Chapter 15 #2
She sits up straighter, moves slightly toward me, I don't think she notices she does it, closing the distance between our shoulders to approximately nothing. “Reallllyyy.” She drags the word out.
“When I was young.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I liked the idea of it,” I say. “But I was good at arguing, I liked winning, and I liked feeling like a winner. It didn't matter if I enjoyed building things or playing with Legos, I had skills I was good at, the practical decision became obvious.” A pause, I could leave it there, it’s more than enough.
But there’s no one else here and we’ve already started down this road.
“I also went into law to impress my father, it was something he couldn’t do.
Then I did it to spite him. Neither reason held up, but by then I was good at it, so.
” I shrug ever so slightly. It isn’t a sob story, I didn’t give up something I pine for.
I like my career, my life choices. But there’s an element of creation that I used to think about as a child that I don’t get to experience now.
“You can be good at something and not want it,” she says.
“You can also want something and not be good enough for it.” She considers this, and I can see her deciding not to push it, which I appreciate more than I tell her. Because so much of who we are to each other has been to push. Though, not like this.
“Is that why the apartment?" she asks instead. “The renovation?”
I hadn't thought of it that way. Or I had, and filed it in the same drawer where I keep everything I don't want to look too closely at. “Maybe.”
“Hudson.” She says my name in a tone that means she thinks I'm being deliberately obtuse. I am.
“Probably.”
She smiles and it’s a smile I haven’t seen in weeks, the kind she gets when she’s convinced she bested me, one I’ve only seen standing in her doorway right before she slams it in my face. She just leans back and holds the daisy up above her face, examining it against the sky.
“I wanted to be a marine biologist,” she says. “Because I once saw this documentary about octopuses.” She pauses as her eyebrows knit together in thought. “Octopi?” Another pause. “I refuse to look it up, they both sound right.”
“Octopodes is technically correct, octopuses is fine.”
She drops the daisy onto her face in exasperation. “OctoPODES?!” she stresses. “PODES,” she says again. “God, I would have made a terrible biologist.” She laughs, and so do I. I don’t think it’s a sound I’ve ever heard before, our voices sharing something like a joke, not at the other’s expense.
“It’s Greek in origin, not Latin. The i plural doesn’t apply, but octopuses is correct enough.”
“Of course,” she says with sarcasm and acceptance. She removes the daisy from her nose. “Surprised your childhood dream wasn’t to be a pedantic asshole… Oh, wait, you did that.” There it is.
“Why no octopodes?” I ask.
“I was six. Marine biologist felt like the exact opposite of where we lived. Somewhere the skies were always grey, and life was boring. By nine, we moved to California. So naturally, then, I wanted to be an actress. By twelve I realized I don’t like being the center of attention, hate it actually, so acting, at least the way most people do it, was not for me. ”
“You hate being the center of attention, had me fooled,” I say.
“Do I?” she asks.
I just shake my head the smallest amount. Because while she garners the attention of every room she’s in, it’s not of her own doing. At least, not in that way.
“But yeah, I hate it, I can’t even order fajitas because they just call attention to you.
And it’s such a shame, because when Chandler and I meet for our Tequila Updates—” she says it like it’s a ritual I’m supposed to know.
I don’t. “Matteo, the waiter, he always says the fajitas are the best thing on the menu, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.
” She sighs to herself, some inner battle between being her truest self, but also, not being too loud while doing it.
“One day maybe, I’ll care less, but for now, I prefer acting in private and will make fajitas at home. ”
She’s so open in a way I’ve never experienced, it’s no doubt why every time she walks down the street it’s like an opening to a Disney movie. Everyone just knows her, because she lets them.
“And how did you get into—”
“Taunting you all night long?” she teases.
“Exactly what I was going to say.” And she doesn’t know just how true that is.
“When I went to college,” she pauses, “that was an experience. There was nothing I liked enough. By then, Theo had moved back, more like ran back, so I was just floating about,” she waves her arms, “like an octopode.” She cuts me with a look, but I shake my head at the incorrect use.
But I think she can see as the corner of my mouth pulls into a smile she has total control over.
She brushes it off with a laugh. “Eventually I found this. That wasn’t the end of wanting anything else, but it was the only thing I wanted consistently.”
“And the coffee shop?” I ask, wondering about her finances in a way that isn't actually my business.
“I do well enough that I don’t need to be a barista, but I like people too much to only talk to myself all day.
” It’s the most insanely clear thing she could have said.
I’ve seen her around people, how she lights up, lights them up.
With each question about their pets, their children, and their childhood hopes and dreams, she leaves them with a sense of warmth and wonderment, and sometimes even a basket of muffins.
There’s an intimacy between us we haven’t shared, maybe drawn out of us from the events of tonight.
At least, drawn out of me. But this is just the beginning.
We have too much time remaining locked in this agreement for me to be careless about it now.
Never being known for my emotional investment in relationships, this is the one I can’t risk.
“So,” she says, the question is thick with the air around us. “Now that we’ve technically committed to ‘death do us part’… What’s next?”