by Tash Skilton
“Exactly,” I say, smiling over at Sebastian. He smiles back but it doesn’t reach his eyes and I really don’t know why until right before the sixth inning. I come back from the bathroom in time to hear Sebastian and Sam having a surprisingly heated conversation.
“I can’t believe you brought up that you dated Nina,” Sebastian says.
“It was only a joke,” Sam says. “Nina was just explaining to Maritza how we all met. You really need to chill.”
Sebastian pauses for a minute and then turns to Sam. “I feel like all I’ve been is chill for nine years. Every time you talked about her or called her ‘my favorite ex’ when you knew how much it bothered me.”
“First of all, that was mostly a ploy to try to get you to admit how you felt about her, ideally to her. And secondly, how can you be jealous of me kissing her like ten years ago? You kiss her all the time now!”
“I’m not jealous,” he mutters.
“You could’ve fooled me,” Sam replies.
I decide now’s a good time to clomp down the two metal stairs between me and our seats, letting them know I’m coming. They abruptly end the conversation and I decide it’s for the best that we all pretend I didn’t hear it.
But Sebastian is in a funk. He’s quiet for most of the rest of the game. He’s quiet during our ride back, with Sam in the back seat since we’re driving to the same building. Sam spends most of the ride talking about a sponsor he’s chasing for his podcast, some very LA-sounding naturopathic startup company.
When we say goodbye to Sam at our door and go into the apartment, I pour two glasses of wine and hand one to Sebastian. I see him futzing around with the remote, about to cue up the next episode of Veep, but I put my hand on his to stop him.
“Hey,” I say. “I think we need to talk.”
He looks over at me, alarmed. “Why?”
“Because you’re upset. And I don’t know why.”
“Oh,” he says, looking relieved. He runs a hand through his hair and then gives a short bark of a laugh. “I don’t really know why either. I mean, I do, but it’s a stupid reason.”
I settle into the couch, indicating that he should go on.
“I just . . . I hate when Sam pulls that ‘my favorite ex’ shit. He’s done it for forever and it drives me crazy.”
“And you’ve told him not to do it before . . .” I extrapolate.
“Actually, no. I haven’t,” Sebastian says. “Tonight was the first time I ever told him how much it bothers me.”
“Oh,” I say. “So he never knew?”
Sebastian shakes his head. “I guess he does now.” He looks at me, worried. “You think I should go and apologize?”
“Uh, no. I don’t think he’s particularly upset. He seemed fine in the car.”
“You’re right,” he says as he puts his head back on the couch. “Maybe I can just bake him some of his favorite blondies. I can use the recipe as a starting-off point for the cookbook, too. ‘Castration Bars?’ You know, ’cause of the chopped nuts?”
He smiles at me and I smile back, but I don’t focus on the TV even when he turns the episode on.
“Sebastian,” I say after two minutes of President Selina Meyer saying hilariously horrible things that I’m not able to fully appreciate right now.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t even get us a snack.” He pauses the TV and starts to get up, but I put an arm on his hand to stop him.
“No, that’s not what I want. Can I ask you . . . why didn’t you tell me? All that time in college? That you had feelings for me? Was it because of Sam?”
He settles back down on the couch. “Yes. Well . . . not just Sam. There was always some guy around. Some guy you met because he sat next to you in class or sold you a sandwich. Some convenient guy.”
It’s not lost on me that Sayeh used the exact same word last week. But I try to let it slide. “But none of them were important.. . .”
“Exactly. I didn’t want to be another unimportant guy to you either.”
“You wouldn’t have been . . .” I say, but then stop myself because it sounds empty. If he’d told me how he felt freshman year, he would have been another four-monther, another guy I had fun with for a while and then left behind when things got too serious. In fact, a couple more months and we’d finally pass that threshold. Wouldn’t we?
But then I look over at him. He’s gotten skinnier over the past few weeks, his eyes hollowed out. I don’t know how because I feel like we’ve just been eating prototype sweets and lounging on the couch. I know my jeans aren’t quite fitting the way they used to. Sebastian looks tired.
