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Her words had a strange poetic lilt. Josie used to be into that kind of thing until a poetry-loving Italian dumped her.
I didn’t say anything because Josie’s words made a kind of sense.
“And at the end of the day,” she finished, “it’s not practical.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
She shrugged. “It’s not. It’s not practical because it doesn’t make you happy. Even if I’m wrong and delusional and out-of-touch, it doesn’t matter, don’t you get it? Because going around with your ‘reality glasses’ and seeing everything in the worst possible way makes you miserable. So, what’s the point? What’s the point of being ‘realistic’ if it makes you miserable?”
At the time, I rolled my eyes and stormed off and hid Josie’s favorite BBQ kettle chips as retribution. Busy in the routine of working and dating and walking the dog and repeat, I never gave it much thought since.
But here it is again, clouding everything, this negativity like a vise around my life.
And yet, isn’t being witty and wry and sad and sarcastic, with my dark humor and tragic tales, just being me? Isn’t that how I bond with the other sad ones who see it too? Aren’t they more exciting, dynamic, and mysterious, these people who carry a bit of the world’s darkness in themselves?
Even Emerson. He’s blond and wholesome and, at base, a good guy, but that wasn’t what drew me to him. It was his little darkness which he’d shown me late one night when it was just us—the mom who never called, the dad who hardly knew who he was.
At the end of the day, it’s not practical.
I switch the cross of my legs again. Two girls with Jamaican braids stride by, looking at me like they know.
Does Josie have a point?
This ‘realism’ of mine, is it wearing thin? Is it more trouble than it’s worth? Have I really renamed ‘pessimism’ ‘realism’?
And what, if anything, is the alternative?
I get up, starting to walk I don’t know where.
What it comes down to is that I’m just putting off the inevitable, talking to Emerson and finding out the truth.
These here are just mental exertions. They won’t come to anything.
And yet...
I can’t go on with my life like this, jumping at shadows and seeing the worst in everything I lay eyes on.
Emerson and I will never work unless I trust him, trust myself, trust that things can maybe go well. But I don’t know how.
If my pessimism is just pessimism and no good at all, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s all I’ve ever known.
My wanderings take me to the beach. I take off my black and white striped Mary Janes and chuckle at how they are so not beach shoes.
I plop down onto the sand, which molds like memory foam to my butt, and look out at the waves upon waves upon waves. I’ve got on my hat and sunscreen, and the sun is baking my paleness into a tan.
“What are you thinking about?”
It’s him. Of course, it’s him.
He sits beside me and looks where I’m looking.
I’m as surprised as he is at what comes out of my mouth. “Wondering if the world’s going to end.”
He manages to chuckle. “Oh, only that?”
I chuckle too. “Minor things.”
And then, because if I put it off any longer I’ll never say it, I tell him, “I’m sorry. About before.”
I don’t look at him because I don’t want whatever else I say to be shaped by the curve of his smile or his frown. I want it to be mine. I want it to be real.
“I don’t think it will,” he says finally. “Us humans, we’re too adaptive for that. We’ll find a way. Whether it’s in the last year or month or week we have, we’ll find it.”
“About before,” he continues. “That was my ex. Mary. The one I told you about.”
“I figured as much,” I say.
The hard breakup one. Of course.
“But I didn’t ask her to come,” he continues. “Shit, we haven’t been in contact for six months. She just showed up out of the blue. Must’ve found out that I stayed on after the wedding. I’d gotten a few texts from her in the past week and a half, but I just ignored them.”
“And?”
Emerson’s expression doesn’t reveal much. Annoyance, if anything.
“And she showed up just as I was leaving your room,” he says. “Wanted to get back together. Came all the way here to tell me in person.”
“And?”
“And I’m past over it.”
With my heel, I’m digging a hole in the sand. Who knows why?
“Emerson,” I say, careful to keep my voice steady, “if you want to get back together with her... I just want you to know that you don’t owe me anything.”
His laugh is incredulous, annoyed. “You think I’m here because I think I owe you something?”
I shrug.
“Seeing her in person confirmed it for me,” Emerson says. “I don’t feel anything for her anymore.”
