Chapter 36
I was wrenched from sleep by a phone call.
The room was dipped in a cool blue light.
It made the ringing feel louder, like it was in my bones.
People partied on the street, their voices sneaking through the cracked window.
In a rush to hit cancel, I pressed accept.
The room filled with Jay’s voice. A bald happiness ballooned in my chest before I could stop it, before I remembered to feel bad.
Tristan’s nose twitched in his sleep. I fumbled to take the call off speaker and crept into the living room, my heart a galloping mess.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hi, just called to say Happy New Year. Know it’s late.” His words ran together at a tilt. He was drunk. I looked at the time on the oven, blinking green. It was four in the morning.
“Happy New Year,” I managed.
My legs wobbled with nerves, dread building like I was bracing to take an exam. I caught myself against the counter. Tristan appeared in the door wearing a summer camp T-shirt, one eye shut. “Hey,” he rasped.
I shook my head. He got the message and turned back into the bedroom.
“Is that… are you with someone?”
I paused. “Yes.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No, no. It’s fine. I’m, um, I was actually just about to leave. Can I call you when I get home?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t actually.” He hung up. It felt like he’d taken a knife to the cord that had always connected us. I stared at my phone’s dark screen, nauseated by how dead it looked in my hand.
When I stumbled back into the bedroom, Tristan was on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face.
“That was Jay?”
“Yeah.”
He looked up at me. “Why did we do this?”
I knew he didn’t want an answer. Because we were selfish? Because we were sluts? Because, because, because. The answer seemed obvious. Because we wanted to.
I groped in the dark for my jeans like someone lost. Tears warmed my eyes but didn’t fall, just burned. I didn’t want to have to become someone else to be with Jay, but the idea of becoming someone else began to sound better than whatever I was doing.
“I’m gonna leave.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“I’ll Uber.”
“The fares are gonna be insane.”
He was right. It was New Year’s Day, the morning after of all morning afters. “I’ll figure it out.”
He started toward me then put his hands behind his back like a prisoner. “Get home safe.”
“Thanks.”
Then he said, “You could stay. I can sleep on the couch.”
I looked out the window, imagining I could see the sun. I could slip home soon. These feelings were fresh enough to forget.
We waited for me to reveal myself. Which story was I in?
The one where the woman goes home to lead a life of solid love but crushing conformity?
The one where she stays and inhabits the margins’ margins, wrecked by a lost love, a life of delicious, selfish freedom?
Even if I went home, it wasn’t as if Jay would be there waiting to embrace me.
Staying was a different sacrifice. A part of me would get left behind no matter where I went.
I crawled into Tristan’s bed like a small animal burying itself in the warm dirt. He left for the couch. But a few minutes later, unable to sleep, I went into the living room and watched his back rise and fall with his breath on the sofa.
Carefully, I laid myself flat on top of him like we were two sardines smooshed in a can. He went still. But then, reaching his arm around, he slipped his hand into my hair and left it there.