by Adi Alsaid
“Pretty sure it is.”
My phone buzzed in my hand. “Alright, dude, my phone’s blowing up because I’m extremely popular and people clamor for my time. I’ll see you at work.” I figured it was a social media notification or something, or some follow-up pep talk from Hafsah, so after I hung up with Pete I went out to the living room and had breakfast with my mom and Jase. I only checked my phone again right before heading to work. It was a text from Cal.
CAL
You can write about us. You can interview us. Whatever you need, we’re in.
At work, I found Pete in a projection room, changing over from one film to another. I walked up to him with my phone out, showing Cal’s text message.
He stared at me, his eyes wide. “Whoa.”
I thought he was reacting to the text message and so I nodded and smiled. “I know!”
“I’m talking about your face. Goddamn, Lu, that looks worse in person. How did it happen?”
“Oh that.” I waved my hand. “Drunken piggyback ride, you know how it goes. It’s healing quickly. But read this text.”
“You’re definitely gonna have to elaborate on ‘drunken piggyback ride’ in a sec.” He turned his attention to my phone and read. Now, I wasn’t exactly expecting an over-the-top reaction. I didn’t need Pete to do somersaults and shoot confetti out of his butt or anything. But some overt expression of joy would have been nice. A smile or a high five or something. Instead he shuffled around the projection room, checking switches that we never had to look at before. “Interesting timing,” he mumbled.
“Interesting my ass. This is perfect! I have their permission, right during my last chance. It’s all going to be okay.”
Pete brushed the hair out of his eyes and kept fiddling with the projector. “You said there were developments with Leo? He didn’t do that, did he?” he asked, motioning at my face.
“What? No. It was Cal.”
Pete nodded. “Right. I have no follow-up questions.” He looked up at the official theater clock on the wall, then started the trailer reel and we headed out of the booth. “So, what happened with Leo?”
“I don’t want to talk about Leo. I’m finally forgetting him and moving on from him, like you wanted. You should be excited for me.”
“I am,” he deadpanned. Oh, I got it. He was joking. We walked out into the theater lobby and saw Brad walking by, clipboard tucked under his arm. “Brad! We need responsibilities!” Pete called out.
“Hot dogs and popcorn,” Brad called back, barely missing a beat before disappearing into the back office.
I belched a groan out as we shuffled our way to the concession stand. Throwing more hot dogs into a fake rotisserie thingy and reloading kernels and prepackaged popcorn into a machine wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but we long ago decided it was the worst part of our jobs. Then I realized Pete wasn’t joining me in the exaggerated parade of complaints we usually indulged in.
We fell into a silence, heavy only because of its timing. We’d never loaded the popcorn machine without making some sort of guess as to what they made the fake butter out of. “What do you think?” I asked. “Liposuction extractions, hippopotamus eye boogers, Saint Bernard drool?”
“Those are repeats,” Pete muttered. He shut the glass door for the popcorn machine, then pulled out a package of hot dogs from the freezer. “What do you wanna do after work?”
“Er, did I not scroll down from that text message I showed you? Because there were more.”
Pete pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re hanging out with the lovebirds again.”
“You can come if you want!”
As Pete and I moved on to the second popcorn machine, we muttered a hello to our coworker Rahim, who was manning the one open concession register, a handful of people lined up waiting to be served. “I’m gonna be interviewing them for the article, so you’ll totally be a fourth wheel, but it might help to have you there. I think you’ll like them. Iris is doing a little photo shoot in Brooklyn, so at least it’ll be a change of scenery.”
Pete crossed his arms in front of his chest. He had his pouty face on. It wasn’t a full pout, just a hint of sadness behind the eyes. I think it might be an Irish thing, pouting with your pupils.
“Don’t get all broody on me. It’s bad timing, but it’s not like I’m spending every waking moment with them.” Rahim turned over his shoulder at us, clearly hearing the conversation. I finished refilling the popcorn machine and lowered my voice. “You know how important this column is to me. Once the column is written, I promise we’ll return to our regularly scheduled time-killing activities.”
Pete nodded his head quickly, offering me a tight-lipped smile. “You’re right. I’m happy for you. Not sure if I’ll make the trek out to Brooklyn, but I’m glad you’ve got another chance.” He sighed and uncrossed his arms, running a hand through his hair. “What game are we playing today?”
BRIEF CHRONICLE OF ANOTHER STUPID HEART
The Sound of Settling
By Lu Charles
November 21
What did couples do before movies and television were widely available from the comfort of your home, flashing from a computer screen set up in a bedroom while you pressed yourselves against each other?
I’m not being facetious here, I’m seriously asking. What did we do as a species to pass the time in the company of someone we loved? When the conversation dries up after months together—not entirely, obviously, not for good, but for now—and economic limitations prevent you from going out into the world, when the mental and physical onuses of senior year have taken their toll, and it’s exhausting to do anything but lie around and be entertained by stories, what did couples do? Did they have to do anything? Do we?
