Half His Age

Jennette McCurdy

Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

HarperCollinsPublishers

Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper,

Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland

First published in Great Britain in 2026 by 4th Estate

First published in the US in 2026 by Ballantine Books

Copyright © Waffle Cone, Inc. 2026

Jennette McCurdy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design: Arsh Raziuddin

Cover image: Getty Images

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

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Source ISBN: 9780008617691

Ebook Edition © January 2026 ISBN: 9780008617714

Version: 2026-01-12

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Dedication

FOR A.K.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Acknowledgments

About the Author

By Jennette McCurdy

About the Publisher

1

It’s bad form to groan when a guy’s going down on you, I know that, but right now it’s hard not to.

“You taste so good,” he says, licking his lips.

“Thanks.”

Randy Julep’s fingers clamp down on my splayed-out thighs, his death grip tightening. His cunnilingus technique is underwhelming: Eyes shut reverently. Occasional mmms. Slimy tongue that loop-de-loops over and over like a carnival ride, mechanical and passionless.

“You know what, why don’t you just come up here?”

“You don’t want me to keep going?” he asks, cocking his head.

“No, let’s just … get to it.”

“O-okay, if you’re sure.” Randy tries and fails to hide his excitement as he whips a condom out from his pocket then runs his clammy hands through his mop of hair. The same mop of hair I found so mysterious when we met over the summer at that Fourth of July party. The same mop of hair that shielded his hooded eyes while we threw back red, white, and blue Jell-O shots, while we ate corn on the cob with too much butter, while we swam in Goose Lake and watched illegal fireworks burst in the sky. The mop of hair I found so intriguing. So seductive. And that I now just find greasy.

“You need help with that?” I ask as Randy struggles to rip open the wrapper.

“Um, would you?”

He chucks it at me, I tear it open and chuck it back at him. He kicks off his boxers and discards them in the corner.

I close my eyes and start moving my hands down, imagining I’m somewhere else, somewhere with someone I connect with, someone who gets me and who I get. It’s a shame. For a second, I really thought Randy could be the guy. He’s quiet and moody. I figured that must mean he had thoughts so riveting that he couldn’t utter them out loud or he’d spoil them.

“Your tits are beautiful,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“So beautiful,” he repeats, mashing and squishing them between his fingers like a kid with a ball of Play-Doh. “Your whole body is …”

“Thanks,” I say again, hesitantly. Maybe it is beautiful, my body. I wouldn’t know, since in the two years that I’ve had this new version of it, I’ve been much more consumed with dealing with it than appreciating it. Shaving it or scraping it or strapping it in or exfoliating it or lathering it or shoving a coarse cotton plug into it. Always doing something to stop my body from doing what it wants to do. Oozing or bursting or bleeding, making too much hair in the wrong places and not enough in the right ones.

I’m not used to this new body yet, with these new curves and stretch marks and this unrecognizable silhouette. It’s like my smaller-framed, flatter-chested body could no longer contain all that was inside it, so it expanded to make room. Now my body’s ahead of my mind and my mind needs to catch up. Needs to realize this thing isn’t an Airbnb. This is home now. Even if it doesn’t feel like it yet.

“You ready?” Randy asks, eyes narrowing with a weird intensity. I want to remind him this isn’t Apollo 13. It’s a couple kids about to fuck on a twin-sized bed.

“Yeah,” I say in a wispy sex voice that I feel like I’m supposed to use.

Randy pumps into me with a staccato pump, pump, pump. Same as they all do. Or at the least the three boys I’ve fucked, all of them with their boners and their closed comedones and their way of touching my body like they’re fumbling for their car keys. No passion, no bond. Just sweat and bumping and genitals. Body parts in body parts.

It’s not for lack of trying. They’re trying. I’m trying too. But no matter how much spit or cum, how much dry-humping or making out, going down or eating out, petting or edging, sex always falls short. Feels clunky and perfunctory. Clumsy and performative. A blatant reminder of the misshapen puzzle pieces that are private parts.

