Love in the Time of Cynicism

by Jani Berghuis

  Rhett’s face breaks into a wicked smile as he steps inside. “I see you’ve dressed for the occasion.”

  “So have you,” I reply, suave as one can be standing in a towel in front of the person one’s interested in. Since I saw him last in his usual leather jacket or blazer, it’s extremely weird to see him in a white tee shirt and shorts. No leather jacket. No long sleeves.

  He explains this at my first glance, “The short sleeves are a gesture of solidarity, by the way. To show you that I trust you, so you can trust me. Apparently, judging by your choice of eveningwear, that you already do.” I blush as he glances over my toweled body and continues, “Were you planning on getting dressed? I’m fine either way, of course, but it’s your choice.”

  “Yeah,” I reply, smiling at how cheeky he’s being. “Give me a minute.”

  As I’m darting up the stairs, he calls after me, “Nice view!”

  I laugh and reach my room, shut the door behind me, and throw off my towel before shrugging on a pair of orange Soffe’s and a white tank top. I decide to take my contacts out before heading downstairs to meet Rhett officially. When I walk into the kitchen, he’s already gotten out his laptop and notebook and made himself comfortable. He glances up at me from the counter and says, “May I say, you look positively dazzling this evening.”

  I grin and lean on the counter. Then, not sure what to do since I almost never have anyone but Sky, who generally waltzes in like she owns the place and eats my food, over in years, I ask awkwardly, “Want anything to drink?”

  Seeing my inelegance, he laughs and replied sarcastically (at least, I assume he’s sarcastic), “Vodka. Straight from the bottle.”

  I roll my eyes and get out two glasses. “Seriously.”

  “Whatever you’re having,” he answers without missing a beat. As I fill the cups with ice water (because I am a lame loser who doesn’t drink soda or anything else, really), he transfers our messily scrawled out anthropology paper into simple typeface. His fingers move rhythmically and with speed I can’t pretend to comprehend over the keys, face in a mask of intense concentration.

  After about five minutes, I’m sitting next to him, watching him type the words and correcting him when he makes a mistake, and he stops. He’s typed up everything we have, so we move to spit-balling ideas and phrases back and forth. Rhett picks out what he likes, tweaks it, and puts it in until we have a six page (double-spaced, but still) masterpiece in front of us. I look up at the clock. Forty five minutes have passed during this creative process and we’ve both finished out waters.

  “Finished.” He turns to me and raises an eyebrow suggestively. “What exactly was your plan for the remainder of the evening?”

  “Because I figured this assignment would take us a long time, there is no plan,” I admit with a laugh. “I guess this means we can do whatever we want.”

  So, at eleven o’clock, we’re lying on my plush living room floor on our sides staring at one another and giggling like we’re four years olds. For some reason, everything seems funnier when you’re on the floor. The house is pitch black and the only person home is Trent, who came home red-eyed and stoned enough he didn’t see us in plain view from the door. Now that he’s been upstairs quite some time, Rhett and I have moved to lounging on the couch and I’ve got my head on Rhett’s lap – which, I’ve discovered, is almost as comfortable a resting place as his chest. The mood between us has shifted to something more serious through a long segue.

  We’ve been comparing scars from childhood. I proudly show off the two half-inch lines on the top of my foot that look suspiciously like an equals sign from a wicker-basket related incident. He displays a crescent shaped scar on his index finger from a vicious binder attack. And so on until the scars on his wrist come under scrutiny. I examine them in more detail if only to further understand him. Six horizontal, flat and white and ruler parallel, one vertical, raised beneath my fingertips, garish keloid pink and treading atop the tendon that becomes prominent when his hands clench into fists. This one, he explains patiently, was the most serious.

  Though to me the white ones appeared more menacing strictly in multitude, Rhett tells me that, after three hospitalizations, he learned from some shady individuals that vertical cuts were harder to stitch up. The ones that left you in a morgue, not a psych ward. They did stitch his up, though, so here he is.

  Eventually, I bring up the courage to ask, “What’s it like?”

  My voice is too soft in the paling silence as he mutters, “Hm?”

