“He’s fine. He’s doing great, actually.” Thomas has a tiny smile on his face. “He’s starting to talk. I’m convinced he said daddy the other day.”
“Yeah?” Despite myself, I smile at him. But when he returns it, I can’t resist goading him like he did me, ages ago, “Are you sure it’s not some randomly put together syllables?”
Thomas’ smile thins out and he swallows. There’s probably remorse on his face or something similar but I force myself to peel my eyes away.
And then, I feel someone crashing into me, and I, in turn, crash into Thomas. His arms come around me, and my breasts crush against his hard, hard body. God, this has to be the most clichéd move ever. I can’t believe it happened to me.
I try not to sniff him, but it’s hard to do that when we’re this close. I do have to breathe, so I take in a breath mixed with his chocolate scent. I keep it tucked away somewhere in my body for later when I’m alone in Caleb’s apartment. I jump out of his hold, then. I don’t want his stupid scent.
This time though, I can’t look away from the remorse on his face. It’s sharp and cutting, and it digs into my crazy heart.
My notebook and the papers are scattered on the hot pavement, and I bend down to grab them. But somehow, Thomas is there before me. I watch his fingers -- his large, graceful fingers that I’ve always been curious about -- picking up the papers, one by one. I study the veins on the back of his hands. Do you still not write? I want to ask, but I won’t.
I keep my eyes on his fingers, observing them do an ordinary thing but looking no less extraordinary, no less naked. I stop breathing. His fingers are naked. He doesn’t have a wedding ring on.
I know he never takes it off. Never. Not once have I ever seen him without it. It’s like he always carries Hadley with him. Even when we…had sex, I’d feel that metal digging into my waist, my thighs, my arms…everywhere, telling me how wrong it was, how he was not mine and would never be mine. I feel the pressure again, as if the ring is still pressing into my body.
Abruptly, I stand. Thomas senses something is wrong and comes to his feet beside me. I can’t look away from his...naked hands. “You don’t…”
He looks down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time. A beat passes with no words. Holding my notebook in one hand, he rubs the pale spot where the ring used to be. I don’t know if it’s in regret or relief.
“Hadley and I, we’re getting a divorce.”
“Because of me?” It comes out before I can stop it, and the cringe that follows is involuntary too. I remind myself that I have nothing to do with them now. I shouldn’t even mean anything to them. When Hadley came to me yesterday, pretending it was accidental, I didn’t tell her anything. I never even asked about Thomas or Nicky. But she had to know, right? That’s why she was trying to put me out of my misery, letting me off the hook.
Oh God, did I ruin things again?
Thomas must see the distress on my face because he moves forward, reaching out his free hand, but I move away from him. My feet step back and he flinches.
“No, not because of you. It’s something that should’ve happened a long time ago. It has nothing to do with you.” He pushes a hand through his longish hair. “It was me. I was holding on too tight.”
Is it possible to gasp and sigh at the same time? Because I probably just did that. My own words thrown back at me with such gentleness and gravity is…shocking. I never expected him to remember that, let alone say it.
I need to stop jumping to conclusions. Not everything is my fault. Love yourself and the rest will follow.
I push my unruly, stupid hair back and his eyes follow my tiny gesture. In fact, he hasn’t stopped looking at all. What is he looking for? I don’t think I have anything left that can be of use to him.
“Okay. Well, I-I’m sorry.” I stare at my chipped toenails and my flip-flops, unsure. “I know you…love her.”
“I still do.” He shoots me a sad smile. “And I think I’ll always love her. But I don’t think it’s the kind of love that makes people stay together. It was more of an awe of each other than love, and awe can get intimidating and become a burden after a while.”
What’s going to happen to Nicky? I wish I could ask him that. Divorce is such an awful thing. Look, how I turned out because of my mom’s multiple divorces. But then again, how is living together with no love any better?
So maybe it’s all for the best.
“Right. I can see that.” I nod, unable to stop myself. “You’re pretty…awful.”
He laughs then, short and succinct and loud, and something flutters in my stomach. I tamp it down. Shivers and flutters have no business coming on right now.
“I gotta go now. I have to get home. So I’m gonna go.”
Before I can whirl around and get out of here, Thomas speaks up. “I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye.”
“You did.” I shrug, jerking my tight shoulders up. “You hated me, right? You didn’t owe me anything.”
Just then the sunrays turn harsh and expose every inch of Thomas’ agonized expression. It makes him look a shadow of his previous, confident self.
“I didn’t hate you. I never hated you. I don’t...hate you.” His jaw clenches, but I know it’s not anger. It’s his attempt to control his unruly emotions.
He doesn’t hate me.
It’s the kind of statement that should bring a smile or make me feel lighter. I should feel like I have everything now, but tears spill out of my eyes and down my cheeks, tears I didn’t know were brimming.
Thomas jerks forward again but stops himself. He shakes his head once, silently telling me not to cry. His bunched fists open and close at his sides. He is dying to touch me – I know. But I won’t let him.
