Comedic Timing

Chapter X

X

David leaves for his trip. He sends a selfie from his early morning flight, instructing me not to miss him too much. After a week of his absence, I’m still waiting to hear from him again. He warned me communication would be spotty, but I’m both surprised and irritated by the silence. I’d be happy to receive anything: one cliché nature photo, a “thinking of you” message. Proof that what happened between us is leading us somewhere. Yet I refuse to text him. He was inside of me , after all. I shouldn’t have to be the one to reach out, to profess my longing.

That’s not very bell hooks of you , Jordan texts me. I ignore it. Instead, I spiral and regress. I fall out of my writing habit. I have two too many glasses of wine with Chloe and end up with a Wednesday hangover. I snap at Jhanaki about the teens doing drugs and having sex on the TV too loudly.

To go from feeling so connected to David to feeling untethered destabilizes me. Why didn’t I ask him what we are to each other before he left? Being in my bed alone is torture.

I’m seriously considering that he was a figment of my imagination , I text Jordan.

See, this is why I need to meet him. Verify he’s made of flesh and bones , he responds.

I don’t want to think of myself differently simply for liking David, but I do, even if no one else does. And when he’s not here, real, I start to hate myself for it. Right or wrong, I take his silence as evidence that my feelings are in vain, a form of self-betrayal.

I wake up to a knock at my front door. My cortisol spikes, driving a nervous thump in my chest.

It’s nine in the evening, and I’m home alone. Feeling sorry for myself, I had put myself to bed without dinner and only scrolling for sustenance.

I pull on pajama pants, look through the peephole, and, like some kind of apparition, see Sofia staring down at her shoes, her bag slung over her shoulder.

I fling the door open, wondering if my eyes are working correctly. They are.

“Sofia,” I say. “What’re you doing here?” I take a step back, then forward again.

“Your address,” she says, right hand scratching the back of her neck, her nervous tic. “It was on the package you sent me. My sweatshirt.”

This doesn’t answer my question. Why did—how could —Sofia turn up unannounced to New York? To my apartment ?

I say this out loud, attempting to disguise how I feel: “I didn’t think you would... surprise me like this.”

“I’m here for a conference.” She throws up her hands, eager to clarify she didn’t get on a flight to see me. “I landed a few hours ago, dropped off my things at my hotel, and then just... I should have texted. Or called.”

Sofia fills my silence with more explanation, clearly hoping to ease my shock. “I just thought, since we were in contact... Naina, I miss you.” She looks down, smiling to herself shyly, and it’s so obvious that showing up to my apartment is not about accosting me—it’s an act of love. In my tender state, this feels welcome.

“Sit,” I tell her, waving her in and motioning to the barstool. I give her a glass of water.

Sofia and I look at each other in silence for a few moments, her fidgeting with her moldavite bracelet, me standing with my arms crossed, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“I need to tell you something.” It’s not ripping off the Band-Aid as much as it is suddenly exposing a wound to open air. I speak cautiously, enunciating every word in case I need to catch myself. “I’m kind of seeing someone.”

Sofia’s face falls. She is a confident, outspoken, strong person. But she has never been too good for a poker face. I know what I am about to tell her will upset her, and I will have to brave the conversation.

“It’s sort of new,” I continue, looking away. “And I’m sorry if... I guess I don’t know why you’re here or if it’s because you want... but I do have feelings for someone else, Sofia.”

She nods, gritting her teeth, fingering her bracelet. She eventually throws her hands up.

“I’m an idiot,” she says through a painful laugh.

“You’re not.”

“We left in such a bad place, and then it started feeling so much less bad. And I told myself that if I was going to be here, in New York, I should at least try. To see you.” Her shoulders drop. “So, who is she?”

I brace myself against the pronouns. “His name is David.”

Confusion, then disbelief, then something I’ve never seen before sweep across Sofia’s face. Her spine straightens again.

“Wow,” she says, her tone notably sour. “We’ve been broken up for three months, and now you’re fucking men.”

Men , she says, as if I’ve committed an act of barbarism.

“He’s a friend,” I respond, which is true—or was true—but still evasive. I want to ease into honesty. She is minutes away from knowing everything, and her obliviousness is still precious to me.

She takes a breath, coming down from her outburst. Her tone is gentler now. “You can date whoever you want. Obviously.” A deep sigh. “Just... why didn’t you tell me you were seeing other people?”

I suddenly feel bad for pestering Jordan to make sure knowledge of David didn’t get back to her. I was so paranoid about how she’d respond that it led us to this moment.

