Yolk

by Mary H. K. Choi

  He sighs. I can see his breath. His eyes are hard, then soft.

  “Jayne,” he says. “I would have told you about Aliyah at any point had we seen each other again. I should have told you that first night. I knew it was fucked up. But it’s why we didn’t hook up. Why I stopped. But I also didn’t want to seem presumptuous and call you, like, I have a girlfriend. I was dating a lot of people, and I don’t know anything about your situation.”

  “You were dating a lot of people?” My voice is anemic and pitiable.

  I stare at him, face completely numb.

  I glance up at the gleaming building, trying to see which unit is hers.

  “They’re not done,” he says, reading my mind. He breathes into his fists and scowls.

  “Here,” he says, nodding across the street. It’s a delivery entrance with a glorious recess and nice thick walls to block the wind. There are even stairs on a stoop.

  Without hesitation we run-waddle and sit side by side, huddling close. “We had an open relationship because she wanted one,” he says. “It wasn’t working. So we broke up.”

  I’m doubled over with my hands shoved in my pockets, and my breath warms my knees. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “We were together for two years,” he says. “Living together for six months. She didn’t tell me she applied to the Peace Corps. Meanwhile, I thought we only had to navigate grad school.”

  It takes me everything not to ask where she applied.

  “Instead she told me she was going to Peru for two years.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She slept with some rando a few months ago, but we talked about it like adults. We said we’d try an open relationship, and that’s when I met you.”

  I tilt my head to look at him. He’s hunched over too, with his head turned toward me, temple to knees. It’s strangely intimate. Like we’re in a blanket fort.

  “But then why break up?”

  He sighs as he grinds the sockets of his eyes into his kneecaps. “Because I’m not built for this. I tried it. I did all that Tinder shit. Raya. Bumble. Whatever the fuck, Hinge. I thought maybe it was a good idea. I’ve had a girlfriend from the time I was fifteen. It’s like in high school, Asian dudes were one thing, but a decade later it’s like suddenly we’re all hot. It was ridiculous. I felt like such a trope, like one of those tech bros who gets all cut up and gets Lasik and acts like a totally different person. At first it was a laugh. I liked meeting all these people that I’d otherwise never know. Especially in New York. But having sex with strangers is fucking weird. I think I hate it.”

  Recognition knocks at my heart.

  “I felt so fucking emo.” His shoulders shake a little as he chuckles. “Like, I was getting offended that no one seemed to want to be friends with me.”

  I can’t stop a tiny, sympathetic whine from escaping. I clear my throat. Fuck, he’s cute.

  “It all started to blend together. The drinking, partying, random hook-ups. The shit freaked me out. When you’re fucked up, you’re not always as careful as you need to be. I started to get tested for STDs, like, every other day because I’m a total fucking hypochondriac and the anxiety was making me nuts.”

  “Are you okay now?” Reluctant compassion wells squishily in my chest.

  He nods. “When I saw you in the bar, man, it made me happy. I wanted someone to talk to, to just spend time with. You seemed a little messy, but the last thing I expected was that we’d hook up. Look, I’ve met girls like you. Shit, I’ve been curved by girls like you. And honestly, and I don’t know if this is fucked up, but you ask me to meet you at a hipster dive bar, high-key looking like the type of Asian fashion chick who drinks bubble tea but only dates white photographers who speak conversational Japanese, so I had zero expectations.”

  I sit up. “What the fuck?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know, Jayne. But, that’s the vibe. Like, how many Asian guys have you dated?”

  Malcolm Ito.

  “I haven’t even…” I’m embarrassed to continue, but I hate that he’s turned it around like this. “I haven’t even had a real boyfriend.”

  “But you’ve hooked up with guys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “Well…” I scoff. I glance across the street. I stare at the pavement, disappearing into myself. I wonder if he’s going to ask if I’m obsessed with white-people things.

  “Shit,” he says after a while. He rubs his palms on his denim-clad legs, sighs, and then turns to me. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” I wonder if I go sufficiently dead inside whether I’ll feel the cold.