  “Wanting to die, I mean. You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want. The tee shirt was enough of a ‘gesture of solidarity’ to satisfy my needs.”

  I specifically avoid the phrase ‘wanting to kill yourself’ because Rhett made it very clear that a suicidal person doesn’t want to swallow the pills, doesn’t want to cut too deep or to kick the chair over. A suicidal person ‘just wants all the shit to be over, by whatever means necessary.’ This distinction is crucial to Rhett, so I respect it.

  He chews over my question a moment, fingers tracing tingling, electric patterns over my arms. He finally settles on the right words. “It’s like always living at gunpoint. Everyone is shouting STAY CALM but you’re staring down the barrel of a gun only you can see and there’s only darkness there. And if you can bear to glance away from the gun, all that’s there is the looks on the faces of the people you’re accidentally screwing up and everything is so hazy and out of focus but it still hurts because some omnipotent asshole is holding a gun to your forehead.” As his words pick up speed and volume, Rhett cuts himself off and draws in a sharp breath. “Then, at some point down the line, it becomes so overwhelming you wish he’d pull the trigger right before you realize you’ve been the one holding the gun the whole time. To test it out, you pull the trigger for yourself and wait for the bullet to smash your brain in. But then, because – at the time this is what I thought – I’m some horribly unlucky bastard who can’t even kill himself without fucking it up, the bullet doesn’t hit and I’m left there holding that goddamn gun again. And if feels like there’s nothing to live for. A lot of the time it still does.”

  His voice halts near breaking and I snap to a sitting position, turn in order to look right at him even in the darkness as I say, “Rhett Tressler, there are so many things to live for I could write you a list fifty pages long without any effort.”

  Jokingly, he straightens up, turns on the light, and grabs the pen and notebook where Sullivan’s essay is written and poises himself to write, cross-legged on the floor across from me. “Go for it. I’ll jot down every word as if it’s the gospel truth.”

  Though I can tell he’s not serious, I maneuver onto my knees and straddle his legs to get a better view of his eyes. Speaking quickly, I run off, “Long hugs. Making babies smile. Carving pumpkins. Going to the zoo. Getting real letters in the mail. Laughing so hard you cry. Being awake when everyone else is sleeping.” He laughs here, and doesn’t stop until I finish. “First kisses. Poetry. Dandelions. Teachers who try too hard. Holiday lights put up a few days after Halloween. Socks on linoleum floors. Hearing your favorite song in public. Hot air balloons. Beluga whales. For god’s sake, Tressler, it’s easy.” I giggle at his eye roll. “You try it. Just one thing that makes every other shitty thing worth dealing with.”

  His golden eyes meet mine in the dim light, catching fire as I watch. He shuts his eyes while remembering something private before a slow smile creeps across his lips. “The color of your hair when the spotlight hit it. That night at the poetry reading.”

  I give him a light shove on the chest and lean in closer. “You can do better than that.”

  “It’s proving to be exceedingly difficult to concentrate when your lips are so scandalously close to mine, Cordelia Kane,” he whispers, as if speaking too loud could break this moment. I blush and then he goes on with a small smile, mumbling softly, “Picking up the phone. The color of willow tree sunlight. The sound of your god-awful singing in my
ear. Dr. Sullivan and his stupid clothes. Kissing you. How pale your skin is next to mine. Whatever this is,” he gestures to the ever-shrinking space between us, “it’s worth living for. Good enough for you?”

  In lieu of an answer, I close the gap between us and let the feel of his lips on mine, soft and warm and sweet, be something to live for.

  Chapter Eleven – A Time of Convergence

  Days slur by, an unending muddle of school and work and Rhett.

  October twentieth is a special Saturday poetry reading, the first day when I don’t have work and Rhett doesn’t have to wheedle his way into my schedule during late nights and after school gaps. Our first day completely to ourselves and we choose to spend it at Ebony’s because, frankly, where else can we go? His house is precariously overrun by other people and my parents would die (or something equivalent) if they found him there.

