Remy
REMY
I answer an incoming FaceTime call. “Hey, Lin!”
Lin is sitting on a bench somewhere in Central Park.
Her jet-black hair has been cut from down her back to just past her shoulders while bangs continue to frame her expression.
Lin naturally has what she calls a resting bitch face; she doesn’t mean to, but due to her heavy-lidded eyes and straight brows, she tends to look as if in a permanent state of disinterest, even when she has big news to share.
“Hey, Rem,” she says. “How are you? How’s the weather? I found Ishir.”
“What?”
“I found his number and called him,” she confirms. “We had a few words.”
I mumble something nonsensical before I can come out with, “How did you find his number?”
“I employed a hacker.” Again, with her RBF, it’s impossible to tell if she’s joking.
“You did what?”
“Well, close enough,” Lin says. “I gave my Gen Z sister a twenty, and ten minutes on Google. She could find his number just by one of his Instagram posts. I am terrified of today’s youth. It’s because they don’t play outside anymore.”
“Lin, slow down. You found Ishir’s Instagram? How? I couldn’t.”
“His username is something motorbike related.” Lin pauses to take a sip of an iced coffee I didn’t notice she’d been holding. “Anyway, I told him to call you ASAP or I’d pay him a visit, but I’m going to text you his number, just in case he’s a pussy.”
Immediately a message with only eleven digits comes in.
“My sister offered to find his home address if I took her to Sephora.” Lin pauses again, chewing her straw. “So… would you like me to take her to Sephora?”
“That won’t be necessary,” I reply, still staring at the eleven digits. “Or legal.”
Lin shrugs and blinks slowly. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Will do. Hey, Lin?”
“Yeah?”
“What did you think? Of Ishir, I mean?”
“Oh.” She puts her drink down. “I don’t know. Some of his pictures were cute, I guess, bit textbook, nothing exciting, unworthy of you by about a million and ten miles, but that’s for you to decide. Just… Remy?”
“Yeah, Lin?”
She takes a deep breath. “Hang on.” She pulls a pair of sunglasses from her bag to cover her eyes.
“I don’t want you looking directly at me when I say this.
You know I don’t love the emotional stuff so if you ever bring up what I’m about to say, I will deny it and then bury you in ‘defamation of character’ lawsuits. ”
“Understood,” I say, nodding seriously. “I’d just hire you to represent me anyway.”
“Touché.” Lin takes another deep breath.
“Look, you’re one of a kind, Remy,” she says.
“The way you love has always been an inspiration to me, I guess, and something I’ve maybe never told you is that being loved by you is one of the greatest things in the world…
and one of the easiest to take for granted.
I know I have, just because I’m so used to it, you know?
” She pauses to rub her nose. “Anyways, I’ve been struggling to pinpoint what’s been missing since I arrived in New York, and after talking to Ishir, or kind of at him—he was terrified of me, he barely spoke—and finding out that there’s a guy out there audacious enough to try to keep you out of his life, I realized what it was that doesn’t feel right. It’s you. You’re not here.”
My cheeks have flushed warm and I feel tears tickle my eyes, but I keep quiet, letting Lin continue.
“And I’ve kind of come to terms with the idea that I may never be loved by someone the way you love me, you know?
So subtly, so delicately it seems like nothing, until it’s gone.
Not that it’s gone —I know you’re still obsessed with me—but out here, I go round to people’s houses, and they don’t have my favorite snacks, or I tell them something and have to repeat it a couple of days later because it didn’t stick in their memory the first time; the little things you did every day, so naturally, have partially shaped how I live in this world, and being so far away…
I’m just not quite the same. I’m saying all of this because I don’t want you to feel like you have to manufacture something with Ishir or even try to like him if you don’t.
You’re a great judge of character, and he’d be lucky to have you even part-time in his life, so if you do meet him, let that fact guide you, okay? ”
I sniff, and a rogue tear slips down my cheek.
What Lin said at the beginning is true—she isn’t the emotional type.
Nova is dramatic so she has emotion in the bag; Mel is emotionally intelligent, able to articulately describe each and every feeling she has, and I’m…
well, you’ve met me. Lin is the reserved one, but it’s never bothered any of us because we know she’d run into a burning building to save any of us without a second thought.
