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“Did George tell you?” he asks. “About us?”
“That you two were together?” I ask.
He nods.
“Not in so many words but I assumed...from the way he spoke about you.”
He laughs in that way that makes it clear he finds none of this funny. “What way was that.”
I shrug. “Like he cared about you. Like he loves you.”
“He didn’t tell me about this date until earlier today,” Jesse says. He winces. “I just mean that he cares maybe too much sometimes.”
A familiar sadness blankets me, warm and comforting in a sick sort of way. At least I’m used to the feeling of my colleagues’ rejection, compared to this new rejection from an almost stranger. “You’re not going to come inside,” I say.
When I blink up at him, there’s something about the shadow from the motion-sensor outdoor light, the slope of his shoulders, that makes me think he’s wearing a sad blanket, too.
“No. I’m not.”
“It was nice to meet you, Jesse.” I hold out my hand. He looks at it and, like last time, he doesn’t take it. He steps out of the doorway, shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Thank you for the date, Lulu. It was...” He pauses for so long I think he’ll let it hang. “Interesting.”
I don’t know what I wanted Jesse to say. I don’t know if he could have said anything that would make me feel not so lonely right now. But whatever I needed him to say, it wasn’t that. Silence would have been better. So, I say nothing back, and close the door, and wait in the dark until I hear the crunch of his boots on my gravel walkway. Leaving the lights off in the main room, I wash my face, brush my teeth, and crawl into bed in my underwear, just like I’d planned a few hours earlier. I open my laptop and there, in my inbox, is an email. The subject line reads “I’m Sorry.” I delete it without opening it. There’s nothing new to be said.
It’s still disorienting sleeping here where everything is so quiet. My bed in my UK flat rested beneath a transom window; every night I heard cars from the high street below, and every morning I woke up with the sun on my face. This place doesn’t feel like home, even though it’s attached to the house I grew up in. Even though I’ve been home since last September, my entire life jammed into three bags, and the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed hope that academia wouldn’t chew me up and spit me out.
The bed is cold and empty. Outside, the rain is falling in earnest, thunder rolls like the sky’s steady heartbeat, and the wind isn’t loud but the house creaks around me.
Things with Brian were passionate, red hot. Something about his elbow patches and tortoiseshell glasses, juxtaposed against the soft curl of his hair and his crooked front tooth, really did it for me. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. He also couldn’t keep his hands off Nora. I’d tell myself that there was no passion with Jesse, not like with Brian, that the familiarity with which I spoke to him, the ease I felt even in my awkwardness was a sign of a dimmed lantern rather than a blazing bonfire. I’d tell myself that, if it wasn’t for that kiss. I’d tell myself we’re Just Friends but he wasn’t interested in even that. Of course, I’d thought he was nervous, too. I was projecting. He wasn’t nervous. He wanted nothing to do with me at all. It was all a favor for George, a last-minute hand for his old friend.
“It wasn’t going to be anything,” I say into the quiet. Since I moved back to Wilvale, I’ve lived and relived my entire relationship with Nora, from flatmates to coworkers to best friends, trying to identify the moment it went wrong. Searching for what made me disposable. I’ve googled “how to make friends as an adult.” I’ve bought books, opening the packages once I get them into my apartment, so my mother won’t see the titles on her kitchen table. I’ve listened to podcasts and watched old talk shows. All the advice comes down to this: be yourself and your people will find you.
When am I going to learn that myself will always be a little too much—and somehow not enough?
Chapter Three
Jesse
I make it home just as the sky opens up. In the time it takes for me to run from my driveway to my front door, I’m soaked. I hang my jacket on the hook by the door, throw my keys in the same dish Pop always did, and leave my clothes in a trail behind me as I strip all the way to the bathroom. The shower is lukewarm. I really should get the water tank fixed. Another problem on an unending list of things I need to save up for now that I’m bringing home a security guard’s wage rather than a firefighter’s salary plus benefits.
The discomfort of my shower’s lackluster performance does nothing to calm the erection that started when Lulu pressed herself against me. Despite a double body wash, I can’t get the smell of her, lavender and light, out of my nose. The water splashing over the tiles can’t drown out the sound of her voice, excited and confident when she talked about witches—fucking witches—and gay kings and early modern whatever the fuck; then breathy and hopeful when she asked me tocome insidelike she was auditioning for my next wet dream.
“Fuck,” I growl.“Fuck.”
I stare at the slate gray shower tiles as I wrap my hand around my dick. But all I see are her cheeks, flushed from the beer and the sudden, unseasonable cold. Her lips swollen fromme. This time when she invites me to come inside, I say yes. We’d shut the door, keep the lights off. She’d push my jacket from my shoulders, and I’d do the same to her. She’d kiss me with my back against the door for what felt like hours. I’d suck her nipples through her shirt, and I hear her cry out, the sound so real it echoes off the tiles. We’d fall on the bed, our clothes gone. I’d touch her everywhere. I’d taste her while her thighs and hands pinned my mouth to her body.
In the fantasy, I’d fuck her for hours.
In reality, I don’t get past the part where I thrust into her, her body hot and soft, her fingers in my mouth. I come and the water washes it away. My skin prickles, suddenly too hot in the cooling water.
I dry myself off before the sputtering bathroom fan can even consider defogging the mirror. Lie in bed with the lights off and my phone silenced, George’s text—Let me know how it goes!—unanswered. The rain has picked up outside, the wind throwing it like a sheet against the windows. I stare at the random patterns in the stucco ceiling, as the vision of Lulu slowly disappears. Until all that’s left is disappointment, mostly in myself.
If she ever saw me again, she’d be able to see it all over me. Not only what I just did to myself in the shower, my lips still hot from her warm exhales. She’d be able to see it all. That Iwantedto come inside. And not just for sex. That I wanted to sit beside her and listen to her talk about just about anything. George knows one thing, at least: I have a type. They’re talkative, where I am not. But what he doesn’t know is that getting me out of whatever rut this is can’t be cured by one date.
No matter how horny my bi ass might be.
How long will it take her to realize that my silence isn’t the kind that wears off with time, that my résumé has two lines: firefighter and security guard—and that I’m only considered good at the latter because I have experience not falling asleep on overnight shifts and my size makes me “intimidating” even if I feel anything but. How long until she finds out I can’t even come out to my grandfather, that I waited so long to tell the man who raised me the truth that now it’s too late. How long would it take her to see that I don’t fit into her life the way I didn’t fit into George’s or my grandfather’s or my own.