And the thing is, I bet I do too.
I put down my wine.
“Sebastian,” I say again, and look him in the eyes. “I don’t want you to be unimportant to me, either. I don’t ever want that.”
He looks over and smiles, reaching over to put his arm on my shoulder.
I swallow and try to smile. “So how about we give this one more week. And then we go back. To just being best friends.”
He blinks at me. “Are you . . . joking?”
I shake my head. “Look, what Matty and Maritza have . . . what a lot of people have . . . it’s just not for me, you know? I mean, you do know, because that’s why you never told me how you felt before. So I think you’ll understand why this is the way it has to be.”
He gets up from the couch, running his hand through his hair again. He never got it cut after my chop job so it’s gotten longer and shaggier again. He looks at me. “Nina. I love you,” he says, managing to make the words sound both true and angry.
I nod. “I know. And you have to understand I love you too. As much as I can. But, just . . . I don’t think I can give you what you need. Maritza asked me today whether we’d ever have kids. . . .” I let out a nervous gulp of laughter.
“And what? That was funny to you?”
“It was . . . terrifying,” I answer honestly. “I’ve never thought about having my own kids. I’ve never thought about getting married. I’ve never even thought about being in a real relationship with anyone. This”—I point around at the apartment, at the giant picture of the two of us, at the literal writing on the wall—“is just too intense. Because it’s with you. You mean too much to me to keep this up.”
He stops and looks at me. “So you’re saying you can’t do this . . . because you care about me too much?” His tone is disbelieving.
I nod. “That’s exactly it.”
“And you want to keep being intimate for another week and then just . . . stop?”
I stand up and touch his cheek. “I think it would help give us some closure on all this. Besides, there were a couple of things I came up with over the past week that we haven’t tried yet,” I say, trying—and failing—to lighten the moment. I lean in and kiss him softly on the corner of his mouth. When he doesn’t reciprocate, I lean back to look at him.
“Does breaking up with me turn you on?” he asks coldly.
“No. You turn me on,” I respond, but step away from him.
“Has it ever occurred to you that sex and intimacy actually go together, Nina? Like, that’s what a real relationship is.”
I pick up the stationery set from the bookshelf. “Well, has it occurred to you that a relationship isn’t about giving everything of yourself all the time to another person?”
“That’s your problem with me?” he laughs bitterly. “I give you too many things?”
“You give everyone too many things!” I burst out. “And I don’t just mean gifts. I mean your time. I mean monkey bread.”
“Why is that goddamn monkey bread such a sore point with you?” he shouts.
“It’s not about the monkey bread!” I get loud right back. “It’s about you feeling like you have to become a doormat for anyone to like you. We want you to just be Sebastian.”
“But you don’t,” he replies. “You don’t want me to just be Sebastian, because you don’t want to be with me, Nina.”
&nb
sp; I have to try to make him understand. “It’s the total opposite. I do want to be with you. I want to be with you all the time.”
“Then why the hell do you want to end things?”
“Because friends stay together. And lovers don’t.” I say it very calmly because I feel it’s the mantra that’s been stitched on my heart, even though I’ve never said it out loud before.
“How can you say that?” he says. “Just because your parents didn’t . . . Lots of people have. What about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward? Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson?”
“Do you really want to keep giving me examples from Hollywood?” I ask wryly.
“My parents,” he says. “Our neighbors in Sherborne have been married almost fifty years. Matty and Maritza are going to make it work. I know they will.”
I sigh. “I hope you’re right. I really do. But I just don’t see it for myself. I never have. It’s not you. . . .”
“Don’t,” he says forcefully. “Don’t you dare end us with a cliché.”
“‘Sometimes tropes are tropes for a reason,’” I mutter, and I don’t even know why. Except that when things get their roughest, I tend to retreat into writing analogies. I like the worlds I can control, the drama that goes how I say it will.
