It had been well over an hour of failing to nap by the time the music started through the wall. He never ran his music player anymore. It had been years since she’d heard music through the tinny speakers of his laptop. In fact, she could’ve sworn he’d blown out those speakers last year and refused to pay to get them repaired. Maybe it was coming from his busted phone. She knew he subscribed to one of the streaming services but rarely used it. It was one of those recurring monthly charges he always talked about needing to eliminate. At least she’d assumed he still subscribed. But did they know anything for certain about each other anymore?
No, she knew these songs. What was coming through the wall was older—the stuff from high school and college and the years right after they’d graduated, the years when they’d imprinted one another’s music onto each other’s brains. The result of having run a cable from one laptop to the other that first summer to make mirrors out of one another’s catalogs. In which case, maybe it was her speakers. Maybe the music was coming from her laptop, not his.
The thought made her heart flutter. The thought made her feel like she might faint.
She stood up and quietly moved toward the door. She heard him scrounging around on the other side, packing maybe. Packing instead of reading the open tabs on her laptop. Had he been able to sleep? Or had he been awake this whole time? She didn’t want to barge in just yet. And so her feet carried her through a series of moves her mind was entirely indifferent to. She ate some almonds. She drank some more water. She adjusted some framed photos of La Sagrada Familia on the wall. She walked circles in the living room, into shadow and then into light. She sat back down on the couch. The music was louder now. She knew every inch of every song. It must’ve been her laptop. They’d seen so much of the music live together. At the Mercury Lounge. At the Bowery Ballroom. At Terminal 5. She’d taken those shows for granted. She’d never perceived them to be things she’d never have again. Experiences that could burn up and blow away. She puddled up on the couch again and closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing so as not to throw up.
She heard the toilet flush off the bedroom. It roused her alert. She thought of her laptop and her heart spiked again, making her head hurt with the pulse. She couldn’t just sit out here forever. She couldn’t take it any longer. She knocked on the bedroom door and then opened it delicately.
The blinds were drawn and it was dark in a way she thought it never would be again in the apartment. Will folded a shirt and placed it in his bag and then looked up at her. The rictus had returned to his face and it made her feel like they’d never met before—like he was looking at her as though she were a stranger. It made her dizzy. It terrified her. She read his face in the instant as a sign of being, at best, heartbroken—at worst, indifferent.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked back at her again with that blunt vacancy.
“I’m sorry, Will,” she said.
“We’re officially on a three a.m. flight. Seats confirmed.”
“Okay…great…” she said, trying to lock his eyes. “Listen, I need you to know that I’m so—”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “I’m sorry that you’re going through what you’re going through. I’m sorry that I’ve put you in this position.”
“You haven’t put me in a…it’s not a big thing. I shouldn’t have kept it to myself, but it’s nothing.”
He looked up at her. “I just don’t know if that’s true. If it were nothing, you would’ve mentioned it. You would’ve said it right out, and we would’ve had a big laugh like we did about the others. Those were nothing. I could tell. They were obviously as meaningful to you as mine were to me, which was…not. And that’s why you were able to talk about them, to laugh about them. Those were about sex—that was it. But you couldn’t tell me about this one.”
“I don’t know why,” she said, swallowing. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know why. I just don’t want you to think this is a bigger deal than it is, okay?”
He nodded. He leveled his eyes at her. He inhaled and then spoke it so casually that it caught her off guard. “Who was it?”
“What?”
“Who was she?”
“Nobody. Some girl who came by the set for one of the days of shooting.”
“Some girl.”
“A woman, I dunno, she’s mentored a bunch of the writers on our show.”
“A writer. A big-deal writer.”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“You guess so.”
“Yes…she’s a big deal. She’s a very talented writer and she’s helping all these other writers.”
“And so you just…hit it off? How did she know you were available?”
“She was direct. She came up to me after we wrapped for the day. Asked if I wanted to get a drink. I was busy, but I thought it might be about pitching something to the—”
“But it wasn’t. You knew it wasn’t.”
“I knew it probably wasn’t.”
“You were busy, but you went anyway.”
“We had a drink, and then another, and nobody ever had to say anything.”
“You brought her back to the hotel.”
“I went to her apartment. It was closer. We had another drink. I played with her Weimaraner.”
“Just like that,” he said.
“It was nothing to her…” she said, swallowing again. “It was easy, it was casual, it was nothing. That was the whole thing. There was nothing special about it.”
“Except of course there was.”
“I mean, there was nothing special about it for her. It was just…routine for her.”
He looked at her blankly again. “Did she know it was your first time?”
She looked right back. “She understood what the
