Page 159 of On His Mind

“No reason. Planning.”

“Planning what?”

“Things.” Mara waves a hand. “December things. Christmas things.”

I let it go, because the alternative is pressing, and pressing means acknowledging that something’s happening, and I know exactly what’s happening.

They know.

I don’t know how much, but they know enough. Somebody’s said something. Blue, maybe. Or it’s just visible on me in a way I’ve failed to control. And now they’re being gentle with me, softening their voices, avoiding whole categories of subject, hugging me at doors. Watching me like I’ll break.

I’d rather they didn’t.

There is nothing on this earth I want less than to be worried about. Every soft look is a little humiliation I have to sit still for.

So I get funnier. I ask Gianna about her mother and let her talk for ten minutes. I make Mara laugh twice. I refill everyone’s glass before they ask. I am the best possible version of myself for two hours and forty minutes, and when I leave, Gianna hugs me a third time and says, “Love you. Really.”

“Love you too.”

I drive home from a room full of women who love me, and I have never been lonelier in my life. Not even when I was hiding. And I can’t tell them. Not because he’s still a secret — he isn’t, not really, not anymore. But to explain what I lost, I’d have to explain all of it, two and a half years, from the beginning, and there’s no version of that story where I don’t come out of it as the fool.

When Melly and I reach home, we walk in, and she hesitates, making the tension worse.

“Can I ask you something?”

I put my keys in the bowl and walk to the kitchen. “Sure.”

“Do you—” She stops. She actually stops mid-sentence, mouth open, and I watch her hesitate again. “Do you want tea? I was going to make tea.”

“I’m okay. Thanks.”

I grab my container of pre-cut fruit from the fridge, and she fills the kettle for tea, moving around me awkwardly.

Later, through the wall, I hear her talking on the phone. It doesn’t sound like she’s talking to Blue. Those phone calls are usually on FaceTime, and I can hear his voice, but right now, it’s only her talking.

I brush my teeth and spit in the sink. Then I go to bed and lie there doing sums on the Larchmont set until the early morning hours.

The next morning, I’m in the grocery store at the produce section with a basket. I have a handwritten list of groceries in my hand. I’m looking for the pineapple, but I hadn’t anticipated the fruit it’d be next to. I glance down at the mangoes, and for the first time since that night, tears prick my eyes.

I try to get them to stop, but they don’t. They leak onto my cheeks, so I book it to the flour aisle where nobody else is, and I pretend I’m shopping for something on the top shelf, but I’m just using gravity to keep the tears in my eyes until whatever’s happening to me can stop.

For a minute, it doesn’t. I press the back of my hand to my mouth to hide my sobs. Then I see someone step into the aisle, and I need to pull it together. I grab a few boxes of Jell-O, and then I walk back to the fruit. I get the pineapple and a mango, because I’m not about to let a fruit win over my emotions.

That night, I pick up my phone and open my text messages. Instead of reading what’s being said in the group chat with the girls, I look at Percy’s name and click on it.

I start scrolling, reading every exchange we’ve had. Many of the texts are that he’s outside, or he’s asking me to come over.They’re all simple. None of it was ever complicated with him. And not hearing from him also feels simple, even though I want to complicate it. I told him that I’m not happy, and that it wasn’t what I wanted, and he’s respecting it. That’s why he didn’t chase after me.

I swipe out of his name and put the phone down and pull the Larchmont sheet toward me, because there’s an exam Thursday and a set due after and none of it does itself.

I sharpen the 2B down to a point and start on the stair detail.

The 2B.

I stop with my hand still on the paper.

I’ve been using them since Christmas. Every sheet I’ve turned in this year. The project I submitted eleven days early, the north elevation Adler couldn’t stop looking at, the client set Renata put my name on — all of it, every line, drawn with the pencils Percy bought me.

I’ve never once bought myself a full set. He knew that too.