A kind of startled exhilaration washed over me as I combed back the layers of this remark. My heart had never beaten louder. I could feel it jumping just beneath the surface of my chest. And yet my voice came out small and wary when I asked, “Can’t you talk to your friends, Kai?”
“I don’t know,” he answered just as carefully. “Can you talk to yours?”
I said nothing, which I believed was a confession equal to his. Confession and validation. He was not alone in his strangeness. I was right here, another pulsing soul in this universe, feeling exactly as he felt—thrilled to have someone to admit this to and, at the same time, horrified because of what it implied about us as people, both of our lives exposed as the hollow shells that they actually were.
Yes, I loved my solitude and the freedom that came with it. But, sometimes, I couldn’t help but wonder: did I choose it, or did I succumb to it? Was I simply romanticizing a life I could not escape, a life I didn’t have the option of escaping?
“So, do you want to come here?” he asked when he realized I wasn’t going to admit any of this aloud. “Or I can come to pick you up? Whatever feels more comfortable to you.”
Well, imagine that, I thought darkly. Kai, coming over from the bar, flushed from having walked in the cold and the anticipation of physical contact, maybe a little drunk, maybe a little careless, with a mixed fragrance of tobacco and rain on his long, dark overcoat. Without so much as a hello, he would walk through the door, put his hands on my waist, and with all the wonderful brute force of his body, press me back against the wall.I thought you wanted to talk, I would say. And he would only smile, boyishly and irrepressibly, then lean down and kiss me on the mouth. A taste of alcohol and the pressure of his thigh between my knees. No questions asked. No discussion needed. Just a mutual taking and giving.
I wished I were someone capable of enjoying something like that. Only for a night to feel desired by this man, who I also found desirable, and then, with no sense of attachment at all, treat these moments as an entirely separate experience from the rest of my life. Did everything in a person’s life have to be related anyway? Did everything have to connect or have a specific meaning?
That was the problem with me. Everything I felt, I felt deeply. And wasn’t this the most frightening thing to know about yourself? To know your own vulnerability so well you were left with no choice but to shield yourself from everything and everyone.
Because here I was, hurt already, wondering if this was why Kai was so popular with the girls at work, if this was all it took for him. A late-night phone call, a false confession, a private invitation. The feeling of being chosen—inflicted and exploited all at once.
“I don’t want to sleep with you, Kai,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
This time the flutter of laughter came straight from him, which caused the line to shrill once more.
“Will you stop that?” I huffed, pulling the receiver from my ear.
“Anya,” he sighed magnanimously. It took me aback a little. I’d never heard my name spoken so softly before. “I’m a very straightforward man. If I wanted to sleep with you tonight, I would have just said so.”
I let out an incredulous hum. “So you don’t want to sleep with me.”
“Well…” he drawled.
“Okay, I’m definitely hanging up now,” I said, although we both knew I wouldn’t.
I had to admit, there was a particular pleasure in knowing he was thinking about me in that way, wanting me even if that wanting was fleeting. Just the idea that I could inspire any amount of desire in him brought something terrible out of me. Something worse than a flattered vanity. Not a need to be desired but a need to be desired byhim.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I exhaled, and out of sheer self-inflicted conditioning, it seemed, I hid myself within the familiar darkness of my armor. “Look, I’m really tired tonight. So maybe another time, okay?”
“Okay,” echoed Kai in a steady, gentle voice, as if to reassure me that there were no hard feelings, that what others would have perceived as a rejection he didn’t bother with perceiving at all.
“Goodnight,” I murmured.
“Take care of yourself, alright?” he said, serious now, and before I could respond, the line went silent with a low, almost subliminalbeep.
I lay there on the floor for a moment longer, observing the flicker of the neon lights from outside as they changed the depth of the room. Red. White. Red. White.
It was a workday, and the building was quiet. The leaky faucet and the continuous hum of the refrigerator were the only noises in the apartment.
Letting the phone drop from my hand, I felt myself submerge into a kind of trance, my mind falling empty of thoughts, my chest bare of feelings. There was only the steadydrip, drip, dripand the alternating lights.
Red. White. Red. White.
Then, all at once, blue.
Staggering to my feet, I ran to the window, my eyes tugging wide, my breath hitching, my whole body clutching in an intense, unnamable feeling.
Blue.
With shaking hands, I drew back the curtains, pushed the sliding door open, and stumbled barefoot onto the balcony, cold tile biting into my skin.
