Pulse

  Mia touched my wrist. My heart skipped like a stone across the ocean.

  “I’ll miss this,” she said quietly.

  We were soaked by the time we got into the car. I bought two overpriced towels from one of the stands and draped them over the leather.

  “Where do you want to go now?” I asked. “We can go anywhere. Anywhere you want.”

  She smiled, but it was weak.

  “Home, I think,” she said, and part of me fell. “I really am tired. It’s not you.”

  “I understand.”

  So I drove her home. We listened to generic radio as we sped along the winding roads, and in the parking lot, after the engine had silenced, she turned to me:

  “Come inside,” she said. “I want you to.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. Nothing else.

  We both knew what this meant. My heart strummed erratically as I climbed the steps, stepped through the threshold of her barren apartment, and turned to look at her again. She looked so timid, frail.

  “Dr. Greene,” she whispered.

  From the short distance between us, I could see that she was trembling.

  “Little fox,” I said gently.

  She shook her head, her eyes falling.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said. “It will make this too hard.”

  I walked towards her carefully, and she moved towards me slowly. The entire span of footsteps seem to happen in slow-motion, broadcasting the fear we both felt.

  What were we doing?

  Mia reached out, pressing a palm to my chest. The other took hold of my hand. Our fingers interlaced, slow and uncertain, and she said:

  “The next one who finds you will be so lucky.”

  The final arrow. I was gone, running on fumes, only living for this moment.

  I caught her face in my hands when she went to turn away, and her eyes cut into mine. I could practically feel her heart slowly tearing in half.

  I kissed her, falling to my knees, her face still cradled in my palms. It was hard, harder than I wanted it to be, but weeks of starvation had halted any shred of rationale.

  I pulled her against me, her moans soft, her eyelids heavy.

  She let me pick her up, carry her into the bedroom, lay her down. When she started to pull of her top, I stopped her.

  “No,” I said. “I want to.”

  I slowly took off her clothes. Her shirt, her bra. I rolled her pants down, tossing them aside. I caught her underwear with my fingers, slowly sliding them down her thighs.

  She gave a small sigh, her face already flushed. Her breasts rose and fell with each exhale; the shadows pooled against the crevices of her bones.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I whispered. I had to stop myself from saying little fox, and the void, the absence of something so simple as a term of affection, was real.

  I was already hard. I yanked off my T-shirt, unbuttoned and zipped down my fly, let my jeans fall. Mia responded with wide eyes, gripping hands, a sharp inhale.

  “You’re so perfect,” she said softly. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re real.”

  I freed my erection from my boxers, hovering over her.

  Before sinking in, I took a moment just to study what she looked like, right then, full of longing and heartbreak.

  “Why are you waiting?” she asked, though it sounded like begging. Her breath had grown shallow.

  “I want to remember your face,” I whispered. “I want to remember this.”

  Her hands pressed against my back, drawing my body closer to hers. We kissed again gently, tongues dancing lightly. I grazed my teeth over her throat, feeling the warmth against my mouth. Her skin was hot as foil.

  Blind with lust, I slid into her slowly, sinking into her delicate frame and feeling every wire in my body snap. I kissed her more deeply, our eyes closed and skin pressed against one another, sinking into each other, with everything just a collective mesh of moans and the sound of her creaking mattress.

  With each thrust, I felt myself growing closer. Her fingertips skimmed down the length of my spine, sending a course of shivers over me. She wrapped her arms around my waist, forcing me in deeper, pleading without words.

  And I gave her what she wanted, begging with my own harder, frantic thrusts, until I couldn’t hold back any more.

  “Mia,” I gasped. “Oh, God…”

  We both came together. A flash of lightening struck. And when the final cord fell, and the music died, and we were just two bodies on a bare mattress, I took her into my arms.

  She didn’t protest.

  When the room grew quiet, I asked:

  “Should I leave?”

  “No,” she said. “Please stay.”

  Her heart was still pounding. I could feel it against my chest.

  I kissed her again, lingering until she pulled away away. She looked at me, but I couldn’t tell what was going through her head.

  She wasn’t going to let me read her. She wouldn’t let me in.

  So this was how it would end.

  Early the next morning, when the sky was still dark, I dropped her off at the airport. We drank our coffee quietly, and she was relatively bundled up when we got into the car.

  “I know,” she muttered. “But I always get cold on planes. It doesn’t matter where I’m traveling to. I need a sweater.”

  I smiled, wanting to share her anticipation, her excitement. But this was, above all things, the worst day of my life.

  I wheeled her luggage to checkin, and we stood for a second longer, the air filled with a sort of awkwardness. As if all of the things that had gone down between us over the concluded months had never happened. We were strangers. Capable of a second chance; void of the positions that had cut us down from the very beginning.

  Hello, my name is Alex. You don’t have to call me Dr. Greene. Just Alex.

  It was all so fucking unbearable.

  “Well,” she said softly. “I’ll see you around.”

  A part of me almost said: you know that’s not true – but I resisted.

  “I’ll see you around,” I told her. “Have a safe flight. Take care of yourself over there. Enjoy seeing your family.”

