by Kristen Mae
The waiter came and took her order, and when she gave it, her voice was low and gravelly, like she wanted to breathe sex all over everybody. Her hair was still wet from a recent shower. What the fuck was she doing?
I looked at Claire. Her mouth was hanging open.
One of Iris’s friends whispered, “So? What happened? Spill it.”
Iris uncrossed her legs, smiling through another wince—I was sure I wasn’t imagining it—and leaned forward to whisper to the girls at her table. I watched them with unguarded fascination while my heart ripped itself apart in my chest. She was really going to do it. She was really going to pretend nothing had happened.
Iris must have felt my gaze on her back because she twisted around to look at me. Her eyes were blank, like she was peering at me from an empty vessel. I noticed an ugly red mark on her neck before she adjusted her hair to cover it. She turned back to her giggling friends and resumed her whispered lies.
“That was weird,” Claire said under her breath. “The way she looked at you. I mean, right? I’m not crazy, am I?”
My head was spinning. I thought of how I’d shut down after what happened to Trey, how I would’ve given anything for people not to have known, how I still didn’t want anyone to know. Why did seeing Iris pretend nothing was wrong make me want to claw my skin off? Make me want to claw her skin off?
I took a bite of my pastry. It tasted like Styrofoam. “No. You’re not crazy,” I said flatly.
Iris’s bullshit prattle had started off discreet, but now she was talking loudly enough that I could make out what she was saying. Everyone could make out what she was saying. Fucking liar. Denier. Idiot. I knew I wasn’t being fair with the names I called her in my head, but the thoughts came anyway.
“How big?” one of the girls asked, leaning in.
Iris giggled. “Oh, huge.”
A thick, awkward hush crept over the group, the kind where people clink their silverware extra loudly because they’re too horrified to think of anything to say but they’re desperate to cover up the thing they’re hearing. Iris’s lurid, lying voice floated above it all like she was a puppet with someone’s hand up her ass.
“Shut up.” My voice was barely more than a whisper but sharp enough to cut through every other sound. “Just shut up. Just shut the fuck up.”
All clinking stopped. Forks paused in midair. Even the seagulls weren’t screeching anymore. Claire especially seemed stupefied, her clear blue eyes bugging out at me in horror like I’d just torn the wings off a butterfly.
Iris raised her eyebrows in mock offense but blushed a deep crimson. I could see the nervous swallow in her throat. “Geez. Who pissed in your Cheerios?”
I threw some Euros on the table, shoved my chair out, and walked away from the group with as much dignity as I could muster on legs that threatened to give out beneath me. I knew they all thought I’d lost my mind. They thought Iris was just being a typical dumb twenty-year-old slut. They thought that she might be ruining her reputation, but that it wasn’t for me to judge. I shouldn’t be telling my students to shut the fuck up.
I wanted to run so badly, but if I did, everyone would know how insane I was. I forced myself to walk, but fast, and I soon felt Claire behind me, breathing hard to match my pace. When I was sure I was out of view of the group, I broke into a run. I wanted to get away from Claire, too, or at least have her believe I wanted to get away from her. The truth was that I wanted her to follow me—needed her there with me. I ran, but slowly enough that she could keep up, and when I arrived at the wall, I ran parallel to it for a while until I found one of the dirt paths that angled upward. Then I ran harder, flip-flops slapping against the dirt, my little purse bouncing against my hip, and Claire wheezing behind me trying to keep up.
At the top of the wall, I stopped and caught my breath, clutching my purse against my belly. Pedestrians walked by, as ignorant of our troubles as we were of theirs. Claire caught up and bent over with her hands on her knees. “Holy shit,” she gasped. “You are in really good shape.”
I shrugged off her odd attempt at lightheartedness. I felt sick, like I really might throw up.
“Hazel, are you okay?” she asked. She stood up straight though she was still breathing heavily.
I hugged my purse tighter to me. “Iris. Fucking…god, she’s so full of shit.”