Her right knee bounces up and down. “I feel like such a fucking idiot showing up here—”

“Sofia, I didn’t tell you because it didn’t seem necessary. Why do you still feel like you have some kind of ownership of me? I’m a human being—”

“I love you, Naina,” she snaps.

“You’re supposed to ask before you show up like this,” I insist, shaking my hands at her, gritting my teeth.

“It was a grand gesture,” she mumbles. She holds her head in her palms. “And I already had a plane ticket.”

I sigh, attempting to ease my anxiety. “I get it,” I reply. “I get why you did it.”

“But you wish I didn’t.”

“That’s a simple and unfair way of putting it,” I say, scrunching up my face defensively.

“How’d you meet him?”

“Through Jordan. They have mutual friends. Then we became friends.”

“You have straight friends now?”

“Sofia.”

“So you’ve fucked him.”

I accept there’s no way of avoiding this.

“We’ve had sex, yes,” I say, attempting to veil my guilt. I know I don’t owe her this, but for some reason, I want to witness her hearing me say the words. If I can tell Sofia about David, then maybe both things can be true: that I was in love with a woman—this woman—and that I am also falling for a man. “We were friends, but then it felt like there was something more between us. And we had sex.” There it is: the truth, or at least the beginning of it.

She nods.

“If I’m being honest,” I say. “There have been so many moments where I missed you and our life in Chicago. When I met him—David—it finally felt like I was moving on. But he’s been away, traveling, and I am all in my head about it. About what it is I’m doing with him and what it says about me.”

Sofia shakes her head.

It’s a relief to bare the truth to the person who has helped me work through so many of my identity crises. But she’s staring at something in front of her, avoiding eye contact with me, making that pinched expression of hers to prevent herself from crying.

“How long are you here for?” I ask her, feeling pained.

“Three days.”

We fall silent. The radiator switches on, filling the room with its humming.

“Maybe we should sort this out,” I say, an attempt to take the lead between us for once.

“Sort what out?”

“This, us,” I say. “So maybe we can have some closure.”

“Naina,” Sofia pleads, “are we actually going to sort this out? Or are you just going to do what you always do? You act like you’re the victim of this relationship, but you’re not. And I’m not saying I am, either. But you act like I have some kind of hold over you when in fact you just... you refuse to ask for what you want. And somehow that’s my fault .”

“I’ve been following your lead all these years,” I retort. “I’ve never been able to—”

“Come on,” Sofia says, holding her hand up. “ Following my lead? Naina, I’m just as clueless as you are. I’m figuring my life out, too. But this is who I am—I make decisions and go for it. I thought you loved me for that, for me. And then suddenly you made this one huge decision to leave Chicago and come here, and it’s like you’ve cut me out. All these years I’ve tried to be there for you, push you to choose something for yourself, and you turn around and slap me in the fucking face and disappear.”

A threatening pressure forms behind my eyes. I look away from Sofia.

“See?” she says. “This is what I mean. You can’t even look at me.”

“You don’t understand,” I snap.

“What don’t I understand?”

“I’ve always been that way, yes. I’m trying not to be anymore. I hate how nothing’s in my control. I think when my mom died, I decided that if dying is inevitable and I can’t dictate the terms of my life or how anything pans out, it’s better to let other people decide for me.”

Sofia curls her lip and turns her hand into a fist, pressing her knuckles against the counter.

I’m holding back tears now, choking on my words. “I know I hurt you. I’m not trying to make this about me. I’m just explaining what I learned about myself from being with you, and it’s one of the biggest reasons I left Chicago. I’m stuck in some fucking pattern, Sofia. I’m good at avoiding emotional accountability. But I don’t want to be like this anymore.” I think of David, of telling him the truth the morning after the Halloween party. “I am trying. I am.”

Sofia puts her hand to her forehead and lets out a sharp laugh. “I can’t believe it. That’s all I wanted from you this entire time. And now I have it, but not you.”

“Because it’s over,” I say.

“I know,” she says.

She bounces her knee, shaking her head, refusing to look at me. “I’m honestly impressed you’re fucking a guy,” she spits. “I don’t get it, but at least you chose something for yourself instead of being a sheep and then blaming someone else for your indecision.”

“You hate men. You’re not impressed; you’re disgusted—”

“Oh please, I don’t hate men. You hate men.”

“I clearly don’t,” I respond.

“Well. He must be good,” Sofia says, laughing caustically.

“He’s a good person,” I say, taking a deep breath. “And we have good chemistry. I care about him.”

Sofia raises her eyebrows and draws closer to me, her voice laced with curiosity. “Really? You have good chemistry?”