I’m asking less out of a sincere interest in the dates of the past (no pun intended), but because, as my relationship has settled itself into comfort, I find myself wondering about options. I’m not knocking the Netflix-and-chill approach to modern romance. Few things sound more romantic to me. I’ve just been asking myself, is this all there is? Am I falling too deep into comfort and complacency?
When these thoughts float across my mind, it’s hard for the questions to contain themselves to the literal. I start thinking that the questions are not just directed at the activities my boyfriend and I choose to partake in for our dates, but at the relationship itself.
I get a thrill when I see him for the first time in a few days after I’ve spent a weekend in New Jersey. I get a thrill when we fall asleep on one of these Netflix-and-chill dates and he wakes me up with a kiss on the temple. I get a thrill when I make a joke I’m sure is stupid enough to be grounds for a breakup and he responds with honest laughter, the sound rising up from his sexy belly, which juts out in a way that makes me think of teacup pigs.
But these thrills are few and far between now. Three months later, I don’t keep myself awake all night texting him, thinking about him, writing him into my AP English essays just for the chance to talk about him. A natural part of the whole relationship thing, maybe. I’ve heard of this so-called honeymoon phase, and I think it’s stupid to think feelings should lessen, even if I believe it’s a real thing and a natural part of being a human.
Love that isn’t thrilling is still love.
But thrills are nice too.
Maybe the only thing that happens to relationships as they go on, is that we forget that variety is the spice of life. We seek the same thrills from the start of the relationship, but those have been tired out, and don’t provide the same jolt they used to. Or we’ve elevated those experiences in our minds, colored them gold with nostalgia, so that any new thrills that enter our lives feel lesser in comparison.
But there are new thrills to be found, right? We just trick ourselves into thinking that a relationship that has gone on for a while has tired them all out. We are blind to the possibilities
because we’re complacent.
What I’m saying is: I could find more thrills for me and my beau (ew, sorry, I won’t repeat that term again) to partake in. From you, maybe. Thrills that you’ve tired of might hold some novelty for us.
Comment below with thrills you’ve experienced, so that someone (cough, cough) might try them out for herself.
17
OUT OF SHAPE
Cal and I stood leaning against a brick wall by the Dumbo waterfront while Iris walked around us, finding the best angle for the Brooklyn Bridge, with Manhattan coloring the background. It had been overcast all day, but a few rays of sunlight poked through the clouds now, as if the skies had parted just for Iris.
“Face looks good,” Cal said. I started to blush, even though I knew what he meant.
“All hail Neosporin,” I responded.
Iris waited for some tourists to step out of her shot. She was in another pinup-style dress, red with white polka dots. Again, I thought about how she seemed entirely at home in New York, but I could also picture her fitting into California perfectly. She moved through the world like she belonged in it.
I slipped my pen inside my notebook, where I’d been scribbling notes for the past hour or so. Not just my questions and their answers, but the way they looked at each other, how many times Iris reached out to put a hand on his forearm, anything they said that might have been an inside joke. I wanted to capture anything that could have been a key to answering why they survived and Leo and I had not.
“How’d you convince her?” I asked.
Cal squinted against the sun and shrugged. “I didn’t try to convince her. I just told her that it would be a gift to have a little reminder of us. We might be splitting up come August, but what we had—what we have—is special. I don’t want time erasing that, don’t want myself thinking in the future that what I feel today was an exaggerated teenage feeling. That it wasn’t actually love.” He shifted his stance, resting one foot against the wall and turning to look at Iris, who was changing her camera lens. “Iris told me that it was silly, that we already have two years’ worth of exchanged emails, texts, Tumblr messages, mementos like that receipt that was in my wallet you found. Plus, two years’ worth of memories.
“But I want more than just memories. I wanted a love story. Our love story.” If Pete were around, he might have burst out in laughter at the earnestness with which Cal said this. But there was something to how he said it that made my heart break on his behalf. “I just want an account. Something I can turn to months/years down the line and relive.” He shrugged again, a very different gesture than when Jase shrugged at me while standing in my doorway. In the distance, Iris fluffed her hair and checked her camera’s display, then turned to us and raised a finger to say she’d be a minute. “Maybe,” Cal added quietly, almost like he didn’t want me to hear the thought, “I could even use it as a way to figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it.”
Then he turned and smiled at me, motioning at the notebook. “What’s next?”
It took me a second to recover from his little speech. I couldn’t even remember what I’d asked. I flipped my notebook open again, looked at the questions I’d scribbled throughout the day at work and on the subway ride over to Brooklyn. Nothing seemed pertinent or poignant enough. “Tell me about your first date,” I said, right as Iris caught up to us.
“Ooh, I love telling this story.”
Cal smiled. “Go ahead.”
We started walking away from the waterfront, Iris switching up her lenses again as she started to tell the story.
We turned down a random street, me and Iris in front and Cal walking behind us. I turned over my shoulder to glance at him. He had his hands in his pockets, a little smudge on his glasses, which he didn’t seem to mind or notice.
I kept quiet as Iris described reaching for Cal’s hand for the first time outside of an Indian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. I had to open up my notebook and start doodling while we walked in order to distract myself from the memory of holding hands with Leo. Not for the first time, but the last. How we’d lain in bed with our fingers limply intertwined, the air in the room so clearly heavy, though I had no idea why at the time. A few hours later we were out on the balcony ending things.
