turning the living room into a second bedroom.”
We reached a fork in the short hall in no time. “Kitchen,” Leland said, pointing right. I eagerly stepped inside. The space couldn’t hold more than two people. Leland wore that odd look again.
“Um, and this is the bathroom,” he said, pointing to the door that stood ajar to his left. “Can’t get it to stay closed to save my life, but it’s not like my roommate had been modest to begin with.”
