Diversification #13
But she doesn’t feel it in her body. It has never felt like weight she can lean against permanently, but rather something
she accommodates temporarily: a gift in her life, yes, beautiful, but a joy that could dim—will dim—with the passing of years,
wane of interest. Friends grow apart. It’s happened before, it will happen still. She was fostered for over a decade; look
how easily she was let go.
Sometimes, she wonders—and it’s a familiar thought, one she’d tested in the dark in bed as a teenager, hush of Marin forests
and fog outside; revisited in her most vulnerable moments as an adult, subspace and moments of being broken open—if she died,
would it hit anyone?
Would the loss of her be a cataclysm for anyone?
There’d be sadness, sure. Tears, grief, but she wonders if it would just be associative grief, in the end: the sadness of
death in proximity, not the agony—the obliterating, bone-collapsing pain that never really eases—of real absence, after someone
necessary to you leaves, is lost.
She used to wonder if she’d ever be truly necessary to someone.
Sometimes, she’d want to test that, too: disappear, and watch as her absence turned out to be just space.
Easily rearranged, reabsorbed. The people she loves, her friends she’s held close, missing her, but moving past her.
Maybe not immediately but eventually; steadily.
It’s not that she had wanted to die, but rather that the thought didn’t seem violent; the loss of her did not feel significant.
And it hurts, it hurts so fucking much. The thought—the belief, basic conviction harder than her own bones—that she doesn’t,
and won’t, mean that much to anyone. Not now, not ever. That there’s no way she could sustain or feed that amount of love;
that her own insufficiency—fostered, never adopted; trip to Marin denied—would cause it to falter.
But if she lets him—if she lets herself hope that she could ever mean that much to him—
Her heart starts to race.
Lili sets her glass aside on the nightstand beside her journal and lip balm, spare hair elastics. Scared by her half-thoughts—conclusions
waiting, cold water, pulse in her throat—she slips back under the sheets. Burying her face against Aleksandr’s shoulder, she
wraps her arms around him.
Grasping after something, trying to linger in something.
But it’s a growing weight. Heavier, each breath, with meaning, with consequences.
Past the point of tolerance.
“What’s wrong?”
Aleksandr grimaces, a flinch of distaste. “Just work,” he says, looking down at his phone, morning light. “Michael’s apparently
downstairs, our flight leaves soon.”
“What, now?” she asks, sitting up in bed.
“Yes, unfortunately. He had to move the flight up,” he replies, flicking through trip details. He’s irritated, she can tell.
He’d woken before her, already fully dressed as he’d kissed her shoulder, setting down coffee for her on the nightstand. “When
do you start classes again?”
She tilts her head. “Why?”
“I was thinking we could go on a trip.”
“Oh.”
A buzz, iPhone going off again. “Sorry,” Aleksandr says, glancing back at the screen. “I’ve got to go—I didn’t realize he’d
rebooked these flights so early. But let me know, okay? What dates, where you’d like to go. I’ll take care of the details.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
“I’ll be back home tomorrow night,” Aleksandr says, shrugging his suit jacket on. “It’s a short trip.”
Lili nods, quiet.
“Any plans today?” he asks. He gently tilts her face up to him.
“No,” she replies. “Just writing.”
He leans down to kiss her, quick before he goes, but Lili grasps his shoulders, holding him close. After a moment, she feels
his arms wrap around her waist.
Like carving out sweetness, a moment to hold onto.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he murmurs. “I’ll text you when I land.”
“Tomorrow,” she whispers.
She tries to focus on work when he’s gone.
Pen tapping against the wooden dining table, blink of her text cursor.
“Fuck,” she winces, accidentally tearing the skin of her cuticle too far. It starts to bleed.
When it proves impossible to write, she slaps her computer closed. Outside, the city is loud. She darts across Canal, running
between cars. It’s Friday, downtown already alive for the weekend, packed with people, restaurants busy, laughing. In Chinatown,
the sidewalks bustle with fruit seller stands, the swing of scales, subway rushing by underfoot, the rustle of plastic bags
stuffed with mangosteen and lychee, exchanged cash. The gutters smell of seawater, fish markets cleaned out and closed for
the day. It’s like her whole head is filled with traffic, with noise; a thousand thoughts racing towards conclusions she’s
trying to outrun.
Afterwards, back at the loft, in the kitchen, her tea stash is lined up neatly in the cupboard she can reach. In the bathroom,
her fluoride-free toothpaste rests against his Sensodyne, her Dr. Bronner’s beside his ridiculous, expensive body wash. In
the closet, a few of her shirts and dresses hang, an overnight tote with fresh clothes.
All around her, consequences are looming.
