F*ck Love

by Tarryn Fisher

  He hugs me tightly before I leave, and kisses me on the temple. “Let me find you. Don’t run.”

  I walk home very slowly.

  Four missed calls and eight texts from Della. What the hell am I doing?

  Each night, right before I lock up the gallery, my screen will light up to notify me that I have a text. Kit, my notification will say. I become flustered when his name appears. I spend a few moments not looking at my phone and distracting myself with other things—an empty stapler, a painting I’ve seen every day for months will have a new speck of paint to observe, writing down that we need more trash bags. During this time, an ache will start in my chest and build like a bad case of heartburn. Except it’s not heartburn; it’s Kit burn. When I finally run out of things to do, and make my way over to my phone, I know what I will see. Each night he sends a picture of a different place in Port Townsend; one day it’s a statue of Galatea, the sea goddess, and the next what looks like an old, rusted elevator shaft the color of a robin’s egg. He sends one of the Rose Theatre, and on another day a grimy restaurant that serves the best hash brown casserole I’ve ever eaten. The old boat/bike sculptor—a hippie “fuck you” to conformity—sits on Main Street, a beautifully, scrappy eyesore. He sent me there yesterday. Though she’s in plain view, he wanted me to find her. Pay attention only to her on that particular day. I love it. Each night after my picture comes, I put on my coat, lock the gallery doors for the evening, and find the place where Kit is waiting. It’s a treasure hunt for Kit. And all that other stuff. That’s the essence of him. I wonder if Della appreciates that part of his nature, or if it goes unseen.

  On one particular day, Kit sends me a picture of a courtyard of brown brick. It is grown over with fluorescent green moss, the floor a thick carpet of red leaves. It takes me thirty minutes to find it, though it was only two blocks away.

  “You bastard,” I say, when I round the corner and see him standing against a wall, leaning ever so casually. “It’s hidden. That was hard!”

  “Nothing worth finding is actually easy to find,” he says. “I know this from experience.” I pretend to not hear him and stop to look around. The beauty overtakes me. Of the courtyard, and him. And him in the courtyard. He’s wearing a plaid hoodie and ripped jeans, standing amongst all those leaves. It’s not an image I’ll easily get out of my mind.

  “Why did you want to show me this?” I ask, though I already know. He’s teaching me Port Townsend.

  “It’s a favorite place. A hiding spot.”

  We don’t stay there. We walk back to his condo where he gives me a mug of mulled wine, heady with clove and oranges. Pulling me back against his chest, I sit between his legs on the couch, facing the window.

  “Helena,” he says, into my ear. “You’ve been giving me a lot of attention lately. I like it.”

  “Because you’re so starved for attention?” I laugh. Even as we walked toward his condo earlier, women turned around to look at him as he passed them.

  “I want your attention,” he says. I close my eyes, glad he can’t see my face. I watch a couple of kids walk tightrope on a wall across the street.

  “Why?”

  “Helena, look at me.”

  “Ugh.”

  I look at him.

  “I don’t have a good reason, except something about me responds to something about you.”

  I know the feeling.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says, watching my lips. “You do.”

  He’s right.

  No one knows about the time we spend together, not even Greer. Especially not Greer. One morning, when we are in the kitchen, she asks me where all the light in my eyes comes from.

  “Port Townsend,” I tell her. She looks at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “It’s Kit,” she says.

  “What? No. Who?” I spill my yogurt.

  I glance at her while I wipe up the mess. Her face is neutral, but I can feel something radiating off her.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I saw your purse at his apartment. The day I came pounding on his door.”

  “Oh,” is all I can think to say. My face is burning.

  “Did he come back here for you?”

  I’ve wondered the same, though it feels indulgent to do so. This is his home. Coming to his home has nothing to do with me. As much as I’d like to believe otherwise.

  “Greer. I don’t know why Kit is here,” I say, standing up. “They broke up, and I think he needed to come home for a bit.”

  She nods, slowly. “Makes sense. But you know what I think? You’re going to get hurt.”

  I know that. I do.

  “I can’t get hurt if my heart’s not in it.”

