17 Rhys
17
Rhys
I closed my laptop and looked out the window for a few seconds. It was hot out. The sun had just risen. I thought about my life there in Los Angeles. But then Sarah moved behind me. She was lying in bed naked, curled up with a bundle of white sheets.
I smiled as I walked over. She was groggy.
“What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Answering an email. Who gets to shower first?”
“You,” she said quickly, closing her eyes.
I looked for some clean clothes to put on and walked into the bathroom. I turned on the cold water. That first burst of it made me shiver, but I stayed there, immobile, until I got used to it, and finally I started liking it. I heard someone say something once about how pain or an ice bath or vertigo woke a person up all at once, made them conscious of their skin, of the feeling of being alive. Because it was physical. Direct. Something that pulls them out of that comfort we instinctively seek.
When I came out, it smelled like freshly brewed coffee and Sarah was talking on the phone. I noticed the light coming in through the window, the effect of it, the way it curved slightly and resembled a small rainbow, reflecting off the kitchen table.
“What are you looking at?” Sarah hugged me from behind when she hung up.
“Nothing. Did they tell you if you’re filming today?”
She nodded and kissed me on the cheek before going to pour herself a cup of coffee. I waited until she was done to serve myself, and the two of us had breakfast in silence while the clock ticked away up on the wall.
They say the silences are how someone knows if the person in front of them is the right one. I think that’s a lie. Or that there’s more to it. A silence can be comfortable but empty. Or a silence can be tense, electrifying; it can even mean everything. Like the one I shared with Ginger more than six months ago in that attic, when I felt her pulse in her wrist against my fingers and we were looking at the full moon’s glow. I guess every instant is unique. That nothing can ever be repeated.
“I don’t feel like leaving,” she said.
“Did you get your tickets yet?”
“Yeah, last night. I used your computer.”
She looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.
“And…?” I arched my eyebrows.
She set her coffee down on the table and took a deep breath, as if she needed a few seconds to know what to say. I could feel myself tense up. Not because she had seen those messages, but because she had decided to barge into that part of my life without even knocking on the door. I only let Ginger in. She could climb in through the open windows, the hidden cracks, the chimney…
“I’m sorry. I only saw the last couple of emails…but my battery was out, and when the screen turned on, the messages were just there, and… I don’t know, Rhys. I feel like we met two years ago, and I still don’t know anything about you.”
“Sarah…”
“And that thing about how with her it was different…” She stood up, walked over to the window, and closed it. The light dimmed, disappeared. But I looked at the place where it had been.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, okay? I woke up this morning and was like, Okay, I’m going to just pretend everything’s okay, and by the time we see each other in New York again I’ll have forgotten it . But then I asked you what you were thinking about, you said, ‘Nothing,’ and I knew you were lying.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Just what you told her. That phrase.”
“Which?” I got up.
“How sometimes you just meet a person and let them in for no reason. I don’t think that’s it. There needs to be an explanation. And I want to know what it is.”
My stomach ached when I saw her like that, eyes damp, lip trembling, gaze hoping that I could give her something when I knew I couldn’t. Maybe I’d been selfish with her. Maybe I hadn’t paid enough attention to the signs.
I took a deep breath. Pensive. Uncomfortable.
“It’s the truth, Sarah. There is no reason. I don’t know why I can open up to her and not to you. I’m sorry.”
She was quiet, and I stepped forward to hug her. She didn’t pull away. I closed my eyes as I felt her lips on my jawline, her hands rising up my shirt, her skin against mine as I sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and pulled her on top of me. I hesitated. Not for me, but for Sarah. Because I wondered if I was hurting her worse then. But I let her keep going. I let her body move against mine, push her hands through my hair, and kiss me hard, with teeth, reclaiming me.
Then our panting filled everything. She came. We came.
She stood up. She had kept her T-shirt on as we did it. She looked at me with a mixture of anger, affection, and confusion. I took her hand and pulled her back into my lap, kissing her on the forehead.
“What are you doing, Sarah?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“This was never a problem for us before, Sarah.”
“Yeah…” She looked wounded. “But I thought that was just how you were, Rhys, the way I knew you. I thought you just didn’t like to talk about yourself, that you couldn’t relax with another person and tell stories about your childhood or worry about what another person was feeling. And now I find that. Another person. One I’ve never even seen. I accepted that I couldn’t change you, but this…this ruins everything.” She shook her head, walking away.
“You’re giving it too much weight…”
“I’m spending tonight in a hotel.”
“I don’t get it. We have an open relationship. And she’s a friend. You’re acting like we’ve been going out for years and I just cheated on you.”
“It’s not that. It’s that you’ve opened my eyes.”
“Fine.” I sighed as I buttoned my pants.
“See? That’s exactly what I meant. Would you act that way if she was the one about to go sleep in a hotel? No. And we’re both your friends. That makes it worse. You haven’t even fucked her. Whatever. You’re not going to understand. And I don’t want things to end all ugly with you.”
I was nervous, frustrated…a little bit of everything. Because I didn’t want to think about it, basically. Sarah took a quick shower, came out dressed, grabbed her bag, and left. I assumed she’d return that afternoon, when filming was over. I stayed in the kitchen, tracing out the faint shadows on the table, pensive.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that before I walked over to the synthesizer.
Then I lost all sense of time. Everything was that sound, the bass, pounding in my head, over and over, tirelessly, until I found the rhythm I wanted, the only one that would work. Boom, boom, boom . I closed my eyes, thinking about what was to come afterward, remembering feelings. Boom, boom, boom . It was almost midday when I saw my phone vibrate on the table and took off my headphones.
It was Logan. He’d been at my door for twenty minutes.
I opened up, and when he saw me, he shook his head. He had a bag from a nearby burger place. He headed straight to the dining room and took out everything.
“I assumed you hadn’t eaten.” He gave me a sidelong look before proceeding. “Sarah called me and asked if she could stay at my place tonight, so… I just assumed something had happened.”
“She told me she was going to sleep in a hotel.”
“Right. What happened exactly?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.” I grabbed a burger, unwrapped it, and fell back on the sofa, taking a bite and thinking. “I mean, yesterday everything was cool, and now all of a sudden she’s acting like we’re serious.”
“So you’re not?”
“Of course not. What’s that question even supposed to mean?”
“I was just thinking like, you guys do see each other a lot, right? And you have for a while now. I don’t see the difference between that and being serious .”
That got to me. Logan showed no emotion as he devoured his burger, even though he must have known what he’d said was ridiculous. Very few people knew me as well as he did, even if there was lots he didn’t know, lots I didn’t tell him, like about the existence of Ginger. Or what had happened with my dad. Or how hard it was for me to talk to my mother week after week…
I realized in that moment that one of my best friends, a guy I’d met at college seven years before, barely knew anything about me. Just the things I let him see, the little trail of breadcrumbs I left behind.
“It’s impossible for me to have a relationship with anyone.”
“Why? Sarah’s incredible.”
“Of course she is. But I’m on the road all the time, remember? I don’t see myself living two or three years in the same place. Or longer. My whole life. The same goes for getting a mortgage or having kids or anything like that.”
Logan studied me a few seconds in silence. “What are you hoping to find, Rhys?”
“Find? Nothing. Why?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I just have that feeling sometimes, that you’re looking for something. Forget it. I wouldn’t marry anything except one of these burgers. And even then, I’d cheat on it with the cheese.”
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t.
And I couldn’t ignore what he’d just said.
That feeling sometimes, that you’re looking for something.