Page 73 of What It's Like in Words
“Don’t we? We laugh all the time! And chemistry, Enola? Come on, we have that!”
I pause to consider my response, and Virinder’s brown eyes widen.
“You don’t think we have chemistry?”
“Virinder, what good is this doing? We’ve been over this already!”
He shakes his head. “Well, apparently, you didn’t do a good enough job tying up the loose ends. The loose ends meaning me, BTW, the rebound guy.”
I want to scream at him to use the full words. He’s not on the internet. God, I hate him. It’s not right or fair or deserved, but I actually hate him. He is leaning against the door like he’s off to work. His brown suit perfectly matches his tie, and his hair looks like Sonic the Hedgehog’s. Why does he highlight it? His highlights are shit. They’re like little squares of paint or refractions on carpet where sunlight hits. He lifts up his shirt to tuck it in, and I know that he has tensed his abs for that exact moment. To let me know what I’m missing. To let me know that I’m walking away from someone who takes care of themselves. Who makes me cum. Who buys the good paper and colors inside the lines? Okay. Breathe. Be kind. Be nice. Be a tablecloth.
“I could have been the love of your life, Enola. But you’ve fucked it.”
Be. A. Tablecloth.
“Virinder.” I say his name like I’m closing the argument. “We’renot the loves of each other’s lives. I don’t think you love me. You love giving love and there’s a difference.”
His face lights up like he’s finally realized my problem.
“So,thatis the real issue! You don’t believe that I love you, Enola?”
He shifts like he’s about to move toward me, but I stop him.
“No! That’s not therealissue. I’m just trying to say that I think you’ll realize this is the right thing for both of us.”
He retreats; his shoulders drop.
“God, Enola. You treat me like I’m this…” He searches for the word, but I’m not going to help him find it. “No one’s ever treated me this badly,” he says, shaking his head.
I think about how easy it must be to be a man sometimes.
“And it takes alotto hurt me.”
With that, he turns to go but stops and looks over his shoulder. There’s a softness in his face that disarms me; I think about his clean shower, the anxiety medication he keeps in a small copper pot, how he kissed me on the forehead before leaving for work. Amy once said in the writing group, when Hugo became annoyed with a fictitious character, that the people who frustrate us the most are the people who remind us the most of ourselves.
“The thing is,” Virinder starts in a new tone, “it’s not even your fault. It’s mine. I knew that you didn’t love me. Sometimes I wondered if you evenlikedme. It always felt like everything I did… like I was never… And my friends warned me, but I thought, well, she’s come out of a bad relationship and she just needs some time. So, mock me all you want but that does make me aschmuck.”
With that, he leaves, swinging the door so hard that the handle hits the wall.
I listen to the actions of his exit: the clip-clopping of his heels, the swish of his jacket, the door being opened and closed. Then I go to the door and watch through the peephole. He is waiting for the lift. He is looking at his Rolex. He is opening the door to the stairwell, where he will take the stairs down two at a time. Confident that heisn’t coming back, I return to the bedroom and take out my birthday CD. I trace the list of songs, where I still exist somewhere, in the curves and slants, the comets, the stars.
Well, this is going rather well, isn’t it?
I scream into my pillow.
CHAPTER 24
Keep us close to your heart,
so if the skies turn dark,
we may live on in comets and stars.
We crouched in Sand River with the sun on our shoulders. Dad put his finger on his lips. Elephants fire a warning signal. We must back away slowly. Never run. I could smell the fry that Mum was cooking up the bank. The matriarch flapped her ears.
Dad…? Dad told me to freeze, but the elephant flicked her trunk. Dad gestured like a marine, and we crept back through the water. But then she trumpeted loudly.
Run!Dad yanked my hand. The reeds whipped our shins, and my ankle turned on a rock. We shambled up to where Mum held a plate of bacon.