  “I sound psychotic,” he says.

  I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze. “What do you want, Patrick?” Jesus, men are exhausting. “You’re the one with a girlfriend.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re cross-examining me about my choices.”

  “I’m just trying to figure you out,” he says. “And it’s going very poorly. God, I sound like some asshole ajusshi.”

  “Yeah, you’re not coming off great right now.”

  “Fuck.”

  Finally, I turn to him. “I wish you’d have just told me about her.”

  “Same,” he says. “Hard same. But again…” He smiles ruefully. “Deadass I couldn’t tell if you’d care. Your whole thing about being fun and effervescent convinced me, until you effervesced all over the place and shit got dark so fast.”

  I laugh despite myself. He’s not wrong. I finally see how wounded he appears. How bloodshot his eyes are. It’s clear to me now how much he looks like someone going through a breakup.

  “Man.” I let out a sigh. “You’re kind of a fuckboy.”

  He grins. “Fair.”

  We sit for a while. I nudge his shoulder with mine. “Yeah, well.” I sigh, my breath misting the air in front of me. “I started hooking up with this grifter who moved into my apartment, and he fucked a whole bunch of other people right in my bedroom while I slept on the couch. So…”

  I feel him shift beside me. “Jesus. Guess you’d know a fuckboy when you see one,” he says.

  “I’m like a truffle pig for fuckboys.”

  He throws his head back and laughs. “You know what?” he says, getting to his feet, shaking his hair, and blowing air out through pursed lips. I look up at him.

  He crouches in front of me and whispers close to my face, “I like you a lot, but it’s freezing.”

  “This is dumb, right?”

  “Want to come over?”

  I nod, teeth chattering.

  chapter 43

  When our car arrives, Patrick wraps his arm around me in the back seat. I’m exhausted. I wonder if it’s hyperthermia setting in. He reaches for my hand as we climb his stairs.

  “I feel like, from a medical standpoint,” he says, opening the door, “we need to swaddle ourselves in as many blankets as possible.”

  He hands me the fuzzy slippers I wore last time. I nod in gratitude. I’m so cold that the pressure from my skull defrosting is a vice grip around my sinuses.

  “But I think I need a shower.” He takes his jacket off and hangs it up. “I just washed my sheets.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I croak, reluctantly removing my coat. “It’s like people who wear their shoes indoors. Or sit on beds in jeans. Gross.”

  Patrick yawns, leaning against his kitchen counter.

  I nod, helplessly yawning back.

  “You go first.” He washes his hands and fills up his teakettle.

  I realize I’m crowding him, huddling close for warmth. “No, you go ahead.”

  He looks down at me. “Do you want to agree that we’ll shower together with no expectations or anatomical inspections because we’re just both so fucking cold?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I’m also going to need more sweats.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” he says, shaking his head. “And don
’t think I didn’t notice when your ass wore them to Trader fucking Joe’s.” I poke him hard in the shoulder, embarrassed. He chuckles and grabs my hand and leads me to the bathroom.

  We turn away from each other chastely as we undress. I’m so cold, I clutch my naked body, and when the hot water sprays over us, it stings, needling into my numb flesh, my back, my ass, my legs. I let out a ragged breath as he does the same. It’s almost as if I can feel my personhood rising into my body as I defrost. I close my eyes. This moment feels like the culmination of so much running around. So much flailing and confusion.

  His arms encircle me, and I know my eye makeup is smearing down my face, but the warmth of his arms and the steam crowd out my thoughts. I trace the tattoos on his biceps. A palm with an evil eye. A large red stamped dojang seal on his shoulder with his Korean name: Jang Min Suk. There are smaller ones: A turtle. A cat. Blossoms blooming on his forearms. A stylized dokkaebi monster mask with horns and his tongue sticking out. We stand under the hot water for a long time. He washes his hair, and when he reaches out of the shower to grab a sample-size bottle of conditioner from his medicine cabinet, I know it belongs to her or any number of hers, but I try not to let it hurt my heart. I wash my hair, luxuriating in it, lathering up, and when he steps out first, I’m happy to have the roomy tub all to myself.

