Chapter 7
I t felt very much like Neve spent all of her limited free time lying on the couch feeling lost these days. Maybe that was fair. Lost was a good description for how she’d been feeling since Roxanne dumped her, perhaps that was just the way with breakups.
What was less hard to wrap her head around was that she’d found herself in the exact same spot, staring at the napkin Zainab had given her from the moment she’d made it back to the apartment.
Part of her knew she should just throw it away. Her whole encounter with Alba had been an embarrassing mess at one of her lowest moments. It was not the start of a great friendship. Running into each other again had been a weird fluke. It was not the kind of thing that should have left her mooning on the couch all evening. And yet, here she was.
At least Charlie and Alice weren’t around to see it. The two of them had dropped her off hours ago before heading out to some concert together. Neve had promised them that she wasn’t going to sit around moping all night, that she would be fine, could look after herself, and would eat dinner.
The level of concern came from a good place, but she was starting to feel suffocated by it. Between Alice’s concern and Charlie’s stern protectiveness, Neve couldn’t help feeling like a child they felt they couldn’t trust to look after herself. As if she hadn’t been managing just fine. One day of weakness and pain around a breakup and you were treated with kid gloves for the rest of time?
Perhaps she’d have a better argument if she had actually fed herself.
It was just… complicated. She hadn’t been able to figure out how to talk to Charlie about her behavior in the café, not while they were driving around, running errands, and when she knew that it came from a place of love. But Neve barely got time to herself at all these days, what with Charlie and Alice constantly keeping her busy and accompanied. But, while they were busy, it was hard to have a serious conversation. Thus, all of those complicated, infantilizing feelings were simply bouncing around her head as she tried to figure out why Alba’s date had given her Alba’s number and, now that she had it, what she was supposed to do with it.
Maybe she deserved to be infantilized. If she were more adult, surely she’d just send a text without overthinking the entire thing?
Maybe if she hadn’t just been dumped she wouldn’t be overthinking the whole thing.
Regardless of the difference in relationships, being rejected did leave you feeling rather raw and fragile. Most especially when that rejection stemmed from a place previous rejections had come from, and from something about herself she couldn’t change even if she wanted to.
She wanted not to want to change it. Asexuality was just part of who she was. She didn’t have control over it. She couldn’t put it away and pretend it didn’t exist. She couldn’t train herself out of it. She couldn’t do a single thing about it. But, when it was the reason she kept getting rejected, kept missing out on the things she really wanted, it was hard not to want to get rid of it, hard not to try to minimize it so much it stopped interfering with her life.
She wanted not to think about it like that.
She wasn’t even clear why the thoughts felt so tied to whether she could text Alba or not. That relationship wasn’t romantic in the slightest, nor was it going to be. They weren’t dating, they weren’t planning to, and they barely even knew each other. It didn’t really matter what happened. Even if Alba rejected her friendship, or never replied to the message, what difference did it really make? They didn’t know each other well enough for a rejection to be personal, or to make a huge difference in Neve’s life.
Roxanne breaking up with Neve changed a lot in her life—and what she needed to tell people. Well, the couple she had to tell. Oh, how she hated telling people. The pity, the sympathy, the knowing looks… Perhaps she should have been more grateful Roxanne had insisted on keeping them so quiet.
But, if Alba didn’t reply to her message, what difference did it make? They’d met twice, both times accidentally. All of the people in Neve’s life didn’t know about Alba. Even the two people who did know would likely be glad nothing ever came of the infamous napkin.
And still, there was something so painful about the prospect of rejection. Maybe that was just the human experience. Maybe it was just the idea of another rejection, even a tiny one, so close to such a huge, impersonal, and heartbreaking rejection. Maybe it was just Neve.
She wasn’t ever going to know the answer, she feared.
She tipped her head back further as she lay on the couch, letting the napkin fall to her stomach, and tried not to cringe as the remembered need to suck in her stomach in front of Alba’s date lanced through her, burning hot and shameful. She squeezed her eyes together, shaking the thought from her head. It had been a moment of weakness, that was all. These things happened, and nobody else knew that it had. Everything was fine.
As if to prove a point to herself, Charlie, Alice, and the entire world, she dragged her phone towards her. She didn’t have the energy or the wherewithal to cook, but she could order food. She could order food and be grateful for her body and enjoy every bite of it.
And she could think about something other than whether or not the only use for her phone tonight was texting Alba.
It was a good plan while it lasted. But ordering food only took so long. Even monitoring the progress of her food only took so long and so much energy. All too soon, she was left in a transitory space waiting for her food to arrive with nothing to do but stare at her phone.
Maybe she should have mustered up the energy to cook after all.
She stared at her phone on the coffee table, lying right next to where she placed the napkin, for far too long. She flicked the TV on in a desperate attempt at a distraction. She checked the progress of her food again.
And, when it was less than five minutes away, Neve finally made a decision.
Sometimes, she did the things she was dreading most right before bed, when she was exhausted. That way, she could fall asleep, and, by the next morning, the thing was dealt with and her brain was rested, no longer stuck on whatever it was she’d needed to do. In five minutes, she’d be eating her dinner—her favorite meal from her favorite Vietnamese restaurant—and that would be a distraction, a mental reset. Maybe it would work like sleep.
She glanced around the room. If this was going to work, she needed to set the scene. Fussing after sending the message would do no good. It would just force her to fixate on her own mistakes and her impending rejection by Alba. Then, she’d have to think about how to have the necessary conversation with Charlie whilst knowing that Alba wanted nothing to do with her, and the whole situation would be a million times more embarrassing than it already was.