  Saturday night, Amanda drives me to the coffeehouse; she didn’t have plans tonight and didn’t want to be completely alone, so she settles in by herself on a chair in the far corner. It’s nice to see her happy by herself for once, no hopeless boy hanging off her shoulder and no wannabe girls trailing. Sky’s here, too, with a new boy whose name I haven’t yet learned; hopefully it’s better than Chaz. He looks nice enough, better than most of the guys she’s dated over the past few years.

  I watch the crowd contentedly, working studiously on my newest paper for Dr. Sullivan until Rhett enters, smile broad for everyone so admire. He’s still wearing his navy blazer in public despite being comfortable enough around me recently to wear (very well, I might add) short sleeves whenever we’re alone. Being granted access to a part of him nobody else sees has been an insane privilege, one I’m proud of holding. Catching my eyes, Rhett hurries over and takes my hands in his, spins me around excitedly, and gives me a quick hug to calm my pounding nerves. He gives me a confident smile. “You ready to do this? Not that it matters, but.” He shakes his head. “Sorry. You’re going to crush it.”

  I’ve agreed, after much bribing and coercion by tickling, to read one of my poems tonight. The idea is mildly terrifying bordering on altogether overwhelming, but Rhett’s promised to keep eye contact the entire time and Amanda and Sky have come for moral support, which gives me some small amount of faith in myself. The past few days, Amanda and Sky have been trying to teach me how to flirt, so I try out a new technique. “The words are nice, but you know what would really help?”

  He leans in, pretends to be confused as amusement flashes in his eyes. “What would that be?”

  “I could certainly use a second opinion on this new lip gloss.” I stand on my toes and link my hands behind his neck. “I think it tastes fantastic. Want a try?”

  “I’d be willing to make that sacrifice in order to boost your confidence. Anything for you.”

  “You brave soldier,” I joke as he kisses me for a moment, then pulls away.

  “I’m more than excited to hear this, by the way,” he tells me as we locate on the only remaining free space, a single leather chair, our butts crammed next to one another in dangerous proximity. He teasingly tugs on the black beanie I’ve worn (in order to be extremely poetic) to get my attention again as my eyes wander over the substantial crowd. “Considering the fact that I read about poem about you two weeks ago, I’m expecting a super mushy proclamation of your undying love and attraction.”

  “I’m sorry to inform you that you will be sorely disappointed,” I warn sarcastically with a quick glance at the stage. Ebony’s taken her position, tonight dressed in a mesmerizing array of feathers and satin, and she begins to speak into the mic. “There will be no mush tonight. Very serious poetry.”

  Of course, I’ve spent the past week writing and rewriting poems in varying amounts of mush, debating a hundred thousand times how hardcore to go with it. For one thing, I don’t write poetry. Prose and nonfiction are my areas of interest. Also, my relationship with Rhett is confusing simply in that it’s the first relationship I’ve been invested in and desiring every second to keep going; I want to have every stupid romantic comedy milestone with him I never wanted with Eric. Dancing in the street and kissing in the rain with Ryan Gosling, John Cusack outside my window with a boom box, a Patrick Swayze kiss after a heated dance number, the whole nine yards. It’s stupid, I know, but it’s the teenage girl in me making a rare sighting.

  What I ended up with, poetry wise, after a week of throwing out drafts and late nights trying to think, is kind of dark and a kind of hopeful. It’s utter crap, if I’m being honest with myself, and everything Rhett’s aren’t. Sullivan, with his PHD in verse and creative writing with a Master’s in anthropology, helped me with most of the lines, so it’s far beyond my normal level of creativity; I even managed to subversively get Rhett’s help by masking my poem in an anthropology paper. It’s altogether too literary and pretentious for my taste, but I’m only doing this for Rhett, so I will get up and read this damn poem if it’s the last thing I ever accomplish.

  The first speaker leaves the stage and Ebony returns, scans her order list, then flashes me a bright smile. “Our next reader is one of our very own baristas on weekday afternoons and, if you’re lucky, Saturday mornings. At our last reading, her devastatingly handsome boyfriend read for her; let’s see if she returns the favor. Please give a warm welcome to Cordelia Kane.” As some applause rustles through the air, she gestures broadly to me and I stand up shakily. While I’m walking to the stage, Sky slaps my ass and tells me to knock ‘em dead. Very Sky. I laugh, more or less unshaken, and head up the four steps as calmly as possible. The microphone is still set for the previous girl, who’s about eight inches shorter than me. I wrench it upwards and nearly smack myself in the face. Graceful as usual.