  I press my palm against the tile. I push my toe up against the blue rubber mesh flower in his drain to drag my long black hairs out. I feel like crying. If I lived here, I would be so happy. It’s not even that I want to move in with Patrick. It’s that his house feels like a home in a way I’ve never experienced in New York. The pictures on the walls, the impractical number of books, the stupid avocado egg timer. It’s festooned with personal effects. Nobody’s leaving anytime soon. It feels like a place where people want to stay.

  Patrick hands me a white towel as he’s brushing his teeth. I squeeze the rope of my hair, wringing it out, and wrap the towel around me, under my armpits. I toss the hair ball I’ve collected from the drain and dry my hands to grab a few squares of toilet paper and wipe my eyes. It feels rough, but I don’t want to soil his towels with eye makeup. Patrick watches me.

  He hands me my toothbrush from before. The same one with his dentist’s name on the handle.

  “Jayne,” he says, after a beat. “No one’s used it.”

  I grin as we brush our teeth side by side. In our reflection, I think how unfair it is that men get to look the same all the time. That they don’t have to experience the rude shock of their appearance unadorned and without makeup. His mirrored face with its toothbrush dangling from his mouth buckles and swings toward me as he pops open the medicine cabinet to hand me facial moisturizer.

  “I have body stuff, too, if you need,” he says. There’s a green-topped bottle of drugstore lotion on the glass shelf above the sink.

  I moisturize my face, then pump some lotion into my cupped hands. With his own towel slung low around his waist, he watches me.

  “Do you mind?”

  He laughs and lets himself out. I lotion my arms, my legs, smearing it into my thighs, and for once I don’t stare at my face and inspect my body. I wrap the towel around myself again and go into the living room. He’s in the kitchen, drinking water, and it looks so good, I walk over. He hands the tall frosted glass to me, and it’s delicious. He refills it, and I drink that, too, and when he kisses me, our mouths are cool and slick.

  I press my steam-poached body up against his as the lip of the towel under my armpits bites into me. He draws me toward him by the waist and the towel loosens, and it’s fine because I want there to be less between us. I want to feel his chest on mine and I don’t care if our chests suction cup together and make a noise, because what I want is to plunge my entire chest inside his and feel the warmth there. My senses skitter. I clutch the towel to me before it falls away entirely.

  “Is this okay?” he asks, expression stormy. He grabs the glass of water left on the counter and takes another sip.

  I nod. He waits. “Yes,” I tell him. I lead him into his room. It’s dark in there, which is better. I take my towel off, fold it into thirds, and lay it on the pillowcase to protect the pillow from my wet hair. Then I lift the covers and get in. He does the same on his side, flinging his towel on the chair by the window. He lies there, offering me his arm, and I snuggle against him.

  “This can go however you want,” he says. His eyes are shiny in the dark.

  His gaze is almost unbearable. I crane my neck, close my eyes, and kiss him.

  He kisses me back, deeply. I break away. His lips are swollen, his hair is mussed. Again he asks, “Is this okay?”

  “Yes.”

  We’re both on our sides facing each other. I watch as his hand travels up to his cowlick to pat it down, and something forceful corkscrews inside of me. I want to eat him. He studies me openly, without any self-consciousness. I’m struck by the solemnity of him. His silence. The scrutiny’s intimidating, but it feels good too. He kisses me, and this time I roll on top of him, hair tumbling onto his face and tenting around us.

  I smile. “Hi.”

  “Hey.”

  I kiss him. Deep. I kiss him with everything. I kiss him, and I’m struck by this insistent pouring feeling.

  It’s a rubbery vertiginous swooping, and when he flips me to be on top of me, our full bodies pressed up against each other, I feel relief. I trace his face with my fingertips. His cheekbones are so close to the surface. He turns his head and kisses my hand. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched like this. I don’t know that I’ve ever been touched like this before at all.