  None of these things were what I wanted to say. But in the airport, before Mia’s departure, was not the place to say what I truly felt. How badly I wanted her to stay. How selfish I was. How I was losing my mind at the thought of her absence; not temporary, but forever.

  “Goodbye, Dr. Greene,” she said. She pressed her lips together, swallowing hard. “I…I’ll call you when I reach Phoenix, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She hugged me tightly. My hands fell against her back. And even through the layers of clothing, I could feel the heavy thrum of her heartbeat as she held onto me for one last time.

  “I’ve listened to thousands of heartbeats,” I told her. I closed my eyes, kissing the top of her head. “But I’ll only miss the sound of yours.”

  Chapter 29

  MIA

  Arizona was a mix of dry heat and chalky sunlight. It bled through my bedroom drapes; jail-cell slants burning hot against my skin.

  “Honey,” Mom touched a hand to my cheek, stirring me awake. I blinked my eyes open, spying her dressed in her bathing suit. She smelled like coconuts and chlorine. “I think it’s time to wake up.”

  I could have stayed in bed forever. Every part of me was sinking into the jersey-linen sheets; soft and reminiscent of a time when this was my home. The walls were still covered in old posters of kittens and early 2000’s musicians: Coldplay, Evanescence, The Killers (Brandon Flowers was forever my early-teens heart-throb). A lava lamp sat beside my bed on the nightstand.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. I’m up.”

  “Why don’t you come outside and lounge by the pool with me? Your Dad made margaritas.”

  “Margaritas? But it’s technically morning, isn’t it?”

  “Mia,” she said. “I know you’ve be
en having a hard time. But that’s over now. You need to get up, catch some sunlight, get those bones in gear. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  Straining to look at the clock, I saw it was 12:00pm. 3:00pm Eastern time. If I were still on the East Coast, I’d have slept the day away already.

  “Let me get motivated first,” I said, settling on the words. “And then I’ll join you.”

  She smiled.

  “I’ll make you a sandwich,” she said. “There’s leftover tomatoes from the garden.”

  “Thank you,” I said, face still buried in a pillow. “I love you.”

  I loved my mother furiously; she was a wonderful woman. Still, I was glad to be alone. Alone with my muddled thoughts. Alone with the sinking anchor in my chest.

  I was some-thousand miles away from Dr. Alex Greene. And I missed him terribly.

  Little Fox sat on the nightstand, leaning against the lava lamp, eying me with those sad, button-brown eyes.

  Picking him up, I hugged him tightly, swearing that I could still catch a subtle hint of Alex’s cologne.

  Laying in bed, I thought about our final night, and how his hands trembled. I recalled with a painful clarity how it felt when he undressed me. Powerful, worshiped. Aggressively desired.

  Tapping on the window, Mom whistled. And I, still full of smoke and sighs, finally dragged myself outside.

  The Arizona sun was so much harsher. What the humidity masked in Florida was double-downed by the absence of water vapors; in the dry heat, you felt everything. The sunlight sank deep into the skin; I could feel it in my bones. Even with a million layers of sunblock, I still feared burning.

  Laying on a float in the pool, Mom and I shared casual banter. She told me about her gardening pursuits, and how one of her friends had gone off the deep-end when it came to her couponing obsession. How she was really starting to enjoy having the house to herself and living simply, domestically, along with my father.

  “And honey, I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Your father and I both are. I can’t believe my daughter is going to Cambridge. In two weeks, you’ll be on the other side of the pond.”

  “I know,” I said, in a kind of disbelief myself. I had been so wrapped up in Dr. Greene that even the things I should have been most excited for – Cambridge, for God’s sakes – had been swept under the rug. “I should probably make sure I’ve packed an umbrella.”

  During the in-between, Mom and I watched every episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, which was terrible and embarrassingly enjoyable all at once. I helped her plant an herb garden, and Dad taught me how to properly grill a steak.

  Every evening, we dined el fresco underneath the scorching orange-streaked sunset, sipping iced tea and enjoying the little remaining time together.

  Two weeks went by. Occasionally I’d look at my phone, expecting a call. I had called him, as promised. But he’d never answered.

  Whatever. I told myself. Even if the thought was bullshit, and phony, and the complete opposite of how I felt. He was never meant for you, anyway.

  Curled up in bed, I held Little Fox against me, my eyes peering out the window towards the noir sky; everything was clearer here, too. The stars, the night-sky, preserved like diamonds through a looking-glass. The Milky Way stretched on, towards oblivion.

  It looked a bit like a child’s painting. There was a profound innocence to it all.

  I wished that I had someone to share it with. To sit out on the dry grass, look up at the sky, and share the sense of woeful awe that I felt.

  I wondered what the sky looked like where he was. I wondered if he was watching, too.

  On my final night in Arizona, he called. I was sitting in bed, staring at my packed suitcase, feeling frightened and uncertain and a little bit sick.

  When his name popped up, lighting up the screen, I felt a little bit irritated, and a little bit heart-broken, and all around conflicted.

  I loved him. I understood why he hadn’t called. This wasn’t easy for him, either – and we had already said our goodbyes.

  I paused, hesitated, and answered.