  Now that the audience is smiling at my uncoordinated nature, I look out over them and am relieved to find that, with the bleaching spotlight on my eyes, I can’t make out anybody, much less Rhett, which would make me too embarrassed to go on. I blink a few times and speak. “This short disgrace of a poem is for Rhett who is, as previously stated by my boss, devastatingly handsome, and it’s called Eye Contact.” My heart smashes against my ribs over and over and over until the rhythmic is constant and wild while the words of my poem descend from my lips.

  those amber eyes of his

  I swear

  he’s got the kind of eyes you get lost in

  and I guess I’m already lost

  because in them the universe reflected on my mind

  an ocean of unspoken promises, swallowed anger

  the constellations of his every wish and fantasy

  longing to brush against the horizons of my own.

  to climb into the moments of his untainted thoughts

  to feel the lingering dream in a sunrise

  staring back at me

  well, that would be the moment

  I would allow myself

  to lose myself

  I trip over my feet leaving the stage, unable to hear applause or any words over the sound of my heartbeat clogging everything else. Then my eyes fall over Rhett, still in our seat and grinning wildly at me while others eye us. When I sit down next to him, no longer awkward at our legs touching or my words being wrong, he holds my shoulders and says seriously, “Oh my god, Cordelia Kane, you are quite possibly the most flawless human being left on this planet.” I mock-bow (or at least as close as one can get to it while sitting) and he goes on like he’s making the most crucial point in human history, “But I do have one very important question.”

  “What would that be?” I ask, trying to match his seriousness while high from the adrenaline of reading that stupid poem.

  He pushes a lock of escaped bluish hair under my beanie and asks, “Are my eyes really that striking?”

  I pull back punch him (harder than expected) on his (muscular) chest (he doesn’t react) and, mock-exasperated, say, “I write you a brilliantly pompous poem and that’s the first question you have? God, Rhett Tressler, you make me so angry!”

>   He rests his hands on my hips, comes in closer, and asks, “How angry?”

  “Angry enough to punch you in the mouth,” I respond with a laugh. “Softly. With my mouth.”

  “I should make a point of aggravating you more often, then.” He grins and raises his eyebrows before pulling my body close against his and wrapping me in a kiss. Like every kiss with him, it’s warm and right and adoring. The kind of kiss that makes me want a thousand more. And when his fingers twine themselves in my hair, something in me releases and I kiss him harder, with more enthusiasm. My entire life, the first rule of relationships was PDA control. But now everything’s changed and I want more of Rhett no matter where we are.

  Until a few words shatter our moment together. “Del, it was a great poem.”

  This voice belongs to Michael.

  And I am in a metric shit ton of trouble.

  The ride home is one more uncomfortable than ever, and that’s coming from someone with two years experience riding in cars with step family. Amanda’s next to me in the back seat, wedged between me and my mother. Michael’s driving with some baby stuff boxes in the passenger seat. Everyone’s silent and I am itching to say something but not sure what. As far as I can tell, there won’t be a blow-out angry fight with screaming and yelling; at this point, I’ve no idea what to expect.

  When we pull into the garage, I jump out of the car before we’ve even parked and follow Michael, his jaw clenched and fists balled up at his sides, to the living. He points at the couch, apparently unable even to speak at the horrible injustice of catching your step-daughter kissing a boy you hate. I can imagine but don’t sympathize.

  “Del-” He starts, stops. Then, he takes a heavy breath like the weight of the world is suddenly on his shoulders. My mom sits on the chair matching the white couch I sit on now. The couch where Rhett and I sat last night, listing reasons to live. Now Michael’s voice is tight and controlled with anger. “Del, I thought you promised your mother and me not to see him again after your mom’s party. And now-” he swallows and sighs again. “-I catch you making out with him like some hormone-driven teenager? Like your brother? For god’s sake Del, have you seen that boy? He’s a mess!”