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Amanda has been a friend for a long time; sometimes, she’s been more. Outside of the three longer relationships I’ve had, she defines what my love life has looked like: casual, friends with benefits situations.
Only now, Celeste’s voice rings in my ears.
“That was incredibly selfish…”
I have been. I was.
I am.
“I’m sorry, Amanda, if I ever made you think?—”
“No!” she yelps, then laughs. “Please don’t. Honestly.”
I laugh uncertainly. “Okay.”
She sighs. “I’m not in love with you, Lucas. Sure, I’ve enjoyed our time together and was maybe looking forward to more, but we’re friends first. Are you going to tell me now? Did you fall in love?”
I recall a conversation we had a few years ago, after too many margaritas on both our parts, wherein she diagnosed me as incapable of falling in love. In her words: “I’ve known you since college and met every one of your exes, and believe me, a woman knows. You cared about them, sure, and showered them with respect and loving behavior, but you never looked at them like a man in love would. Like the world could end and as long as you were holding them, everything was okay.”
I’d called her a hopeless romantic with a demented bent and dismissed the words as booze-born bullshit. We’d laughed about it, after. Now I wonder if she was right.
Scratch that—I know she was.
“Yeah,” I manage after a too-long silence. “I’m in love.”
I never fell out of it.
Amanda sighs a bit too dramatically for it to be congratulatory. “Lucky woman.”
If only it were that easy.
Even after we hang up, the conversation lingers as a pit in my stomach.
So I text Celeste.
How was Damien’s first day of soccer camp?
When she doesn’t immediately respond, I busy myself with starting a load of laundry—including sheets this time—and pulling a steak from the fridge that’s been marinating all day.
I check my phone too often over the next hours, as the light outside dims, as I watch mindless television, overcook the steak, and undercook asparagus and a baked potato.
I send her two more texts, neither of which she answers.
Thinking about you, Peapod.
Wish you were lying next to me, even if it means getting your hair up my nose.
And finally, as I collapse in bed near midnight with an anchor dragging my heart down to my balls, I send her a final message.
Sweet dreams.
34
When I wake up Tuesday morning, the familiar colors, shapes, textures, and smells of my apartment are more vivid. Richer, sharper.
Sounds are different, too, almost like there’s a resonance I was never aware of before, or an echo just outside my range of hearing. My alarm is less grating than usual. I’m hyperaware of birds outside, their normally raucous calls a soothing symphony. Even Damien’s choice of morning music is less jarring.
My first cup of coffee tastes like heaven. I drink it slowly, savoring when I usually gulp it like a fiend. My normally utilitarian morning shower is instead a decadent sensory overload, my skin flushed and burning despite cranking the temperature down until I shiver. The sight of teeth marks, pink and fading, on my breasts overwhelms me. I touch myself, orgasming in three quick strokes.
