She dabbed small dollops of color onto a glossy sheet. “It’s the only way I can access my thoughts. Otherwise I have no idea what’s going on with me. I started making these scary knit dolls during the pandemic.”
She grabbed her phone to show me a picture. The doll sat in the palm of her hand, black beads for eyes, a stitched mouth. I studied Nia from the side while she grinned at the photo. She had one of those faces that, in profile, looked entirely different than it did head-on. I wondered what would happen if I just leaned in and buried my face in her perfumed neck. Then I wondered what the fuck was wrong with me.
When she fell silent, I panicked, afraid we’d run out of things to say.
“I feel like I don’t actually know you,” I blurted.
“What’s there to know?”
“Tons of stuff like where you’re from…” I immediately forgot what you’d want to know about a person.
“Boring Maryland. Divorced parents. I may have ADHD, but I keep missing my diagnostic exam. I hate sharing facts like this, they don’t tell you anything. Oh! Are you poly? Who told me this? Did I tell you about my friend Brooke? She’s poly.”
Nia pulled up Brooke’s Instagram. She was a white girl with bleach-blond hair. I didn’t want to meet any more white people doing nonmonogamy.
“I’m actually trying to decide if I’m going to keep being polyamorous. Or keep doing it, I guess.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Jay doesn’t want to be open anymore.”
“Men love nonmonogamy until you start slanging your punani. Then it’s trouble in paradise.”
“I’m not even slanging it around that much!”
Except for with her boyfriend.
“My dad’s a serial cheater,” she said. “But the second my mom evenglancedin somebody’s direction, it was a problem. Ugh, this is not the color I want.” She scraped something away with a palette knife. “Your face is a challenge. That’s why I wanted to paint it, of course.”
I almost told her that her face was a challenge, too, but it was also perfect. I sat on my hands until it hurt to distract from the heat in my chest.
“So, what are you going to do?” she asked with such earnest curiosity, I started to tear up. Quickly, I rubbed away the moisture with my knuckle.
“I don’t know. I love him.”
“But he doesn’t love the way you are.”
She looked at me with sympathy. I turned away, my eyes hot, stinging. I knew I shouldn’t feel embarrassed to cry about Jay, but it felt like I didn’t have the right to, that I had all the power to be with him and yet I was choosing this nebulous identity instead. And the choice felt impossible, like in those tales where a genie grants you three wishes, but the wishes can never represent your true wants. There’s always a caveat, a trick. It’s never what you actually wished, but a bastardized version of it.
Nia returned to the painting. She was kindly ignoring the fact that I was struggling not to cry.
She finished an hour later, rinsing her brushes, splattering paint-streaked water everywhere.
“This time again? Next week? Oh, wait, I have something. I’ll call you. If I don’t, I’ll see you in class.”
“Okay.”
I stumbled toward the door with a pounding heart, feeling like I’d just committed a crime, being there with her.
“Cat,” she called.
I turned, hoping she’d asked me to stay. Maybe we could get coffee, walk around campus, talk.
What she said was: “It’s not worth it, sacrificing yourself like that for a man. That’s just how I feel. But it’s your life.”
I thanked her though it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I left with a massive weight on me, even more wrecked by this decision before me with not enough time or wisdom or will to make it.
Chapter 45