The point is, while we know how she feels about us, rarely do we get to hear it.
“Remy? I swear to God, if you’re crying…”
“It’s the hormones!”
“That’s going to get old quick,” she says, pulling off her sunglasses. “Let’s make this conversation end, for both our sakes.”
I nod, swiping at my nose while burning this memory into my brain’s core. “I love you, Lin.”
I watch her smile. “Meh,” she says. “I think you’re only all right.”
I’d decided to call Ishir later that evening, but he beats me to it.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Hey, Remy,” says a male voice. “Hi, yeah, erm, it’s Ishir.”
I reach for my stomach. “Ishir from the dating app?”
“That’s the one.”
“Oh, okay. Hi.”
“Yeah, so I got a call from a girl called Linisha earlier today?” he says. “Did you… did you hire someone to find me?”
“Lin is my best friend,” I answer, “and she didn’t charge.”
Silence.
Ishir coughs. “Right… well, she said you had something to tell me, and she threatened to sue me if I didn’t call you straightaway. I thought she was just bluffing but I looked her up and she’s actually a lawyer at this big New York firm—”
“Ishir, I’m pregnant.”
When I’m nervous, I play with my hands. Every. Single. Time. It’s one of the reasons I don’t play poker.
When Ishir is nervous, apparently his right leg bounces rapidly, his eyes dart across the room, and he rubs the back of his neck.
It wouldn’t be fair to judge his ability to be a father after only today… but it isn’t looking good.
“So, I just didn’t feel like we had a connection,” he says, hand at his nape yet again.
“We slept together,” I remind him. We’re sitting in a crowded coffee shop, so I keep my voice low.
“Yeah, I know, and that was great, don’t get me wrong,” he says, “but it wasn’t enough . Remy, when we met, I’d just gotten out of a six-year relationship and you were, like, crazy upset about your friends moving out or something and…”
As he talks, I think of how laughable it is that your own desperation can alter the personality of someone else. When I’d first met Ishir, he’d seemed so cool and mature… He was fast proving that this was never the case.
“When me and Kendra broke up,” he continues, “I didn’t know how to be alone.
I thought I needed to dive back into a relationship, you know, to get back on my routine when really, I should have taken some time out for myself, try to figure out what I need and want.
There’s this podcast that I started listening to recently and it’s really changed… ”
He goes on to talk about this podcast and that it’s (of course) changed his life, but how exactly it’s changed his life is unclear. What it has to do with the reason we’re gathered here today is also unclear, but I let him finish.
There must have been something I found attractive about him? I like his dark hair, I guess, and the bump in the bridge of his nose is interesting. I thought his eyes were light brown but they’re actually a little darker than I remember.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I release my eyes from their squinting position. “Sorry, you were saying.”
“Look, Rem… can I call you Rem?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Look, Remy, I think it’s obvious where I stand,” he says.
“I’m not ready to be a dad—I live with two roommates!
” He runs his hands through his hair so that it sticks out at an increased number of angles.
“But if you choose to have this baby,” he continues, “then I’ll stand by you and… fuck, my parents are going to kill me.”
“Aren’t you thirty-one?”
“Thirty-two last week, but if you choose to have this baby,” he says, admirably remaining on track, “then I will do the responsible thing.”
“Like not ghosting me?”
He flinches. “Ouch, but fair. I’m just saying, even though it’s not what I’d… prefer, I’ll support your decision. I’ll come to appointments, get you weird food cravings, and even sell my Rockrider.”
“Is that a motorcycle?”
“No, a mountain bike.”
I nod and consider starting my response with “Look, Ish, can I call you Ish?” But I decide this is no time for jokes.
“Ishir, while I appreciate you promising to grit your teeth and hate your life for the foreseeable, I still haven’t made up my mind.
When Lin offered to find you, I only went along with it because I thought seeing you again would help force a decision, but it hasn’t. ”
Ishir nods. “It’s up to you.” He holds out his palms as if physically pushing the decision my way. “I’m here whichever route you take.”
After he says this, the specific reason I don’t feel good about Ishir arrives in such rapid fashion, it leaves me disorientated.
“Whoa.”
“Remy?” Ishir asks. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve just remembered something.”