“Yeah, obviously,” said Claire. “But I’m worried about you. This, you running like this, this isn’t really about Iris. This is about you.”
I gritted my teeth and shook my head.
“Hazel?” A breeze whipped over the top of the wall, and Claire’s hair flew away from her face in a way that made time stop for a few seconds, let me observe every line and shadow and hue in her face in agonizing, painstaking detail.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She shook her head at me. Her hair was still billowing wildly around her, making her seem more than human. “Why don’t you talk to me anymore?”
“I talk plenty.”
“Only about trivial stuff. I can feel you pulling away. Before Italy, you told me you couldn’t study because you were sick. Oren told Mike you weren’t sick at all. So what is really going on?”
I hugged my arms around myself. “Please, Claire. You’re too close already.” I felt the cracking, felt all that hot lava pressing me from the inside out, boiling and splattering and trying to break free.
“You mean because the thing with Iris stirs up old feelings for you? And you don’t want to think about that stuff?”
Then I was suddenly very mixed up, unsure which upset me most—my own past, Iris’s present, or my insane feelings for Claire. I had that feeling again, that if I could have Claire, even just once, then maybe everything else wouldn’t seem so terrible. But that wasn’t something I could say, at least not out loud, and even if I could say it, it wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me.
A young couple walked by, smiling and holding hands and chattering in Italian, somehow unable to perceive the cataclysm happening mere feet away, and then their backs were to us, their chatter faded, and Claire and I were suddenly alone on top of the wall. I just stood there breathing too hard and blinking too much, afraid to speak. Afraid of what I might say.
Her swimming pool eyes bored into mine. “Hazel, I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
But she wasn’t. Not in the way I wanted her to be. She was everything a friend should be and then some, the most understanding and intuitive person I’d ever known, but I selfishly, irrationally, crazily, wanted more. “I’m so sorry,” I said, and I could feel my eyes prickling with the beginnings of tears.
She flung her hands out in frustration. “What are you sorry for?”
And there it was, the thick, jagged crack. Finally. It ripped through me and tore open a deep chasm that swallowed my inhibitions. I took a slow step toward Claire and put my hands on either side of her face. My heart crashed so violently in my chest that the noise of it blocked out every other sound.
I waited for her to pull away, and when she didn’t, I put my mouth on hers. Crazy. And she let me. Crazier. Jesus god, her lips were so much softer than in my dreams. My insides turned to soup. Then my tongue was in her mouth, feeling for her tongue, wanting to pour my desire into her, to share it with her, to give her some of that awful burden I’d been carrying around all on my own.
And she kissed me back. Her hands floated in the air beside us like startled little stars, but she kissed me back. Her mouth tasted like espresso and sugar. A moan escaped me, a whimper, almost. How embarrassing for her to hear that little cry, because it said so much, but there was no stopping it. No stopping anything. The wind whipped around us, smug and triumphant, as if it were responsible for our kiss, as if it had blown us together, and my hands moved with it, sweeping over her without forethought, to her face, her neck, her shoulders, greedy and wanting.
A shrill noise startled us apart. We turned together in search of the sound, breathless and stunned ourselv
es. A man on a bike rode by us, whistling and leering. He swerved, righted himself, and continued down the path.
My hands flew to my mouth. I’d kissed Claire. She’d kissed me back. My underwear was wet, for god’s sake: I’d stood there and gushed all over myself. Jesus. That made me giggle too. I knew I was teetering on the edge of delirium because I should have been ashamed and horrified at what I’d just done, but I wasn’t. I was fucking ecstatic.
“Holy shit,” Claire said, her eyes wide with shock. She brought a hand to her face, as if unsure of the thing that had just touched her there, and then she wiped her mouth.
Wiped my kiss off.
As quickly as if someone had flipped a switch, all my beautiful, wild feelings ceased to exist. My chest caved in. My heart stopped beating. I still saw the girl standing before me, but I didn’t recognize her anymore. I couldn’t even remember her name.