  “You’re a very, very poor liar, Helena.”

  I know that too.

  We don’t talk about it any more. Greer leaves without a goodbye, and I get ready to go to work. She was right. I needed to stop this now. I take out my phone and delete Kit’s number. There. Now I couldn’t text him first. Such a stupid thing, but I feel mildly triumphant. For the moment. I walk to work, formulating a plan. I’ll text Della, listen to her, comfort her. I’ll reaffirm our friendship. Chicks before dicks. I will be the friend she needs me to be, and put my feelings for Kit aside. There! I make it down the block, and turn left when I reach the Conservatory. I see him about twenty steps ahead, walking right toward me. His head is bent over his phone. I have time to turn around and run. Maybe running isn’t the best option. I go inside the Conservatory. It’s my favorite store, but today it will just serve as my hiding spot. I move past the shelves of red coral and fur throws, and head to the back of the store. There’s a piece of art I like to look at, hanging on the far wall. An octopus, legs furled, ink shooting from its mouth.

  “I’ll always find you. Even when you run.”

  “That’s not creepy at all,” I say, not turning around. I’m cool as a cucumber, but my heart is violent in its pumping. “I was just doing my morning exercise routine.”

  “I see that,” he says. “Running away from me.” I glance at him out of the corner of my eye.

  “That’s a very self-absorbed thing to say.”

  “Hey, wanna go for a walk?”

  “Nope. I have to work.”

  “I’ll walk you to work.”

  I shrug.

  Kit walks with his hands buried in his pockets. There is no wind today, but I clutch my purse like it’s going to blow away anyway. Something to do with all my tension. When we reach the gallery doors, we stop, and I dangle the keys from my fingertip, shaking them a little. Just to let him know. This is it. Peace out! I’m jingling my keys at you!

  “Thank you for walking me to work,” I say stiffly. I jingle the keys louder, and they slip off my finger. Kit bends down to retrieve them, and when I look at him, he’s on one knee in front of me. He lifts my hand from my side and slips the ring of the keychain back onto my finger. It’s not on my ring finger, and for that I’m mildly grateful. There would be the issue of not being able to conceal a swoon. He’s already on his knees, looking me in the eyes. And he doesn’t break eye contact with me when he stands up either.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  I turn, insert key into lock, all robotic. I see him come up behind me in the reflection on the window. His voice is close to my ear. I imagine I can feel his breath, but it’s probably just a blow of wind. I imagine myself pushing the door open and walking inside—the gallery swallowing me and pressing Kit out. The gallery would have to press him out, because I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

  “Don’t push me out, Helena. I’m not ready to go.”

  And what can you do in that moment but close your eyes as tightly as you can and try to control the trembling in your limbs. I turn around, the stupid girl that I am, and let him kiss me. He holds my face like he wants to keep me from pulling away. He doesn’t have anything to worry about. All my attention is…

  His phone r
ings. That’s what ends our kiss. I am left pressed to the glass doors of the gallery. I can feel Greer’s warnings staring at my back—ripples upon ripples in blues and greens and blacks. I am blurry eyed, my chest aching from … what? Longing? I watch him answer his phone, our eyes connected, then a look of surprise takes over his face.

  “Whose number is this?” His voice is hard. I wouldn’t like to be on the other side of that voice. I come out of my daze a little bit. I don’t need the gallery to hold me up anymore. I right myself, straightening my hair, which was mussed underneath Kit’s hands.

  I have an uneasiness. It’s building by the second. And then Kit’s eyes find mine. He’s quiet as he listens, but I can see it on his face. I already know, before he hangs up the phone and slips it back into his pocket. We are over before we even start.

  “It was Della,” he says. There’s a pause. “She’s pregnant.”

  Not five minutes after she called Kit, Della posts a sonogram picture to Instagram. A perfectly timed scheme by a perfectly insecure girl. Helluva way to go about this, Dells. She captioned it: my little been. Been. As in I’ve been there. IF ONLY THERE’D BEEN SOMEONE TO PROOF THIS CAPTION. Her hashtag crushes me: #eightweeks. Right before he came back to PT. Oh my God, I feel so sick.