“I have to go,” he says as he takes his keys and wallet from the side table and opens the door.
He turns to me before he leaves. “I think you did this to spare your heart. But you did it with no regard to mine.” He chokes up on the last few words, but then turns and leaves, slamming the door behind him.
CHAPTER 35
SEBASTIAN
When you kiss a friend, the friendship dies. That’s what I always told myself. Turns out it’s a lie; or at least, it’s not the full story. I know, shocker, a fantasy series about time travel, centaurs, and queens didn’t accurately portray someone’s inner journey in twenty-first-century Los Angeles.
Don’t get me wrong; the moment Nina kissed me, our friendship perished. But a phoenix emerged from the ashes, majestic and beautiful. I will never regret that kiss and everything it led to. We were fucking perfect together. We were endgame.
Either she values us, this version of us, or she doesn’t. Telling me I’m “too important” to be with is utter tripe.
After storming out of the building, I walk past the Grove and all the way up Fairfax. I linger over a matzo ball soup at Canter’s Deli, but it doesn’t comfort me. I can’t even taste it; all it does is scorch my tongue.
I walk home, dread accompanying each step, but when I pass my apartment door and continue down the hall, the dread lifts. If Sam’s not around, I’ll get in my car and drive to Matty’s because I can’t face Nina right now.
Luckily, Sam’s there, headphones on, brandishing a message.
“Hey.” He ushers me inside and takes off his headphones. “Nina stopped by looking for you. She seemed worried and out of it but wouldn’t tell me why. You guys okay?”
I shake my head. I can’t elaborate or I’ll lose it, so I text Nina the bare minimum (I’m fine, won’t be home for a while). There’s no reply, and I hate looking at those words on my screen.
It’s not home anymore, if she doesn’t want me.
Sam and I hash things out and I’m honest for the first time about how his history with Nina—or more accurately, his repeated referencing of his history with Nina—gets under my skin.
“It was over in a nanosecond. Yours is the real relationship. Everyone knows that.”
“It’s not about that. Not really. Every time you call her your favorite ex, it reminds me I was too shy to act back then. It reminds me how easy everything is for everybody else. Making friends, having girlfriends, fitting in. Nobody else has to try so hard for those things. All I do is try hard. My whole fucking life.”
We navigate a path through his apartment and sit at the breakfast bar. Sam turns off his monitor and microphones. He must have been in the middle of recording when I showed up, which sends another bolt of guilt through me.
“Start at the beginning,” he says, eyes meeting mine.
I clear my throat. “I never told you guys this, but when I moved to the States in second grade, I didn’t fit in. I didn’t have real friends until college. I had classmates and neighbors and people my family knew, and that was just how I thought life was for me. How it would always be—on the edge of the room, watching a party I wasn’t part of. You, Nina, and Matty changed all that. We got along so great, so effortlessly, that I felt normal for once, you know? But now that I’m finally with Nina”—(or was with Nina, I think bitterly)—“I’m worried the price is I’ll lose you and Matty. I can’t keep up with everything anymore, like groceries and Sunday dinners, and good-luck meals, and podcasts—I’m literally twenty-four episodes behind now—it’s so tiring, and I hate that I haven’t been a good friend lately.”
He folds his arms. “First of all, we’re not friends, we’re family, and you don’t ‘lose’ family. Secondly, I wasn’t exactly Mister Popular growing up, either. I think Ithaca brings together misfits and thank God for that. But my point is, no one wants you to do any of that stuff you just mentioned unless you want to. Do what makes you happy and forget the rest! If something’s legitimately important to us, we’ll let you know, but otherwise, don’t assume we expect things to be how they were. We know you’ve been preoccupied with Nina, and sometimes we give you a hard time about it, but we’re all rooting for you.”
I’m touched by his words, but considering Nina ended things tonight, they’re rather beside the point. I slump into my seat and rest my face in my hands.
“Don’t bother. She’s not even rooting for us. She wants out.”