  He leans over to get a condom, and he checks in again and I say good again, and as I watch him, I realize I’ve always looked away for this part, as if not to be complicit, so later, when the regret comes, I can blame everyone but myself. But this time I watch. He smiles self-consciously. Shyly somehow, and it endears him to me all over again.

  He hangs above me and covers my mouth with his, my neck, a shoulder, and at some point I’m no longer looking out of my eyes, wondering how I must appear, whether I smell okay, if I taste good, if I’m fatter or thinner with my clothes off or on, or how I rank against the billions of other images of women that exist in the world.

  My heart actually aches, it’s so full.

  When he presses into me, I don’t feel invaded.

  I didn’t know about this. This other sensation.

  A feeling of recognition. Of me claiming him.

  It’s how he fits perfectly inside of me. It’s in the way his mouth tastes. The way his tongue feels. How he smells. I’ve always understood the transaction of it. That I give something up, that I endure the physical discomfort of intrusion for something in return. For him to like me. To think I’m special. Special enough that he’ll want to stick around. But this is more mysterious. The inquisition somehow mutual. I have no idea how this goes.

  My breath sounds ragged to my ears as he reaches down to touch me, pulling his hips back before rocking into me. I choke a little on my own spit, I’m so surprised by my reaction to him. His hair’s in his face. I close my eyes, and when I feel his hot, wet mouth on my breasts, I feel as though I’m falling.

  I sigh when it’s over. I don’t pretend that I came, but I feel almost as though I could have. That I almost had to stop myself from doing it. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to finishing with someone else, and as I grab his hands and cinch them tighter around my shoulders, he collapses behind me.

  “Hey,” I squeak. I’m breathing out of my mouth as smoothly as I can, so he doesn’t hear the hitch in my throat. The wet in my nose. I’m mortified. My eyes smart.

  “Jayne,” he says, propping himself up to look at me.

  “Yeah?” I angle my face away. To hide the tears leaking out of my eyes.

  “Hey,” he says.

  I swallow, my tears puddling on the towel I’ve left on the pillow.

  “Jayne.”

  I turn around to face him. “I
don’t know why I’m crying,” I say helplessly, laughing, feeling like an idiot.

  “Okay,” he says, awash with concern. “What do you need?”

  “Can you just hug me but maybe not look at me?”

  He gathers me in his arms from behind and presses his chest right up against my back.

  I exhale. “My reaction bears no reflection on performance,” I reassure him, patting his hand, and I can tell he’s smiling even if I can’t see it.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, sniffing like a child. “What a mess.”

  The tears take a moment to dry up, but eventually I collect myself. “Can I stay here tonight?”

  “Of course,” he says. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know I haven’t been completely honest with you,” he says. “But I’m super done with dating randos. I like you. So, um, please stay the night. You’re the one who keeps trying to run out of here. You don’t have to feel like you’re overstaying your welcome with me.”

  I start weeping all over again, the tears sliding sideways.

  “You want a glass of water?” he asks.

  “Okay.” I sniff.

  He grabs a pair of gray sweats.

  When he comes back in, concerned look on his face, hair messy, I sit up with the sheets pulled up around me.

  I take long, thirsty gulps. “Thanks.” I hand back the glass feeling like a child.

  He sets it on the bedside table.

  “Fuck,” I tell him. “I’m exhausting.”

  He laughs.

  Between the vomiting and the sobbing and the yelling, I wonder what’s wrong with Patrick that he seems to like me.

  “You know what though?” He sits on the edge of the bed.

  “Hmm?”

  “Remember the part where you used toilet paper to take off your makeup, so you didn’t smear it into my towels?”

  I turn my head up to him.

  He grins. “That was hot.”

  chapter 44

  It’s just getting light when I skip down Patrick’s stairs and out his door. The air is bracing and crisp. I hug myself, having wheedled another sweatshirt from Patrick, and while the sounds of garbage trucks used to sour my mood after big nights out, this morning I’m glad to be sober and awake at this early hour.