She dropped her eyes from mine and turned her back on me, so slow and measured I almost doubted my perception of time. I crossed my arms against the goosebumps springing up all over my skin. Stiff and deliberate as a rusted tin man, the blond girl with the curls walked away from me and took the path down off the wall, leaving me quaking and hugging myself and praying a freak bolt of lightning would shoot from the sky and send me sizzling into the atmosphere.
NINETEEN
That afternoon, I walked the wall with my arms still hugged around myself despite the warmth of the sun, choking on tears until my throat was sore. I felt like someone had scraped out my guts and filled me up instead with liquid humiliation. Claire’s rejection had obliterated my longing for her, and my insides, that liquid humiliation, were freezing into a dense block of unfeeling. Swallowing, breathing, the very beating of my heart—everything turned cold, as if I were slowly becoming encased in a creeping layer of frost.
I don’t know how many times I circled the wall, but it was late in the afternoon when I finally took one of the paths back down into the streets of Lucca. Somehow I stumbled upon a little public garden bursting with cheerful blooms that I might have appreciated on any other day but now only seemed to mock me. I deposited myself onto a bench and cried until I had no tears left and could no longer feel one shred of desire for Claire.
The next time I looked up at the sky, the sun hung low on the horizon, creating gorgeous, swirling ribbons of pink and purple.
Sunset. I imagined the apartment, what it would be like to face Claire and her logical, matter-of-fact detachment, and I shivered. Sleeping under a bush in the garden seemed less crazy than facing her. Still, I trudged along the street back toward the apartment, each step heavier than the one before.
She was sitting on the edge of the couch with her elbows on her knees when I opened the door, and she jumped up as I entered. “Jesus. Hazel, finally.” Then her eyes met my mine. “Oh my god, Hazel. Oh my god.”
I could only imagine how swollen and red my face must be after crying all day. Claire came at me with her arms outstretched, and my shoulders hunched up by my ears. “Don’t touch me,” I growled.
I couldn’t bear to look at her. Her pity blew out from her like wind, rushing over me and lifting the hairs on my arms. I clenched my fists and pushed past her toward my room.
“Hazel, please.” Her voice cracked. “Jesus, I’m sorry. Talk to me. Please, I didn’t know.”
I slammed the door and yanked my laptop out of its bag, desperate for some kind of escape. I pulled up my email, barely able to see straight through my agitation to read the words on the screen, but at least it was somewhere to point my thoughts, a place to put my hands and eyes.
The first message was from Oren. God, Oren…what had I done?
Hazel,
Taking a quick break from work and figured I’d say hello. I miss you like crazy, but I hope you’re having a great time. I know things have been difficult for you lately. Don’t forget what I said about C. It really is ok. Love you - Oren
Stupid, optimistic Oren thinking me kissing a girl would give him a better fuck. I deleted the email, wishing the cold frost could envelop me completely.
Another email was from Katrina, something about a chamber ensemble coming to perform a concert that coming Thursday in the Anfiteatro and how we’d need to reschedule our rehearsal for that night, and…and they’d fixed the leak in the other apartment. Claire and I would each have our own space. The cold crept over me as I read Claire’s “Reply All” indicating that she would take the other apartment, as I had already set up in the bedroom at this one.
Then why was she still here?
“Hazel, please talk to me.” Her muffled voice came from just outside my door. In my mind, I screamed at her to go away, that it hurt too much to have her here. But the tiniest corner of my heart, the one piece that was not yet encased in ice, begged her to stay, even if it meant the only thing I got from her was pity.
“I’m coming in, okay?” She waited a second for me to tell her no, and when I didn’t, she opened the door. I closed my laptop and set it aside.
She sat down beside me on the bed but kept a respectful distance as if her proximity might cause me to lose control and kiss her again. Her carefulness tore at me at least as much as her indifferent abandonment.
“Hazel, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. I was startled, and I just…I walked for hours looking for you and finally gave up and came back here.”