“What? Why?” he yells, shocked. His response is vindicating, and I wish Nina could see it. If only majority rules could compel her to return to me. I know it’s immature, but it’s all I’ve got.
“She said she likes me ‘too much.’ Whatever that means.”
He exhales and tugs on a lock of his hair. “What are you going to do?”
“I think the thing we need most right now is time away from each other.” I don’t know fuck-all about what we need, though. If I did, I’d give it to her.
Although wasn’t that part of the problem? Me giving her too much?
“Crash here all week if you need to,” Sam says. “If you stay longer than that, though, you automatically become a guest on my podcast. A multiple-episode sidekick.”
“Fair. Did you hear back from the, what’d you call it, nature-pathic sponsor yet?”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
I take him up on his offer and spend the next two nights there, stopping by my own apartment for a change of clothes in the late afternoon before Nina arrives home from work. I feel like a stranger in my own place, in and out in five minutes, simultaneously hoping she’ll show up and praying she doesn’t.
The numbness that overcame me at Canter’s Deli spreads throughout my body.
I get up each morning and I drive to work and I handle things for Janine and I drive around LA running errands, and all the while there’s a lead ball in my stomach. I choke back just enough food and drink just enough water to provide the bare minimum strength to finish my tasks so I’ll be allowed to go home each night.
I’m not living. I’m a witness to time passing, slower than I thought possible.
I spend the darkened hours between midnight and six a.m. paralyzed, thoughts racing, making up for the torpor of my days, trying to convince myself that maybe, if I give Nina enough space, she’ll change her mind and summon me back.
If she did, though, what would that make me? Her prince, her knight, her court jester, or her whipping boy?
Doesn’t she know I’d be all those things—any of them, whatever she desires—if only she would ask? (But shouldn’t I have an identity that’s separate from her desires?)
It’s moot, anyway. She doesn’t ask.
Sam wants to help, do something concrete, so I perform a mild ac
t of vengeance for all my past grocery runs and send him to Ralphs with a list a mile long. I commandeer his kitchen and cast him in the role of sous-chef.
I can’t do anything about Nina. She’s made her position clear. What I can do is focus on my goals.
At Vasquez the next morning, I flick on my hazard lights and park in a loading zone so I’m mere feet from the entrance when I step out with by far my finest Seraphim Cake. It’s a tower of perfection, glistening in the sunlight. No galloping warhorses knock me on my ass, no slowpoke Ennises force me to slam on my brakes, no Ramblers (CoRaB’s version of zombies) in full makeup startle me, and no Robertos trip me. I finally, finally make it to craft services without a single dribble of blood icing or frosted feathers out of place.
I lower my arms and set my creation down. A swarm appears, Francis Jean among the crowd. I dart back to my car for utensils and paper plates, and when I return, Her Royal Highness Queen Lucinda has tucked in, feasting on an enormous slice she apparently cut for herself with the bagel knife. In my humble opinion, she’s never looked more luminous in real life or onscreen.
“This is absolutely scrummy.” She flicks her white hair over her shoulder and licks her fingers clean, then serves herself a second slice, right into the palm of her hand. She swivels around and calls out, “Whoever’s birthday it is, God bless you!”
I mean. It’s clearly not a birthday cake, but who cares, she loves it! I wish I could snap a photo of her literally licking her lips, but of course my camera phone has a sticker over it. Roberto barrels past and shovels in a slice as well. It makes me a bit ill to see him mashing and gnawing around it, but cheers, Rob Slob.
“Our scene got pushed up, so move your ever-expanding ass,” he tells Francis Jean between mouthfuls. She shoots him a reverse peace sign (“fuck you” in the U.K.), and finishes her second slice before gliding toward the set.
I want to follow them and eavesdrop, but I hang back to observe other people’s reactions, which are overwhelmingly positive. I can’t wait to tell . . . Oh. Right.
Thirty seconds later, a voice over the loudspeaker thunders out like the voice of God: “Whoever brought the cake, report to soundstage B immediately.”