“When I was at my worst, I went through this phase where I’d take photos of things to make sure they were the way they were supposed to be. I had hundreds and hundreds of pictures on my phone of my house’s locked front door, of Edith, of our stove.” I’m not used to being this open with someone I’m hooking up with, but I don’t hate the way it feels to tell him all of this. “It’s that searching for proof and realizing I’m never going to get it. That’s how my therapist talked about it. Because the photos didn’t stop me from doing additional checks, or from taking even more photos. I have to be okay with the uncertainty. I have to trust myself. It’s a fight with my brain, and most of the time, my brain is acting especially infuriating.”
“I’m sorry.” He taps the side of my head with a fingertip. “I happen to like your brain, whether it’s fighting with you or not.”
Tarek liking my brain feels a little too boyfriend-adjacent for comfort, so I smile and try to brush it off. “Speaking of fighting,” I say. “I have the perfect idea to end this night. How do you feel about breaking things?”
Tarek is wearing goggles and a hard hat and wielding a sledgehammer. I’m sure I look equally goofy in my protective gear, plus a borrowed jacket and pants, since I wasn’t allowed to break things in a dress.
“A rage cage,” Tarek says, laughing as we enter the room. “Maybe nothing should surprise me about you at this point.”
“No, it’s RAAAAGE CAAAAGE! You have to be aggro while saying it or it doesn’t count. And it’s supposed to be very cathartic.”
I’d always wanted to go to a wrecking club like this. Breaking things and not getting in trouble for it? What’s not to love? I didn’t think it was possible to look good in goggles and a hard hat, but damn it, of course Tarek pulls it off. After we get a safety spiel from one of the employees, we’re led into a graffitied, industrial-looking room set up to look like a very sad office: an ancient computer and TV, a chair with three legs, and a long desk with woodworking that would horrify Maxine, stacked with old ceramic plates.
I pick up my sledgehammer and bring it down on the chair, and a hunk of it breaks off. Then I do it again, smashing it into smaller pieces. In a Venn diagram with people who play the harp on one side and people who like to smash things on the other, I thought there wouldn’t be any overlap, but nope, I am loving this.
Tarek takes his sledgehammer to the stack of plates. He’s gentle at first, barely nicking one, before sweeping them to the floor in a massive crash.
“You want to do this one together?” I ask, and we join forces to obliterate a TV monitor.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed this much.
After about twenty minutes of hard-core destruction, we take a break on a bench in the room. Tarek removes his goggles and hat. His hairline is damp with sweat.
“This is a great look for you,” he says, pulling my hat down over my eyes. If we were a real couple, we’d probably be taking selfies. “That was quite a lot of rage. Well done. I’ve got to come back here with Harun sometime.”
“It’s been a summer.” I take off the hat and fiddle with the brim of it. “Sometimes I wonder if it would really be that terrible if I kept going along with what my parents want.”
He just stares at me. “And keep being unhappy?”
“I don’t know! It’s less scary than the alternative. It’s comfortable. You’re not there when they’re guilting me into something. They make me feel like I can’t say no to them.”
I’ve planned it out in my head a hundred times. It starts with those words women use to qualify things so often, “maybe” and “I’m not sure if” and “I just.”
“Even if it does hurt them,” Tarek says, “that hurt isn’t going to last forever. Isn’t it better to tell them sooner as opposed to having it keep building? Wouldn’t it hurt less that way, for all of you?”
“Why do you have to be right?” I grumble.
“I’m older. More educated.”
I roll my eyes. “So if I told them, what would that look like? ‘Hey, Mom, hey, Dad, I fucking quit. Oh, and by the way, I’ve been taking harp lessons because I wanted to expand on my least marketable skill.’ ”
“You still have to play for me.”
“I will, I will,” I say, unsure whether I’m lying. “It’s just hard, with my parents, and even finding the time to play…”
He reaches over, pulls my legs across his lap. “I know. Hey. Let me try something. Don’t think—just say whatever comes to mind first. Five years from now, what are you doing? Your biggest, wildest dream?”
I close my eyes. I can imagine myself with B+B, but maybe that’s only because it’s the default. Would I still be helping out in Maxine’s workshop? Would I still be playing the harp at all?
“You’re thinking,” he says.
“Because I honestly don’t know,” I say. “You go. Wildest dream.”
His smiles slides to one side. Of course he knows. “I love the idea of opening a bakery–slash–test kitchen, where people could come in and try something new every week or take cooking classes.” He moves his hands as he speaks, almost like he’s waving around an invisible whisk or spatula. “One week we’d do Middle Eastern pastries, and the next we’d do pies, and then we’d do gourmet grilled cheese. I’d want to test out new recipes for different allergens, too, the way I started out with Harun. I’ve been trying more of that lately.”
“I can picture it.” I can, and it sounds wonderful. When it’s like this between us, it’s easier to forgive his flashy