“See, that’s worse, Thomas,” I tell him, getting choked up. “Because if you don’t hate me then that means you…” I can’t say love. I don’t think I can ever say love. “Feel something opposite of hate, and if you in fact feel something opposite of hate, how could you not find me before this? How could you not pick up a phone to tell me you don’t hate me? I went days and weeks thinking you hated me, that I ruined every fucking thing in your life. I thought because of me, you’d never be happy. People kept telling me it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t have been me, but I never believed them. I still don’t believe them. How could you do that to me? How could you let me carry that burden? How could you do that to a person you don’t hate?”
I don’t know how long I’ve kept these words inside, and how long I can go on now before breaking down and sobbing on this godforsaken sidewalk. My tears show no sign of stopping, and I feel a sob beginning to emerge.
So maybe I’m being selfish. Obviously, he never had the time before this. He was busy taking care of Hadley and his son. I should let him off the hook, but I don’t want to. I don’t. I can’t. Loving myself means fighting for myself, fighting for my sanity, and I will fucking fight. I won’t be a martyr even though guilt keeps pouring out of me like tears and sweat.
“You don’t. You don’t do that to a person you don’t hate,” he whispers, his eyes red-rimmed. The tears shining in them stagger me. I mean, I know he must cry—he’s human—but seeing it in the flesh is…defeating. I feel defeated at his tears. I feel like I’ll crumble right here.
“Then why d-did you?”
“Because with you, everything is new. I feel like I’ve never not hated anyone before.”
A broken chuckle escapes me at his deliberate use of my terminology. He doesn’t laugh though; no. “With you, I feel that I’ve never had any feelings before, like it’s the first time I’m feeling anything at all. Do you know how terrifying that is?” He shakes his head and answers his own question. “It’s very terrifying. I have so many things I want to say to you that I end up saying the wrong thing. I’m so scared of taking the wrong step that I never move at all. I don’t know why I do that. I don’t know why I keep fucking things up when it comes to you, but all I can say is you make me f
eel like…I’ve never taken a breath before, like I’ve never lived before.”
It’s spooky how he said the same thing I was thinking about earlier, that he looks…unlived somehow.
We’re soul mates, my heart whispers.
Shut up, moron. We don’t think about those things anymore.
There’s an eerie seriousness in the air, and I don’t know how to deal with that. “Well, that was…um, very poetic.”
He tucks his hands into his pockets and rolls on his feet, as if embarrassed. “You wake up the words in me.”
That stirs a memory from long ago, but I can’t quite grasp it. Why does it feel like I’ve heard that before? And why does everything feel sad and hopeless again? Like even if all of this is true, too much has happened?
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I tell him honestly.
“I’ll wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For you to figure out what to do with it.”
“That’s…” I shake my head. “You can’t do that.”
“Sure I can.”
“What if I never figure it out?”
“Then I’ll keep waiting.”
“That’s crazy,” I scoff. “That’s…like the book.” My heart bottoms out then. It’s exactly like Barthes’ book, the one I stole from him ages ago. I still have it tucked away at the bottom of my drawer.
“A lover is the one who waits,” he paraphrases. “Then, I’ll wait. Forever.”
The Bard
In the months following my divorce, and getting custody of Nicky, I’ve thought a lot about what bravery means. Is it the absence of fear? Is it the feeling of being invincible?
I realized I already know what it means, that I’ve already seen it. My father was a brave man. It’s an odd and jarring thought, but it’s true. All my life I assumed my father was weak, that he wasn’t even a real poet, and I did everything I could to not be like him. But, as it turns out, my father was braver than me.
Bravery is picking up a pen and writing. Bravery is gouging out words from inside you and then imprinting them on a page to make them permanent. Bravery is knowing they might not ever be read by anyone, that the art you leave behind, the contributions you make to the world, might never be known by anyone. Bravery is knowing all of that but doing it anyway.
Like my father did. He wrote for himself. He didn’t care about the awards or validations. He wasn’t a good father, no, but in his own way, he was brave—braver than I ever was. I put so much stock into what I don’t want to be that I forgot what I could be.
I’ve started writing again. It’s poetry. It will always be poetry. That’s how I express myself. It’s the voice of my soul, like Anesthesia. The testament to my loneliness even when Hadley and I were together.
I’ve been working on a collection about Nicky. It helps me deal with things that happened. I don’t know where Hadley is. She left, just like she said she would. All I can wish is that she finds the peace she’s looking for. Maybe one day she’ll be back and Nicky can meet her. But until then, I’ll tell him stories about his mom.
Nicky has grown up so much. He is walking. He laughs. He plays. His favorite toys still change every week. It’s as if there is no past for him. He doesn’t remember being in the hospital or almost choking to death.
I do. I remember those things. They keep me awake at night. I check up on him constantly. I sleep more on the floor by his crib, than on the bed. But that’s okay. For now, they make me feel in control.
When I watch Nicky take stumbling steps, I look down at my own feet. I flex my toes to understand the mechanics of walking. There are times when I feel that every step is my very first step. There are times when I look at the world with Nicky’s eyes and wonderment.
And I keep coming to the same conclusion: that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the courage to do something despite it—taking that first step despite the danger of falling, creating a piece of art knowing that people might not appreciate it.
Bravery is like falling in love. You don’t know if the person will reciprocate, but still you fall.