I stare at her face, those sharp, demanding blue eyes. Her question is obviously rhetorical but also a challenge. Sofia and I had excellent chemistry too, once.

The space between us shrinks as she stands up from the barstool. Her throat is at eye level with me. She tilts her chin down, her lower lip unfolding slightly, revealing her bottom teeth. “How good?” she whispers, her breath hot against my ear. I am resistant to the moment but wickedly tempted, realizing our anger is morphing into something else, something I recognize. Historically, we fight and then fuck, our vulnerability leaving us both aching for connection.

“I’m here now,” she whispers. “If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

“You don’t need to leave,” I reply.

“Right,” she says, bringing her palm to my cheek. Like muscle memory, I place my hands on her waist, and we kiss.

Her tongue brushes against my lips urgently, and I raise my hips to sit on the kitchen counter. She kisses my chest and slips my T-shirt over my head. I wrap my legs around hers, a swell of excitement washing over me as her fingers gently but adamantly move between my thighs, her face pressed against my breasts.

“Is this what you want?” she asks, her hot breath warming my bare nipple, her cheek sticky against my skin.

“Don’t ask me that,” I whimper.

“Tell me,” she demands, moving her hand to my neck, cupping my throat.

“Yes,” I say, refusing to interrogate why.

She trails her tongue up my neck and kisses me again, fervently, her mouth all over my mouth, saliva finding its way to the tip of my nose. Her fingers are now closer to where my body begs for release.

I wrap my legs around her right thigh, squeezing, pressing myself against her palm. “Not yet,” she whispers in my ear. I slide off the counter and lead her to the couch.

Sofia pulls her sweater off in one swift motion, then the T-shirt underneath, and I tug her body onto mine. We sloppily press our mouths together. I ask her to touch me, speaking into her lips, and she ignores me. I repeat myself, begging, and she pinches my left nipple. I moan.

In a flurry of emotion, I hold her head in my hands and direct it where I want her. She looks up at me and scoffs. “Please,” I whisper. She smirks and finally concedes.

Her mouth latches on, and I lose it. My body surrenders itself to pleasure, like a last meal before death.

I’m splayed on top of Sofia. “I can’t believe we did that,” I say.

“It’s only me.” She tugs my earlobe affectionately.

“I know.”

Our breathing is synchronized, our skin sticky and sour. I feel like I did something wrong, but I don’t know if I did. I thought I might distract myself from my obsessive looping about David—remind myself that I exist outside the context of him—but I don’t know if I did.

“It’s fucked up,” Sofia says. “All of this.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was cold, the way I ended things with you. I just leaned on you, then resented you for it. It’s unfair. I was being unfair.”

Sofia sighs and rubs her face.

“I didn’t know you were attracted to men,” she mutters.

“Me neither. But does it matter?”

“Yes. Because the only thing I ever really wanted was to know you.”

“You don’t feel like you know me?”

“Only sometimes.” She sighs.

I only sometimes know myself.

“What about me?” Sofia asks. “Do you feel like you know me?”

“I do. But sometimes I couldn’t see you clearly because I was caught up in my own bullshit.”

I move my fingers through her hair, and she exhales.

“I shouldn’t have turned up here. I thought it would be romantic.”

“It kind of was.” I poke her cheek, and she laughs.

“Do you have feelings-feelings for him?” she asks hesitantly. “David?” My heartbeat soars, tapping against the underside of my chest.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“I want to know. Even if it’s difficult. Even if it’s fucked up.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Do you want to be with him?”

“I think so. I do.”

“So you’re a human being with feelings,” Sofia says. “It’s nice to see, even if they’re not for me. I feel like you used to be so much more guarded.”

I play with a strand of her hair, twisting it around my finger. “I had feelings for you. I didn’t know what to do with them. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Her chest expands, and she releases the air with a deep moan. “I’m sorry, too,” she says.

I shift my body. “We probably shouldn’t have sex again.”

“Definitely not.”

She pats my shoulder, motioning for me to sit up. I take my weight off her, and we slouch together on the couch, naked, legs outstretched.

“I go in between hating you and missing you. All. The. Time,” she says.

I bury my head in a cushion and stay like that for a few moments, my nose bent upward, my breath moving like waves. I think about David. How much I miss him, how badly I want to hear from him, and, most worryingly, how things could be different with him than they were with Sofia. If I let them be. But without him standing in front of me, it is difficult to envision.

I turn and press my face into Sofia’s bony shoulder, determined to say goodbye but not to shed a tear.

She holds my head to her, and I feel her body shake gently with her tears. “Fine,” she whispers. “I’ll cry for the both of us.”