Comedic Timing

Chapter XII

XII

Three days later, some good news unexpectedly finds its way to me: My essay will be published.

Fresh out of the shower, wet hair dripping down my back and shoulders, I blink profusely and rub my eyes before rereading the email, desperate to savor every word. There will be some light edits, the pay is modest but sufficient, and I’ll have my first byline by the new year. My words will be in both digital and print form, in a publication that I actually read. I thank myself for trying, for putting myself out there. I cringe at myself for embracing cringe.

The essay emphasizes the online preservation of the worst parts of ourselves. Strangers arrive at collective verdicts about who we are based on our worst moments, if we’re unlucky enough. When our mistakes are put on blast, it’s a challenge to not be defined by them. If the love bomber changed, healed, found authenticity in his relationships, the internet would not care. Truth expands and morphs; what was true of him at one point might no longer be true in the future. To some people, he would always be the love bomber. He would have to be okay with that.

I wrap myself in a towel and walk to my bedroom, creating a damp spot on my comforter as I sit down to text my father and Jordan the news. I’m tempted to share the update with David, but I know I shouldn’t. I still have two days left of my sentence to serve. I leave my phone under my pillow, turning my notifications off, forcing the option out of my mind.

Seventy-something hours without speaking to David or knowing where we stand feels stretched into an eternity. I went to a show last night hoping to see him but ended up running into Christian instead. We ate pizza while perched on the sidewalk curb, grease dripping onto the concrete.

“How’s David?” I asked him as nonchalantly as I could manage.

“I don’t know,” Christian said, chewing thoughtfully. “He’s never home.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I think he’s helping a friend with a shoot or something.”

“Oh.”

“You guys not talking?”

I rolled my eyes, feigning indifference. “We’re taking a break.”

“Ah.”

Though Christian and I had discussed our relationship history extensively and shamelessly, talking about my situation with David was a different endeavor.

“It’ll blow over,” Christian said, stuffing the last bit of crust into his mouth and rubbing his hands together. “These things always do.”

“What,” I retorted, “so now I’m just another number in the endless stream of women? Statistically, these things blow over?”

Christian raised his hands, surrendering, eyes wide from the blow of my bitterness.

“I’m just sad, is all,” I said. “I like him.”

“When things get complicated, isn’t it better to take a step back?” Christian posed. “It’s like staring at a painting too close or something, then you don’t get the full picture.”

“That’s, like, very astute Christian.”

“David likes you too,” he said. “I think he’s just trying to do things differently this time around.”

I immediately mentally dissected his words, searching for clues as to what David might be thinking. I pocketed the knowledge of Christian knowing how David feels about me. But what does that mean, doing things differently? Can that even be possible, to alter your intentions when you catch yourself in a pattern, if all the ingredients for behavioral disaster are already present? At what point can you stop and tell yourself it will be different this time and make it so?

I am afraid I will always stand too close to the thought of David.

Jhanaki notices a shift in my mood, and she invites me to a club with a group of her friends.

“A club ? I didn’t know you went out.” I look at her aghast.

“Quarterly. Don’t be weird about it.”

I take Molly at someone’s pregame festivities. I think of David while mixing the powder into a glass of water.

“Did you test this?” I ask Jhanaki. She glances sheepishly at her friend with bleached eyebrows, the supplier of the Molly (amongst other things). Eyebrows shrugs nonchalantly.

“Dangerous,” I murmur, gulping the water. I feel reckless, looking for any exit from purgatory.

“She just hooked up with her ex-girlfriend,” Jhanaki explains to Eyebrows. “And she was ghosted by a guy she was fucking.”

“He didn’t ghost me,” I respond, considering a hit of the joint Jhanaki is holding while Eyebrows squints at me. “I mean, it felt like he did, but he was away on a trip and didn’t have service. And while he was gone, my ex-girlfriend showed up. Then I had to actually end things with her, for good. Then he came back and I had to tell him about seeing my ex and now we are on a break.”

Eyebrows curls their lip and shakes their head empathically.

“Our bi queen,” Jhanaki says, placing her arm around my shoulders and shaking me affectionately.

The next morning, Sunday, I wake up at 1p.m., feeling like all the joy has been sucked out of me. I don’t regret the Molly or the night out—they were conscious choices I made—but I have to find less exhausting or reckless ways to satisfy my need for control.

In some kind of effort to erase myself and thus erase whatever I’m feeling, I deactivate my social media accounts. I think of the love bomber.

bitch , Jordan texts me an hour or so later, did you delete your Instagram?

I silence my phone notifications, once again, as if to train my mind against the delusional urge to check if David has texted me. Part of me clings to the hope he’ll break his own rule.

I can’t stand the thought of work tomorrow. Of the promise of the new week and its fresh start. I hear Jhanaki washing dishes in the living room, and although I’m tempted to debrief last night’s activities with her, my serotonin levels feel dangerously low to be good company.

You need to be nice to yourself. My mother had said this to me when I was a kid, my father later absorbing it into his own philosophy to cope with his grief. He’d remind me of this often via text when I’d complain about being too lazy to cook or clean my apartment. He said it to me when he dropped me off at the airport the day I left for New York.

I recognize what I am feeling: grief. Over Sofia, over a lost chance with David, over a version of myself that no longer exists. It seems dramatic, because I know I’ll be okay, and no one’s dead . I know what that feels like, the permanence of it, and it’s incomparable—yet the ache of this feeling is the same.