Bravery is waiting for my Layla. I couldn’t ask her to love me back then. It wouldn’t have been fair. She’d already given me too much, and in return, I’d hurt her too much.
So I told her I’d wait, and since then, I’ve been waiting. Fall has become winter now.
Endless days when we meet at her school and I watch her shy away from me. At first, she wouldn’t even let me touch her. We’d go to a café nearby and sit at a distance from each other, me staring at her because I didn’t know where else to look, and her looking anywhere but at me. She’d play with Nicky, give him hats, laugh with him, teach him words. And I’d be torn between laughing at her antics and shaking her, begging her to love me back.
Every day I watch her walk away, saying she has classes or has to be somewhere. Endless nights when I think about her, and then break down and call her. In the beginning, she ignored my calls, until one day she picked up, but the conversation was halting. It took days of my coaxing before she finally started to open up, and I realized how fucking hard it must have been for her when I refused to give in and talk to her.
Endless conversations where we talk about Nicky, about books, about things I never even knew I wanted to talk about. I never even knew I had this many words in me.
I never knew I could wait for someone like this. Until Layla.
It’s almost midnight, and she just called me to tell me she’s coming over. I told her not to. It’s not safe taking the subway to Brooklyn this time of the night. I told her I’d come to her, but she laughed and said, Midnight streets are my friends.
The knock comes at my door and I rush to open it. Layla stands there with a huge grin on her face, and I have to clutch the door to keep myself upright. Her beauty is like an explosion, sudden and jarring, but in a way that steals all my breath and thoughts. Sometimes I have to push a palm down on my chest to keep my heart from bursting out.
“I finished it.” She hops on her feet as she comes inside my dismal, one-bedroom apartment. I have more books than furniture, but she doesn’t mind. The walls are purple, and that’s only because Layla thinks white is boring and went with me to pick out the colors.
“Finished what?” I close the door and turn around to find her taking off her coat and her sweater, followed by her hat, her scarf, and then finally, her gloves. She dumps it all on the coffee table and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
She shoots me a glare. “What, it’s cold outside.”
“Right, and we live in Antarctica.”
“Ha ha.” She rolls her eyes and I feel like I could kiss her from five feet away.
She takes out a fur hat from her childish purple backpack and without a word, walks toward the bedroom where Nicky is sleeping. I follow her. I’ll always follow her. She tiptoes to his crib, smiles down at him and sighs, clutching her chest. I want to laugh at her dramatic actions but I press my lips together. I don’t know why I even thought for a second that she wouldn’t love Nicky or think he’d be a burden. She loves him. It’s the little things she does for him, how she brings him hats, how she always makes a point to say goodnight to him on the phone, if she’s not here.
Layla places the hat by his sleeping form, this one tangerine in color, and walks back out to the living room. She comes to a stop and faces me, beaming. Her skirt reaches mid-thigh and even though she’s wearing tights, I’m able to trace out the slope of her thighs and her calves. I remember peeling those scraps of fabric off. It feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago, with the way I remember it so vividly and the way my fingers ache for it.
“Thomas,” she says, her breaths coming out hard and fast. I’ve never admitted it to her, but I love the way she says my name, like no one has ever said it before, like she invents me anew every time she says it. It’s fucking magical, and she calls me magic.
The shudders of her chest echo in my cock an
d I clear my throat. “So what did you finish?”
She swallows, appearing dazed. “Uh, my story.”
Layla has been writing a story that she hasn’t shown me. She doesn’t talk about it, not like she used to do back when she was my student. It stings, the distance, but I’ll take it. Unlike me, she likes to work on many things simultaneously, while I like to labor over one thing at a time. She likes to flit from one project to another.
Again, she bends down to root around in her bag, giving me a peek of her tits through her flimsy white top, and I whip my gaze up to the ceiling. I feel like a fucking pervert. Only Layla can make me feel both young and old at the same time.
“Here.”
I look at her outstretched hand and then up at her face, all inappropriate thoughts forgotten. “What’s that?”
“I want you to read it,” she whispers.
She looks at me through her lashes, shy and uncertain. She rubs her foot against the other leg, anxious. She is so fucking young in this moment that if I touched her right now, I’d sully her with my ancient, cynical fingers.
She isn’t giving me her story. She is giving me her heart.
I’ve thought about her heart a lot too. It’s big and fierce and soft and bright. It’s like a star or the moon or the entire fucking sky, and she’s giving it to me. She’s giving me the sky.
Everything has led to this. The fear I’m so damn familiar with rises up. I feel the physical effect of it in the way my stomach churns, in how tight my chest becomes.
I push past all of that. I push past the fear, the anxiety, and stalk toward her, stalk toward the only thing I want. “What’s it about?”
“It’s about how we fell in love.” She lowers her arm and retreats, step by step. I would’ve stopped if I thought she didn’t want me to come closer, but her purple eyes are shining. As soon as she reaches the wall, she sort of sinks into it, and I sink into her when I reach my destination. Her.
Our bodies touch and I almost groan out loud. I keep my arms on the wall, caging her in. “What’s it called?”
The Unrequited Page 29