“Stop.” Neve shook her head, speaking aloud to the room as if her brain could be commanded simply because she spoke loud enough to drown it out. It never quite worked like that, but she kept trying.
She took a deep breath and released it slowly. Three minutes until food. She pulled up a comedy show she loved on the TV. Set the lighting to her favorite level. Took another deep breath. And picked up her phone, switching to the texting app.
As she typed, it occurred to her how infrequently she ever just texted people these days. It was always done through another messaging app or platform. If anyone raided her texts, they’d think the only people who ever messaged her were her service provider and companies texting her confirmation codes. Even Neve wasn’t quite that lonely.
By the time she reached the end of the text, she wasn’t completely sure what she’d said, but, if she read it back, she’d pick at it until there was no message left to send. So, rather than check it, or doubt herself, or act like a regular, confident person, she just hit send. Releasing her thoughts and her likely typos out into the universe.
Maybe if Alba ignored her now, she could pretend it was simply from a deep hatred of people who made typos in texts.
The second the message was gone, her doorbell buzzed, saving her from the inevitable panic and debating whether she could simply recall the message. She wasn’t even sure that was something you could do with texts. And she wasn’t going to figure it out now.
She locked her phone and threw it face down onto the couch as she jumped up to answer the door, letting the scent of food and an interaction with someone who knew nothing about her other than her name and where she’d ordered her dinner from wash over her like a soothing balm. Experience told her the relief was unlikely to last long, but she tried desperately not to let her mind drift back to the phone or Alba— is she on her phone? Has she gotten the message? Does she leave people on read? She might be out. Or sleeping. Or busy…
It was only when trying actively to ignore her phone that Neve realized just how frequently she tapped its screen, just to check the time, the weather, if she had any notifications. An odd habit developed in the time of smartphones on silent. Not wanting to be hit with notifications constantly, but needing to be available and reachable.
She tried desperately to concentrate on her show and the delicious meal before her, but her hand moved time and time again to the side as if to touch her phone screen. She even realized how much she tended to put her phone down on her left side as that hand flicked out repeatedly, driven by a habit she hadn’t consciously realized she’d been developing.
Perhaps, if she could be annoyed with herself for that, she’d be less concentrated on what she actually wanted to see on her phone. But she couldn’t help thinking the two things were related, and that didn’t help at all.
She really needed to figure out why she was feeling this way—well, she needed to figure out how to heal from Roxanne’s rejection so that she could handle situations normally again.
Neve consciously refocused and made every effort to listen to her show, to watch it and not see anything else in her mind, to enjoy her food and ignore her phone. By the end of the episode, she’d done both better and worse than she’d hoped. Better because she hadn’t picked her phone up once. Worse because it was the only thing she’d thought about.
Her dinner had been hot and delicious and comforting, and everything she’d needed. The show she’d been watching, she was certain was as funny as always, but, if pressed, she had a funny feeling she’d only have been able to give the broadest overview of the plot. Maybe she should have done a rewatch of something instead. She’d been counting on the fact that it was new to keep her attention. Apparently, Alba demanded more attention than that. Neve should have known, really.
She let the next episode play. It didn’t really matter. She was going to have to go back and watch them both again anyway. She cleaned up. And then it was just her and the phone, sitting together on the couch, desperately demanding her attention.
She couldn’t ignore it forever.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she picked it up.
The screen lit up.
Nothing.
The only notification was about the weather tomorrow. One she was pretty sure she’d already seen and dismissed a few hours earlier.
A complicated mix of relief, disappointment, and shame flooded through her, each emotion seeming to chase the others. If she focused on any one, it burned alone, but fed the others, allowing them to take over. Embarrassment joined the cocktail. The whole thing really wasn’t that big a deal. It was a message to someone she barely knew. Sent just over half an hour ago. Many people weren’t glued to their phones. Not getting an immediate reply didn’t mean anything. And at least it meant the reply wasn’t mean or rude.
Did she really expect it to be, though?
Unable to help herself—or glutton for punishment, she couldn’t quite decide—she unlocked the phone and opened the message. Delivered, not read.
Neve had never much cared for read receipts before, paying little attention to them. Now, it felt like a lifeline. Something to cling to as she tried desperately not to be rejected. She wasn’t being ignored, Alba simply wasn’t checking her phone.
Of course, she could have turned the function off, so maybe it had been read, Neve just couldn’t see it. But that was another avenue of worrying Neve didn’t have time for.
She stared at the message, not reading it, just clinging to it. She hadn’t yet been laughed at or rejected. She didn’t yet have to live with knowing she’d humiliated herself again in front of Alba.
It was silly, so silly she hated it, but she wanted so much for Alba to like her. Neve couldn’t think of another person she’d ever so desperately wanted to like her. Of course, she couldn’t think of another person who’d swept in like a savior when she was at her lowest. Maybe it was inevitable she wanted that person to like her. Maybe it was just who Neve was. Maybe it was just who Alba was, and people couldn’t help wanting her to like them. Not Charlie, clearly, but other people. Maybe Alba was just magnetic like that.
Or, maybe Neve was just a little bit desperate right now. Humiliating, but possible.
As her heart slowly started to settle, her breathing leveling out, Neve pursed her lips and hoped for a positive outcome. She couldn’t fully explain why she wanted Alba to like her so much, but she knew it mattered to her right now, and, if that was what she needed, she could at least hope for a positive outcome.
Read.
Alba was on her phone.