She can’t sleep that night.
Sitting in bed, she watches the empty lofts across the street. Lives full of things she cannot see, meaning that isn’t hers
to touch.
This fear, hanging over her, grows, like an anxiety that feeds itself. She can’t live with it. Nameless, this core fear: threat of loss, fog of grief, pain that goes on and on. A balance, frozen, that’s worked for her so far—too dangerous to thaw, too unstable to readjust.
Because this she knows.
Something beautiful can turn ugly.
Something whole will break.
When she finally falls asleep, it is with the memory of arms around her, warm and strong in this bed.
And the things she thought she could rise above, she cannot.
Morning in the loft is cold. Empty.
She drops her keys on the kitchen counter. Packs her belongings, tucking them into the overnight bag she’d left in his closet.
Hooking the tote over her shoulder, she sets Cancer Ward back on his study shelves. Hands shaking, she texts the group chat: (11:23 a.m.) hey!!! remind me, what are the plans for tonight?!
On the train, as messages from her friends start rolling back in—phone buzzing, plans, places, night ahead—she deletes the
photo saved in her camera roll: the Polaroid of the two of them.
She goes out to meet her friends. Saturday night, packed bars spilling out into the streets, shrieks of joy from groups seeing
familiar faces. Inside, bumping into bodies, vaguely glazed eyes, people making new friends in long bathroom lines. The press
of it is near suffocating, close to what she needs.
She heads towards the bar, trying to find her friends in the thick crowd. Her phone buzzes as she gets a drink; they’re almost
there, subway stopped in the tunnel between stations, they’re in line now upstairs, bouncer checking IDs, (10:59 p.m.) sorry, it’s taking ages—
“Hey, are you waiting for anyone?”
Oh, it could all be so fucking easy.
Her smile flashes as she looks over her shoulder at the stranger.
“No,” Lili says. Distant, it feels so distant: the weight of her smile, the tilt of her head.
“Could I get you another drink, then?”
“Yeah, thanks,” she replies.
“I’m Justin,” he says, offering his hand with a smile.
His grin is crooked, endearing—chipped incisor, messy black hair.
Kind eyes, reflecting back the dark bar.
He’s only a few years older than her: twenty-eight, copywriter at a digital agency.
He makes a joke about fueling capitalism by advertising products via sans serif fonts to millennials.
Her laugh is well-timed. When she mentions she’s in grad school, he looks both impressed and interested.
He asks if she’s enjoying it, if she wants to teach.
And he has black hair, taller than her, dark eyes, and he says something half-funny about the aestheticization of socialism
on TikTok, and she wonders if she should look for someone else, someone completely physically different—
Her heartbeat pounds in her throat, as she drains her gin and tonic. Clear, clean blanch of alcohol. Lili glances over the
bar, crunch of the black straw between her teeth.
It’s easier this way.
She won’t—she refuses—to have one more thing she can lose.
“Do you want to get out of here?” Lili asks, interrupting him.
Eyebrows raised, he trails off—he’s taken aback, but then he smiles, slight disbelief. “Yeah, sure, I’d love that.”
It’s a walk-up on Mulberry. His roommate is out, and the living room doesn’t have windows. A bar cart in the corner has Tito’s
and unopened Ghia, MacBooks plastered with stickers rest on the coffee table; a copy of Camus, Bourdain, a few Roth books,
some ?i?ek that looks untouched. Fixed-gear bikes lean against the wall under a Hann Trier MoMA exhibit print, and New Balances
and Common Projects clutter the entry.
“Do you want another drink, or water, or anything?” he asks, as the door falls shut behind them.
“No,” Lili says, pulling him towards her. “No, I’m fine—”
The heat of his mouth against hers—surprised, then eager—isn’t right. He doesn’t know how to kiss her. It’s not inexperienced
but rather clumsy, how he grasps her waist, palming her breasts, like he doesn’t know what she likes, but she has no desire
to show him.
“Which room’s yours?” she asks, breathless. His hair is too coarse under her fingers; his smooth face feels wrong. His smile
against her mouth makes her stomach lurch.
The bedroom window is propped open, letting in cooler night air around the AC unit. The street traffic, drunk laughter, drifts up from the Italian restaurants down Mulberry. His bedsheets are dark blue, and they scratch against the back of her knees as the mattress dips under her weight.
The rip of foil, the initial glide of rubber—it all goes fast. Kicking her boots off, shimmying down her underwear.
“Are you, you know, clean? And like, on birth control?” he asks. “Yeah, both, but—use a condom.” “You sure? I’m clean, so
if you are, too, I’m fine with it—” “No,” she insists. “Just use one.”