We’d been walking along Flushing Avenue, getting close to Williamsburg. Leo lived nearby, which was something I would have rather not thought about. Thankfully, Iris had been giving plenty of details about their date, her memory almost suspiciously good, providing me with plenty of fodder to occupy my mind. I checked my phone to make sure my mom wasn’t getting pissed and threatening to hunt me down, but all I had was a text from Pete asking if I was still in Brooklyn. I texted back, Yes, hanging around Dumbo interviewing the lovebirds, and then added a string of random emojis because I couldn’t think of what else to say as an apology for bailing on him again.
“I don’t mean to bring down the mood after that lovely reminiscence,” I said, “but I just have to know, why are you guys breaking up?”
Iris slipped her hand away from Cal’s, shoving her hands inside the pockets of her dress. “You wanna take this one?” she asked. I tried to detect bitterness in her voice, tried to detect pain in the air around them. But there wasn’t anything so obvious as that. Cal fiddled with his rolled-up shirtsleeves, trying to even them out.
“We just know the path that we’ll likely end up on if we stay together,” Cal said. “We’re not one of those couples that assumes first love is last love. Everyone knows it’s irrational to think that, but they also believe they’re one of the exceptions. It’s better to end things on a good note.”
I made eye contact with Cal, certain I’d see some of the hurt I’d seen the other night. I listened for his voice to waver.
“We know it sounds ridiculous,” Iris added. “And we know it’s not necessarily avoiding any pain. But we’re avoiding the ugly parts, the sad unraveling. Everyone that doesn’t marry their first love has it ruined by the breakup.”
With just those few lines, I probably had enough material to put together into something Hafsah would accept. All I had to do was arrange it into something semicohesive. I couldn’t tell if I was officially past my writer’s block, but I felt close enough that a sigh of relief was appropriate.
Before I could, though, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned around and when I saw who it was I let out an exasperated, “Of course!”
Leo furrowed his brow, then turned to look behind him, as if I might have been talking about someone else. “Hey,” he said.
I searched the scene for further context as to why the hell he was standing in front of me right now. Then I saw his parents and sisters standing outside of a restaurant across the street. Cheryl, his younger sister, looked over at me and waved. She went to our school too and seemed to think I was cool. The rest of his family didn’t seem to give me much thought.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, although I’d picked up enough context to guess.
“You never answered me,” he said, scratching at his neck. He looked over my shoulder at Iris and Cal, who’d picked up on the fact that something awkward was in the works and had taken a couple of steps backward. “I texted Pete, and he said you were around here.”
“So you convinced your entire family to stalk me?”
I expected him to flatly reject this statement as me being ridiculous, but he combed a tress behind his ear and looked down at the ground. My stomach lurched. Why wasn’t I throwing my arms around his neck, telling him that I still loved him too? Wasn’t this exactly what I’d wanted? “I was just hoping to see you. I convinced them to go for Italian.” He smiled. He had such a great smile, the prick. “It’s been harder than...” He trailed off, looking again at Iris and Cal. “Wow, new friends already?” He forced a smile, then awkwardly waved.
Cal and Iris waved back, and then I saw Cal lean into Iris
to say something, but their exchange was interrupted by Leo shouting his name at them, like a child with a weak grasp on social etiquette. Before Cal and Iris could respond with a slew of questions about his understanding of how the world works, Cheryl jogged across the street toward us.
“Our table’s ready,” she said to Leo. Then, turning to me, she smiled and waved. “Hi, Lu! How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.” My eyes flitted toward Leo, whose downturned eyes made it obvious that he hadn’t told her we’d broken up. Maybe he hadn’t told any of them.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just, you know. Hanging. Say hi to the rest of the family for me,” I added, making a point to say it to Leo.
Iris, Cal, and I walked away, wandering through Williamsburg as the sun dipped down. Iris stopped every few blocks to take pictures of buildings, a group of friends hanging out in stoops, two guys taking a smoke break from unloading a beer truck. They looked at the camera, one of them staring blankly, the other smiling, his hands resting on his hip. I could picture Iris printing this shot out, hanging it up in her California dorm, a shrine to all things New York.
“Was that the ex?” Cal asked.
I nodded, feeling physically exhausted from thinking about Leo. It was like I’d been in shape for a while, lifting that heavy load week in and week out. But since hanging out with Iris and Cal, I’d slowly lost my conditioning, and now the slightest exercise got me winded.
“I may not know what you’re feeling now, but I can confidently say the dude made a mistake.” Cal turned to look at me, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, looking a lot more tenuous than the person who spoke about love and paintball teams to strangers on benches. He gave me a little smile. “You’re great, Lu.”
About an hour later, riding back on the J/M/Z toward Manhattan, the city lights starting to flicker on as twilight grew, Leo texted me again, telling me he missed me. If only I had the strength to delete it. Instead I stared at it for a long time, wishing it hadn’t come, or that it had come from someone else.