  “You never picked up my call,” I said. “Or any of them, actually.”

  I could practically see the slant of his mouth. I pictured him laying on his pristine-white couch, wearing his rumpled dress-shirt and slacks, still in his tie, smelling of hospital and that clean, tangy scent of his body wash.

  “When do you leave for England?” he asked.

  I sighed heavily.

  “You’re a real mind-fuck sometimes, Alex,” I said. A chord inside of me hummed. I rarely called him Alex, and saying his name out loud made this feel different. It hit a bare nerve. “I leave tomorrow. Early in the morning.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I hope…I’m sorry, Mia. I know I should have answered. It was shitty of me not to. This has just left a bigger scar than I could have ever anticipated. I wasn’t trying to ignore you. I was just trying to reach a place where I could hear your voice and not fall back to where I started.”

  I could hear the strain as the words tumbled. I looked at my own clock: 11:24pm. It was almost 2:30am in Orlando.

  “I know,” I said gently.

  “Write to me,” he said. “If you write to me, I’ll write back.”

  “I will,” I said. “I promise.”

  I tried to picture his smile, but I couldn’t. My heart clenched in response to all of the little things, the little memories, that were slowly trickling away. It was already, in the span of just over a month, difficult for me to remember exactly how he smiled.

  Something about that hurt. I felt my face grow hot.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I looked towards the skyline again. It was still clear, the moon still full.

  “Do you still think about me?”

  He grew quiet for a moment, but I could still hear his breath.

  “Yes,” he finally answered, his voice heavy with what was probably something stronger than water. “Every single fucking day.”

  And whether by purpose or accident, the call ended. The line went silent.

  Chapter 30

  ALEX

  Every night, from my apartment balcony, I looked up and tried to catch a glimpse of unclouded sky. I watched the lights seep into the streets, with all the colors spilling together like paint.

  Every little thing, every single star or smile, reminded me of her.

  With Mia gone, I was left to spend my nights either at the hospital or tilting a bottle of something strong into a glass. I spent my mornings locked into the same routine, buzzing around the hallways that were packed as congested arteries. I spent my afternoons sitting lonely at my desk, staring at my diplomas, feeling like a man made of stone.

  Glancing down at my phone, I gave it a spin. I had become bored, and restless, running off my last vapors. Every little thing – a paper set down on my desk, a release to sign, or one of the nurses popping in to tell me that my next patient was ready and waiting – made me sigh.

  Last we spoke, I hadn’t hung up on Mia. My phone had died.

  Two weeks later, I received a letter.

  Alex -

  I’m writing this while sitting on the edge of the River Cam, watching the punters row by. It’s a beautiful day, and the sunlight is warm and welcoming after a long bout of gray skies. It’s the kind of warmth that settles nicely into your bones. I come here most afternoons to sit by the water. Sometimes I bring my homework, or some bread to feed the swans, and other days I just bring my thoughts. Occasionally I’ll walk around King’s College Chapel and admire the architecture. So far, I’d say so far, it’s one of my favorite places.

  You’d like it. It’s very serene. It’s the kind of place you can go to escape from everything.

  For now, here are some things I’m learning: the rain is not a stereotype, everyone is so polite, and they call shopping carts trollies. Everything is more delightful-sounding here. The buildings are magical; the
y don’t make ‘em in the States like they do here. Everything is so full of history. The roads are lined with cobblestones nearby where I live. Have you ever heard the sound of a horse-drawn carriage over cobblestone streets? It’s wonderful.

  Right now, I’ve got the kettle on (see? I’m already picking things up) and trying to prepare myself for this essay I need to write. I’m also trying hard not to think about you so much.

  I hope you’re well.

  Take care of yourself, Dr. Greene.

  Sincerely yours,

  Mia

  Selfishly, I wished the letter was longer. It was short, written on notebook paper in purple ink. Still, I read and re-read it about a dozen times.

  And that same night, I wrote her a letter. I figured I owed her that much, and there was something intimate about spending a few hours at my desk, thinking about what I wanted to say, and penning the words down. Paper and ink.

  When I left the post office, my wallet burning after having hashed out a ridiculous amount for expedited shipping, it still felt right.

  As I sat in my car, it began to rain. Heavy, swollen droplets. And every one of them reminded me of Mia.

  Another sullen sigh; another fist to my chest. Call me Houdini, because I wouldn’t survive another hit.

  I had tried to imagine a life with her, of course. Like anybody who finds themselves desperately in love. I envisioned that she would be the one in the framed photographs, our smiles lighting up the empty spots on my desk. I imagined future children, a future home, a future story to tell other people.

  But I think most of us know how things are going to end. Deep down, at least. We just never acknowledge it, because giving nod to the insanity that pricks us like a poisoned spindle is just too easy. We’d rather struggle. We’d rather drive straight-on towards the inevitable crash, clinging onto our hopes and notions until we eventually realize they were nothing but a vain, naive illusion.

  She had said it herself. She was too young, and I was too old. She needed to finish her schooling, and I needed to start growing the fuck up and playing the part of a proper doctor.

  Tapping a finger against my desk, I shook my head slowly.