“It’s just the way we are,” I explain. Which isn’t an explanation at all, really.
“That’s okay. She isn’t the one I wanted to walk through the door.”
This should be exactly what I want to hear. I should be leaning into this moment, leaning into this boy in the darkness.
But I—
I—
He can’t point out what’s wrong and then say it’s okay, just because he wants to kiss me.
I pull away a little. I become a little less clear in his eyes.
“I wanted to respond,” I tell him.
“I know. That’s sweet.” He stops resting against the counter. He moves closer to me. “You’re very sweet.”
“No, no—you don’t get it. I mean, I wanted to respond. It’s not that I respond because she won’t. It’s not like I’m ruled by the dynamic you’re talking about. I’d want to do it anyway, even if she weren’t there to not do it. Does that make sense? Does it make any sense at all? Because I want it to make sense. It feels really important that it make sense, that my caring can be separate from her not caring. If that’s even true—because I think she does care about a lot of things. I’m just more honest in expressing it.”
Oh God, listen to yourself. He doesn’t want to hear this!
His hand touches me right below my shoulder. Supportive, or at least attempting to be.
“It’s okay,” he tells me.
“No,” I reply. “That’s too easy. It’s not helpful.”
He puts his hand down. “Give me a chance to talk, okay?”
He hates you, I think. He totally hates you.
He goes on. “I understand what you mean—I just dated this guy for almost a year, and it was like he felt we had to be exact complements; if he was bitchy, I had to be a saint; if he was the life of the party, I had to be the death of the party; if he was Mr. Public, I had to be Mr. Private. The stupid thing is, I went along with it. Because I thought, fine, if I was going to be those things anyway, there were plenty of other areas where being complementary was…beneficial.”
I don’t want to hear this. I don’t like it when other people are brought into the room. Because then you can’t ignore them.
But I can’t just stand here, either. He’s telling me something. I have to respond.
“So what happened?” I ask. It’s the safest thing I can think to say.
“It’s so ridiculous.”
“It can’t be any more ridiculous than our dinner party,” I point out.
“True. But this is that mundane ridiculousness where something way too small becomes something way too big. Do you really want to know why we broke up?”
“Yes,” I say. With some hesitation, of course. I know it’s a bad sign when a guy spends too much time talking about his ex.
Johan sighs. “It was over his phone.”
Then he stops. It is unclear to me whether they broke up while talking over the phone, or whether the phone played a more important role. “Go on,” I tell him.
I can see Johan reach behind him to find the counter again. Once he finds it, he leans. But we still feel close.
“So, I was at his apartment, hanging out after rehearsal. We were on the couch, watching Drag Race. Anyway, we’re there, side by side, and it’s feeling comfortable. Then he says, ‘I need my phone.’ And I ask him where it is, and he says it’s in his bedroom. Then he asks me to get it. I tell him he can get it himself, and his response is that, no, that’s my job. He’s joking, but he’s not really joking, and I can see that this is a game to him—can he make me do it? And I realize that usually the answer is yes, I will do it, so the game can be over quickly. But this time I refuse—and he’s hurt by it. Genuinely hurt. Why would I refuse such a simple request? ‘You like helping me!’ he tells me—or something like that. And I say, ‘Stan, clearly I don’t like it right now.’ ”
“Stan,” I say.
“Yes—and first I thought he was going to make everything right, say he was sorry and get his own damn phone so he could text or tweet or whatever it is he does. But no. Here’s the beautiful part. He calls me selfish. And I say, ‘You, of all people, are not allowed to deploy that adjective.’ It goes from there.”
It’s in the middle of that sentence that the lights come back on. For a moment, we are blinded. Then our eyes adjust.
“A tweeter named Stan,” I say.
Johan nods. “Stan Ball. He goes to your school, right?”
“But he…he never tweeted about you.”
“The only selfless thing he ever did! I said if he made me part of his running commentary, I’d be the one running. And he heeded that. Until we broke up.”
The kitchen has come back to life, and is adding its own commentary, blinking and groaning and ticking its way back to reality.
Johan goes on. “I guess he talked about coming here. I didn’t make the connection until I showed up.”
It shouldn’t matter to me that Johan isn’t a complete stranger. If anything, it should make me feel better, that we have something in common, even if it’s #Stantastic. But instead, it’s like he’s ruining the story of us, the story of this great random meeting on the subway. It’s still random, but it no longer feels serendipitously random.
I’m realizing it’s pretty quiet in the living room—which could mean either that things have settled down or that the chaos has turned into a black hole.
I can’t help it: I wonder if anything in there has been broken. Or is in the process of being broken. Or is about to be broken unless I intercede.
“We should probably see what they’re up to,” I tell Johan.
He looks disappointed. Or confused. Or annoyed.
I guess the point is that I can’t tell which.
I
