I’m unfortunately one of those women who gets horny when she’s sad and being comforted. I want to curl up like a cat in his lap and feel his hands run soothingly over every inch of me; listen to his warm, deep voice tell me everything’s going to be okay; then I want him to throw me onto my bed, sink into me, and make mefeellike everything’s going to be okay, too.
Alex senses my internal meltdown. “Ted? What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. My eyes well with tears.
He wraps an arm around me, holding me to his chest. “You want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “But first, I want to wine.”
“Whine?” He asks. “Or wine. As in, drink wine.”
“The one,” I tell him, “that involves alcohol.”
He reaches for his backpack. “Thankfully, I came prepared.”
A fuzzy number of hours have passed since Alex got here. It’s late, past midnight, I know that much. Traffic is finally quiet but for the occasional car that rolls by, the city bus that hisses to a stop outside my building every twenty-some minutes. The sky is pitch-black outside my windows, and my apartment is dim, lit only by a cone of butter-yellow thrown by my nearby reading lamp. The wine has left me pleasantly mellow-brained and loose-limbed. Telling—well, sobbing at—Alex about Lauren’s upcoming move, has left me drained yet peaceful, that specific kind of relieved exhaustion that comes after a good, hard cry.
Finally, a breeze billows through the windows, stirring my newly sewn field of dandelion tissue balls. Two bottles of wine sit empty on the coffee table, while Alex and I lie sprawled on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I whisper through the tears I keep wiping away. “I’m sorry for being such a mess.”
“You’re not a mess, Ted. You’re going through messy shit.”
“No difference.”
“Big difference.” He props up on an elbow, staring me down. “I’m right about this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my therapist said so. And my therapist, annoyingly, is always right.”
I sigh and go back to staring at the ceiling. “Sour Patch?” I reach into the bag and offer him one.
“Nope. Those things fuck with my palate.”
“And cigarettes don’t?”
He scowls at me. “I never said theydidn’t. I just said they were a vice. And that I’m quitting them. Which I’ve done a great job of, so far.”
I raise a hand, and he slaps it for a high five.
“And how,” he says, “are you doing on your gas station hot dogs, Ms. Sodium Nitrates?”
“Haven’t even walked into a 7-Eleven for a whiff of one.”
Alex tips his head. “Not there yet. I’ll walk through a cloud of smoke anytime I can.”
I grimace. “Well, I might have actually walked into a 7-Eleven for a whiff of one yesterday. But it was aroughweekend.” I toss the Sour Patch in my mouth and chew. “I probably need a therapist.”
Alex seems unphased by my topic jump. “You ever had one before?”
“No.” I feel around the Sour Patch bag but come up empty. “They scare me.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because from what I understand, going to therapy is paying someone to make me do my least favorite thing ever—deal with conflict, sadness, disappointment, fear; pick a negative emotion, I don’t want it.”