“Maybe you should go to your own apartment.”
She pursed her lips. “Hazel, we’re coaching together this week. We should straighten things out before tomorrow.”
My stomach rolled. Hours with her every day. Hours of humiliation. Hours of her knowing. “There’s nothing to get straight, Claire. Please, let’s just pretend the whole thing never happened.”
“But Hazel, you’re hurting. I don’t like seeing you—”
“You know what, Claire? You need to check your ego. I’m not in love with you. You’re not going to break my heart or something.”
She cringed. “I don’t think you’re in love with me, Hazel. I know you love Oren. I’ve seen you guys together, seen your little secret looks. I meant…well, the other stuff that’s come up for you lately. What happened with Iris, it…I’m sure you just had a moment where you kind of lost it, right?”
I stared at her. “Yes.” That was…easy. Could I really wipe all the ugliness away with one word, blame it on one single moment of insanity?
“And I don’t know what the right way to react was, but walking away from you and leaving you standing by yourself like that definitely was not it. I’m so sorry.”
I looked down at my hands in my lap. They weren’t even shaking; I was too drained from crying. “And I’m sorry I”—kissed you— “did what I did.”
She made a move like she might reach for me, but stopped herself, and the stark reality of knowing she would never touch me again, not even in a casual, friendly way, was a knife in my chest. “Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Honestly, I’m not the least bit bothered by it.” She smiled and her eyes glowed with reassurance, begging me to be okay. “You freaked out, I freaked out, but it’s cool because we’re friends and we forgive each other for being a little crazy sometimes. Right?”
She was making it so easy. I nodded, stiff with the effort of holding back.
“So I’ll see you tomorrow morning at breakfast? Sure you’re okay?”
I nodded again.
She raised her hand like she might put it on my shoulder, but again withdrew and left me sitting in the room by myself. Out in the living area, I heard the familiar clatter of her cello case, the thud of a suitcase being shoved around. She was going to try to carry her cello and suitcase down four flights of stairs by herself. I couldn’t just sit there and listen to her struggle. Stuffing down my shattered pride, I heaved myself from the bed and met her in the living room where, careful not to touch her fingers, I took the suitcase from her.
“You know you don’t have to.” Her eyes shone with unbearable compassion.<
br />
I tightened my fist around the suitcase handle.
She sighed. “Okay. Let’s go.”
We descended the stairs in silence, and she led me to her new apartment a few buildings over, this one on the second floor. I carried her suitcase up and set it outside the door. The mundaneness of our efforts made our kiss on the wall and all my tearful wandering seem like a dream I could barely remember.
She held up the key. “You wanna come in?”
Yes, yes, yes. I shook my head no.
“Are you ever going to speak to me again?”
“Sorry. I…don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay. Tomorrow will feel better. I promise.”
She gave me a hopeful smile, and I trudged back to my apartment alone and pulled out a bottle of wine I’d bought at the market. I drank half of it straight from the bottle and then fell asleep in my clothes. That night I dreamed I rode a motorcycle off a cliff and right into the ocean.
At breakfast the next morning, I sat between Raymond and Katrina so Claire couldn’t sit next to me. I needed to show her I didn’t have to be hip-to-hip with her all the time. She sat across from me instead and chattered with everyone like she wasn’t even aware I’d snubbed her. I set my face into a blank mask of indifference, but my chest felt like a huge metal drum, magnifying the weighty thudding of my heart in a loud reminder of how very not-indifferent I was.
The rest of the group shared stories with one another about their excursions the previous day, to the beach, to churches, to Siena, to Pisa, all places they’d gone while I wandered the wall and fell to pieces. Katrina turned to me at one point and said, “Hazel, you’re awfully quiet. Did you do anything special yesterday?”
“I just…took a walk.” I met Claire’s eyes, saw her pity, and looked away.
Iris missed breakfast, and I felt a pang of guilt at her absence too, sure it was because of me and my harsh words to her.