Own me with your fingers. Trace the aches on my chest, touch the words it hurts me to say, press the exposed nerves around my heart until you hear my begging in your dreams.
My throat is thick, as if I’ve swallowed something I shouldn’t have. Beneath the text is a simple sketch of a man’s hands holding up a nude, ragdoll-like girl by her waist. Wide-eyed, her lips are parted, her cheeks pink—the only color in the photo.
I was happily yours until you fucked off.
The poetry in her words is gone, but the rawness strikes me in the gut. Just one sentence describes what Sadie left me with a year ago—a loving hate. Sweet, searing memories. The ache of desire mixed with the gut-churn of brutal rejection.
When I slam the book shut, I’m breathing hard. I’m going to be late to meet a client I can’t afford to piss off. I stick the journal in my bag and leave the coffee shop. I should turn it in to a barista, but my heart’s pounding, palms are sweating—things I haven’t felt since Sadie. Fucking her, wanting to fuck her, watching her return to her husband—my reaction was always the same, physical.
I don’t exactly enjoy ripping open old wounds, but I need this journal in my possession. Right now, the words inside it belong to me.
I meet my new client at a building between Tenth and Eleventh Avenue. Commercial gigs weren’t exactly what I had in mind when I left Wall Street. I’d opted to shoot now and aim later, so to speak. But between child support, alimony, and renting a two-bedroom apartment in the city, I can’t be picky.
Liz looks about my age, with dyed red hair and frown lines that give the impression she’s permanently stressed. She lets me into the freshly-staged apartment. “You look just like the photo on your website,” she says. “Most people don’t, as if I’d hire or not hire someone just based on their face.” She looks at my hair. It gets a lot of female attention, always has. There’s a ton of it. “I’ve got girlfriends who’d kill for that golden color,” she says. “What’s the name of it?”
Since I moved to the city over a decade ago, I’m always getting weird questions about my hair, like whether it’s all my own or where I get it done. My senior year of high school, I was voted best hair. And smile. And biggest flirt. The last one surprised me. I never intended to flirt, but I liked to make girls smile. Growing up, I appreciated when a simple compliment could reverse my mom’s mood.
Liz is smiling now, even though I’ve hardly said a word.
She has me take photos of the kitchen and living areas from every angle. The apartment is a new development in West Chelsea that boasts views of both The Highline and the Hudson. The kind of place I might’ve come to meet a client when I worked on Wall Street. And here I am, meeting a client.
Eventually, we end up in the master. “Make sure to get the bed,” she says, hovering behind me. “They did a good job on it, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” She sounds excited, so I spend extra time on it.
“People are very particular about where they sleep. I once showed an apartment for two months without so much as a nibble. I change the bedding andbam—got an offer the next day.”
“Let’s get the balcony,” I suggest.
“We aren’t done in here.” She sits on the edge of the mattress, running a manicured hand over the comforter. “Come.”
I wipe my temple on my sleeve. It’s stuffy in here and reeks of fresh paint. “I’m working.”
She undoes a button at her throat. “Then take my picture.”
I’ve taken many photos the last year, none of which have amounted to anything. I might’ve lost the ability when I lost Sadie. I remember her eyes, richly purple, when I stepped into the hallway of my new apartment building and met her eyes. The gaze of a woman who’d become much more than a neighbor. Our first night together, we’d gotten caught in the rain. I’d photographed her in my apartment. Her back arched against my then-wife’s green velvet couch. Sadie’s wet hair stuck to the cushion as her tits pointed to the ceiling. My lens had loved all of her. I haven’t looked at the photos since. She’s not mine to look at. That intimacy is reserved for her husband.
Like bullets, the words hurtle through me.
Give me your fuck. Split me down the middle with it.
“I can’t,” I tell Liz.
She frowns, those lines deepening in her face, signaling her disappointment. Turning her down’ll probably cost me future jobs. It’s been a while since I’ve been with anyone, but I crave intimacy over casual sex, I’ve always needed that with a partner.
I want the weight of those words in my hand again, the stick of good leather.
* * *
Back at my apartment, I hang my jacket on a hook by the door without bothering with the entryway light. I drop my camera bag in its usual spot by the couch. Leftovers go in the microwave. Almost thirteen months after moving in here, I’m better at being single. I clean up after myself more, eat vegetables, change the sheets regularly. I at least have to try harder twice a month when I have Marissa. Kendra, my perceptive ex, would find out if I fed our daughter too much junk or had her sleeping in dirty sheets.
After today’s job, I blew off steam at the gym, then regrouped on a park bench. Did some holiday shopping. Even though the journal’s been burning a hole in my bag all day, I haven’t opened it again. It’s not right to read a stranger that way, on the fly, out in public. But as I sit in front of the TV, shoveling dry chicken in my mouth, my mind wanders. I only read two pages. The journal’s huge.
I bring it to the couch and flip through her pages. She shifts abruptly between love and sex, pain and euphoria. It’s jarring, no matter how many times she rips me out of one emotion to drown me in another. She’s wise, emotional, observant of the human condition, and yet also erratic. Angry. Indecisive. Unreliable. Her drawings are as provocative as they are messy. The beginning of one of the poems makes me stop.
Make me a woman.
Let me be your girl.
