Chapter 53
“So cute,” Tristan says, and Nolan and I nod in agreement.
We all order food and force our way to a polite piecemeal conversation until, as if sent by God, our milkshakes arrive.
We pretend not to use them as the crutches that they are, longer and longer sips saving us from the strain of lacking chemistry, those pockets where our group disconnect hits a little too palpably.
I remind myself to be present, to be positive. That we’re trying. We’re all trying.
Nolan tells a story about shitting his pants onstage during his kindergarten’s production of Peter Pan.
Frannie looks horrified and Tristan listens intently, too intently, like someone who’s not really listening at all but trying to show you how hard they’re listening and is actually thinking about how their hair looks.
I laugh along and Nolan takes my hand and I let him.
And I tell myself this is good. This is healthy.
This is right. Tentative hand-holds, fumbling identities, wobbly punch lines to stories that were rehearsed in front of mirrors.
Sweet double dates with unchallenging conversations.
This is eighteen. I can do this. I can be here.
“Is that Mr. Korgy?” Nolan asks.
I turn and there he is. Sitting at a corner booth at the far side of the restaurant, across the table from Gwen and Gregory.
Gwen’s moving her hands a lot, in the middle of an animated story that Korgy is phoning in his reactions to.
He pokes his fork around absentmindedly, occasionally throwing in a gesture of polite contribution.
A head tilt that’s a little overdone, a chuckle with unhumorous eyes.
And I feel a pang of hope that he’s this removed from his life.
That his mind is clearly elsewhere, maybe on me the way mine is on him.
I will him to feel me, to feel my presence, to look up at me and know that I see him, but he doesn’t.
“Should we say hi to him?” Nolan asks.
“Definitely not,” Frannie says sharply, her eyes penetrating mine.
And then our food arrives—hamburgers and a plate of chili cheese fries for the table—and I try to refocus as Tristan bows his head performatively then looks up like a boy band member in a tween magazine photoshoot, biting his lip and raising his eyebrows until his forehead crinkles with that put-on look of surprise-meets-bedroom-eyes-meets-squinting-into-the-sun.
“Would anyone be offended if I say a pre-meal prayer for the group?” he asks. Frannie looks like she might cum.
Tristan prays and then we eat. With each fry, I beg my body not to turn around.
I bargain with it. If I can just not turn around for this next fry, I’ll buy myself a dress later.
Or a bag. A hobo bag. Or a structured bag.
Or a fucking snakeskin bag with pearls on the sides.
I don’t care. Whatever kind of bag will make me not turn around.
One more fry. Don’t turn around. Then another.
Don’t turn around. Then one more. Don’t turn around.
But then I hear the bells on the entrance door jingle and I have to.
Mr. Korgy holds the door open for Gwen and Gregory as they leave, then he glances up directly at me and freezes.
Our eyes lock. They’re arrested. Nothing else exists.
Only his eyes and my eyes. There is no noise.
No movement. Everything is still. Until Gwen calls to him, and he startles, and he throws on a fake, husbandly smile and follows after her.
And the noise is back. And the movement is back.
And as he vanishes out of my life and returns to his, I excuse myself and head to the restroom.
I lock myself in a stall and start to text him that I miss him and that I have to see him and then delete the text and go to his Instagram page and masturbate to it with my chili cheese fingers.
The chili burns my vagina. But I keep going and going while that song that goes “sh-boom sh-boom life could be a dream” plays in the background.