16
Lia
There’s a really, really big part of me that wants to text Sophie about last night. Unabashedly interrupt her honeymoon and demand a two-hour debrief about going on a date with Owen and making out with Owen and whether I’m fucking my own life up for no reason.
But there are two reasons I can’t do that.
Reason One: She’s on her honeymoon, obviously.
Reason Two: She doesn’t actually know about my choking thing, or the events that led me there.
I mean, she knows I dated Connor during college, obviously. We were roommates at the time. And she also knows to some degree that our relationship was unhealthy, but I think she viewed it as mutually volatile in an only semi-problematic way, as opposed to… well, what it was.
My fingers even go so far as to start typing out the text.
Lia: hey soph. i know youre busy having hot hawaii sex next to sea turtles or whatever but i lost my mind and went on a date with owen yesterday and it ended up being a hot mess, but shockingly not because he was a dick about anything.
it was a me thing. you see i have a weird thing about people touching my neck that ive never told you about because i never wanted to display weakness because im totally mentally unwell and it all started during college and i havent gotten over it yet so im pretty sure im permanently broken and
That’s where I give up, the pad of my thumb jamming angrily against the backspace until all that’s left is a blank box. I throw the phone onto my bed.
I don’t have time for this, anyway. I have a craft fair to go to.
Please read the words craft fair with as much disdain as humanly possible.
Obviously not for the other artists and vendors—they’re my people and I respect them greatly. I just respect them too much to abide by the term craft fair as it pertains to anything we do.
A craft fair is something you attend in second grade, making a floppy brown handprint turkey out of construction paper just for your mom to surreptitiously tuck it into the recycling bin when you’re not looking.
Of course, it’s no coincidence that art forms passed down through generations of women artisans are the ones demoted to craft: tatting, embroidery, felting, quilting, crochet.
But for all my moral high ground, rent is due soon and things are looking tight, so off to the craft fair I go.
And when I arrive, it’s worse than I imagined.
First of all, the event is in Southie, so already kill me. The building is an altar to gentrification, taking prime real estate on Dorchester Ave with generic white-washed brick, a flavorless event hall inside.
I brought a mix of things: some pieces I consider visual art (to be displayed), some fashion (to be worn), and some that straddle the line.
At the front of my booth is a poster with a QR code and all my social media handles.
It’s stationed between two of my favorite outfits: a patchwork dress in sage green with gold embroidery, and a two-piece crochet set in black—long skirt and matching crop top.
The top has two bright red apples across the chest, exactly where you’d expect, each with a bite taken out.
The skirt says BITE ME in repeating crimson along the side.
If I’d realized this was an event for children, I would’ve picked something else.
Okay, maybe it’s not an event for children, but it’s certainly catering to a family audience. I mean, the booth next to mine is fucking interactive. Hordes of nine-year-olds are wasting perfectly good yarn to make oversized pom-poms and I want to die.
What am I doing?
Like really—what am I doing here?
Is this a productive step in my career? Does it align with my goals? What even are my goals anymore?
I was supposed to be making fashion and art, visiting Milan and Paris and taking hold of opportunities with both fists while I’m still young. I think back to my notebook with the three-item goals list, still folded open on the table at home:
1. Make good art
2. Make good fashion
3. Make good money
This craft fair isn’t any of those things. Something’s gotta change.
Without a second thought to our intensely awkward stalemate, I take out my phone and send a text.
Lia: hey you never gave me guy’s number
Lia: can i have it?
He replies in under five seconds.
Owen: 617-555-0619
Owen: Can we talk about last night?
I don’t respond. I’m too busy creating a new contact and shooting a desperate shot. I opt for English because I don’t trust my business French at a time like this.
Lia: Bonjour, Guy. This is Lia Mercado. We met a few weeks ago at your firm’s party.
You mentioned that your cousin’s boutique is expanding from Paris to Boston and I would love a chance to connect with her, if you still think she would be open to it.
I’m including a link to my website below in case it’s a helpful reference.
Please let me know if there is anything else I can provide at this time. Merci et à très bient?t xx
I read it once, twice, thrice, proofreading meticulously. I even run my extremely basic French phrases through Google Translate to make sure I didn’t fuck up an accent mark or something.
The moment I hit send, I hear a shrieking child say, “Mom, look! That one has apples! Can I get it?”
She’s accompanied by an exhausted-looking woman in all gray and at least three middle-school minions, grabby fingers rampaging through each booth they pass.
“Oh, honey,” the mom demurs towards my suggestive bitten-apple work, “I don’t think it’s your size.”
She meets my gaze with a reprimanding furrow in her brow, asking how dare you interest my child in a shirt that vaguely alludes to the existence of breasts? I pretend not to notice.
“Please, mom? Pleeeeaaasee?”
The child sounds vaguely snotty, like the state of being eleven or whatever has left her with a perpetual cold. A cold she’s now rubbing all over my hand-made garments.
Kids are assholes.
I don’t even try to engage her or the mother. They’re not my target audience by a longshot. An expensive bachelor’s degree and six years of grinding my crochet fingers to the bone for… this?
Yeah, I don’t think so.
I want to complain. I want to whine. I want to bitch about this stupid day and be told I’m right and the world is wrong.
And you know what’s weird? The person I most want to whine to is… Owen. Because I know he would be just as cutting and critical as I am. Then he would probably tell me I’m hot and I’m right and come on, who doesn’t want to hear that?
I actually go so far as to reach for my phone to text him, but when I open our thread I’m hit with the sight of his last message:
Can we talk about last night?
Damn, this sucks.
I’m used to fighting with him and snapping at him and even wanting to leave a room I find him in. But I’m not used to wishing I didn’t.
The worst thing is that, in the hindsight of a new day, I can recognize that he did everything right. I wanted him to kiss me, and he did. I wanted him to stop, and he did. But it would be such a comfort to be angry. And if not with him then who? Myself?
It’s tempting. I’m embarrassed—mad at my body for the way it reacts, desperate to just be fucking normal. I’ve gotten better at giving myself grace over the last few years, but with Connor’s reappearance in Boston this year it’s like that progress has eroded to nothing.
And even through the swirl of anger and humiliation in my brain, I want Owen to call me.
I want him to apologize, say he’ll never do it again, beg me for forgiveness.
I want him to intuit my needs without any of the relevant context.
Because I definitely, definitely don’t want to explain what’s really going on in my head.
I’ve accepted that I like the guy, and that I’m incredibly attracted to him, but can I trust him with the softest parts of myself? The damaged and broken parts?
I don’t think so. Not yet.