  You’ll be okay, I tell myself. This isn’t even a big deal. I hung out with him, like, what? Five times? Fifty-five times? I married him once, and we had a baby, but he doesn’t know that. Plus, I’ve been through this before. A guy. A woman who is not me. A baby. But, what Neil did does not compare to this. Neil betrayed me, sure. But Neil and I were together because we were young, and it made sense. Had we really had a connection? Ha! No. Our connection was circumstantial. We went to the same school, had the same friends. We watched the same things on television because our friends were watching, and we needed something to talk about.

  Kit hit me out of nowhere. I had a dream that made me take a closer look at a guy I was otherwise ignoring. And from that dream I discovered a connection. I don’t even think about the dream anymore. For the last eight weeks I’ve been living it.

  But I don’t think about that as I answer calls, pack some pieces up for shipment, and deposit checks. I feel like all of my insides have been taken out and replaced with stuffing that has made me stiff, and numb, and mechanical. I do not get my usual text from Kit when it’s time to lock up and go home, so I stay later than usual. I remind myself of my granny, who moves from room to room, managing to look busy without really doing anything.

  Kit is probably on his way back to Florida by now, a plastic cup of shitty wine in his hand. To think of him being so far away causes the muscles in my heart to stretch painfully. This isn’t okay. I am not okay. There is no one on the street when I leave. It’s eerily quiet; the only sound is of the rain and the distant hum of a generator. It’s a cold night; the wind has been touching the tops of the snowy mountains and blowing our way. I shrink deeper into my coat and look toward the cannery. I don’t want to be there. Or here. Or anywhere. I walk toward the harbor, my steps determined. Deep in my pocket, my wine cork sits clutched in my fist. I’m not feeling quite as numb as I was before. The shock has worn off and filled with something sharper. I think it’s called realization. Ha! The Belle is not in her slip. It’s the first time I’ve found her spot empty. I stand on the dock, shivering and wondering what to do next.

  “Helena.”

  I’ll always find you.

  “Don’t bother,” I say without turning around. He comes to stand next to me, and we stare at the water together. I can see my breath.

  “I thought you would have left by now.”

  He looks down at his feet, and I hear him sigh. “I fly back tomorrow.”

  “Ah.”

  More silence.

  “A baby. You must be very excited.”

  “Don’t, Helena. This is … I didn’t plan for this. I have to go talk to her, take care of things.”

  “You have to go take care of your family,” I say, turning to face him. “That’s the right thing. I mean, what were we even doing here, Kit?”

  He makes a face, starts to say something, then looks away, grinding his teeth. “We were doing something good. My intentions were to get to know you. To really get to know you,” he says.

  “We weren’t doing something good. It just felt good. I betrayed Della. What was I? Your little distraction before you settled down?”

  He’s bouncing on his heels, shaking his head like he can’t believe what I’m saying.

  “You know that’s not true. We have something, Helena. In another life, it would have been a beautiful something.”

  That hurts. God, does it. I’ve seen that life. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. In his mind, I’m just some possibility that could have been, but in my mind, he’s the only possibility.

  I step close to him, close enough to see the stubble on his cheeks. I reach up to touch it, and it scrapes against the tender side of my hand. Kit closes his eyes. “There’s a house uptown on Washington; we live there together in that life,” I say softly. “Everything is green, green, green in our backyard. We have two children, a boy and a girl. She looks like you,” I say. “But she acts like me.” I caress his cheek because I know it’s the last time I’m going to get to do it. Kit’s eyes are open and storming. I run my teeth across my bottom lip before I continue. “In the summer, we make love outside, against the big wooden table that still holds our dinner dishes. And we talk about all the places we want to make love.” I lick the tears from my lip where they are pooling. Running in a straight line down my cheeks, a leaky faucet. “And we’re so happy, Kit. It’s like a dream every day.” I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss him softly on the lips, letting him taste my tears. He’s staring at me so hard I want to crack. “But, it’s just a dream, isn’t it?”

  Before I move away, I touch the crease between his eyes. He hasn’t said a word, but his mouth is puckered into this angry frown. He has less right to say things now. I understand.

  “Here,” I say. I hold out my fist, and he lifts his hand. I drop the wine cork into his palm. “Will you do me a favor?”

  He’s looking at the cork; I can see the confusion on his face. There are a hundred things going on behind his eyes. I point to the water.

  “Throw it in,” I say.

  “Is this the … why?”

  “Just do it,” I plead, closing my eyes. “Please.”

  He’s struggling. He wants to say more, but he turns to the water and lifts his arm above his head. I can only see it for a second before it disappears into the dark.

  There. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Goodbye, Kit,” I say.

  There are days—many of them. I can’t tell you what happened on those days: who I met, who I spoke to, what I ate. I definitely can’t recall the details of my thoughts, only that my dread jangled around the quiet corners of my mind until I couldn’t keep it sectioned off from anything. It soaked into work, and into home. Into my dealings with customers, and my phone calls with my parents. I was dreading life without him, and that was a sad, sad thing.

  Numbness. That came next. After weeks of feeling pain so potently, it was a welcome relief. It is what it is, I tell myself. And I feel so proud that I made it to the point of nothingness.

  But, then it comes back. Fucker. I don’t expect that. I wake up one morning with the sun streaming through my window. The sun, for God’s sake. Isn’t this the land of no sun? I roll over onto my stomach and pull a pillow over my head. And that’s when it happens. Everything comes rushing back—the intensity of what I feel for him, the dream right down to the ridiculous Pottery Barn couch, and the way he left with a big fat sorry. I can see the sinews in his neck pulled taut when I close my eyes. The full lower lip that falls into a pout when he’s thinking about something. I know his smell—not of his cologne—but his actual skin. I think of the day in his closet when he caught me smelling his shirt. God, that seems like forever ago. I am so devastated.
So utterly devastated.

  I tell Phyllis. It’s an accident, really. I’m browsing through knitted hats that look like doilies when she suddenly smiles at me from behind the register. I start to cry right away. It’s not even normal crying—it’s an ugly cry.

  “Hurt of this magnitude is like menopause,” Phyllis tells me. I’ve just wiped my nose with one of the hats. She takes it from me and hands me a tissue. “Comes in hot flashes. Just when you feel like you can’t take it anymore, it passes for a bit. But it comes back, boy does it.”

  I nod, but Phyllis is wrong. It never passes, and it never pauses. It’s like a fist clutched around my heart, squeezing all day long. The only thing that eases the pressure is when I’m working. You can distract a mind for a little bit, but when the heart and mind work together, they’re cruel. Phyllis sends me off with the hat I used to wipe my nose—as a gift. It takes me a few days to notice the glances. People in town seem to know. I’m in the Conservatory picking up something to send to my mom for her birthday when the owner touches my hand. I look up, startled. I’m hardly ever touched nowadays. I almost cry because everything makes me cry.

  “Just so you know,” she says, “we were all rooting for you.”

  I blink away the tears. I can’t speak. I don’t know whether or not to thank her, so I grab my purchase and nod at her before walking quickly from the store. When I mention it to Greer later that evening, she frowns at me.

  “Did you really think that no one knew? This is a small town, Helena. When a golden boy like Kit follows a girl around town with a bottle of wine in his hand, people get excited.”

  “He wasn’t … he didn’t…”

  Greer rolls her eyes. “He’s clearly in love with you. Too bad he knocked that girl up.”

  Her words take my breath away. Kit … in love with me? No. That is laughable. I do laugh a little bit. I haven’t heard from Kit or Della in weeks. As far as I know, they are painting their nursery some puke shade of gender neutral. I’ll just be over here in magic town licking my wounds. Drinking my wine. Slowly dying inside. Being melodramatic. Clinging to a dream I had once that changed everything I thought I wanted. I miss him so bad. I am too afraid to look at pictures. Too afraid to remember the way he sucked on my lips like they were candy. It is all a slippery slope. Me sitting in the dark with wine dribbling down my chin. Hating Della for touching him. Hating him for letting her. Where does it end? It doesn’t. That’s why you have to put it away.