And afterward, they re-buckle their pants and I re-clasp my bra and accept in the awkward silence the itchy fact that I settled for pleasure when I wanted connection, an itchy fact that I refuse to scratch by saying it out loud, so instead we go and get ice cream.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem. My mom called me hard to love when I was seven and the phrase always stuck with me even though she swore she didn’t mean it twenty minutes later, and by two days later she denied she’d ever said it at all.

“You heard me wrong,” Mom explained after I brought it up on our weekly trip to the Dollar Zone for processed foods (jumbo bags of Cheetos and SunChips, a jar of Skippy, and a couple boxes of Hamburger Helper that usually expired before they got used) and essentials (toothpaste and toilet paper and trash bags so thin they ripped if you filled them all the way up) and usually one novelty item Mom couldn’t resist (a cream for cracked feet or any product with the word “detoxifying” in it).

“I dunno, those don’t seem like easy words to mishear,” I said.

She popped a stick of Big Red in her mouth and chomped down on it.

“Well just cuz they’re not easy words to mishear doesn’t mean you didn’t mishear ’em.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. But just know I never said that. Maybe I said you were a lot. Because you are. You need a lot and you are a lot. That’s me being honest, not mean. But never would I ever say you’re hard to love.”

Problem solved, I thought. I’m not hard to love, I just need a lot and am a lot. And then I grabbed a coloring book I wanted, but thought better of it and set it back on the shelf. Maybe wanting things is what makes me a lot. If I could just want less, I’d be the right amount of person. The amount I’m supposed to be. The not-a-lot amount. The easy-to-love amount.

It’s an approach I’ve taken with me into my three relationships, if you can call them that, which you probably can’t. I’ve tried to not ask for much, and to expect even less. I’ve tried to make them feel funny when they all say the same jokes, feel smart when they all have the same point of view, feel right when a quick Google search confirms that they’re not. I’ve tried to laugh on cue, smile on cue, compliment on cue. I’ve watered down my personality to a cardboard cutout version of myself, and I thought that was fine so long as my body showed up in 4D with bells and whistles, ready to grab and grope and lick and suck. But the more I try, the more I realize it’s not possible. A body can’t just connect on command, or find a spark that isn’t there, or force a nonexistent chemistry. You might be able to squeeze a couple of cheap thrills out of it, but eventually, the body says no more.

Like mine is saying to me right now.

“I’m gonna cum!” Randy shouts in my ear.

And he does. At least he did what he said he was gonna do. I can appreciate reliability, in any form.

He pulls out, panting. I glance at his nightstand—at his plate of pizza crusts that’s been sitting out the past few times I’ve been here and his dog-eared copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, lying face up, like he’s proud of reading it. I scan the floating shelves on his wall, crammed with soccer trophies, and the trifecta of movie posters pinned up next to them: Scarface, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction. The Holy Trinity. What is it about boys and these three movies? Always with these three movies.

“Do you ever feel like your body and mind are saying two different things?” I ask him.

“Um …” Randy says, staring at me dumbfounded. “No. Not really, no. Do you?”

“Me? No … not really,” I say. It’s unsettling how often agreement doubles as giving up.

Randy peels off the condom then flings it in the trash like it’s a slingshot, even squinting his eye for accuracy. He makes the shot at least. If you’re gonna sling your progeny into your trash can, you better make that shot. He snatches a dirty sock from the carpet and starts wiping himself off with it.

“Hey, Randy,” I hear myself saying while I shimmy into my jeans, my voice flat and distant.

“Mm-hmm?” he asks, still sopping up his cum with his own sock.

“I think we should …” I pause, trying to find the right words.

“Break things off?” he asks effortlessly, tossing his sock into his dirty clothes bin. “Honestly, I was kinda thinking the same thing …”

“Great.”

“Great, I’m glad we can be so mature about it,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. He falls back onto his bed and kicks one foot over the other, swiping open his phone to laugh at some video a friend sent.

“See you around,” I say over my shoulder as I head out.

“See you,” he says without looking up.

And that’s that. As unceremonious as a breakup could be. No tears shed. No why’s or I can change’s. Just a clean, simple break. Another cheap thrill crumpled up and chucked in the trash. Or, perhaps, sling-shotted.

2

When I get home, I kick my shoes off, take a leak, and throw the toilet paper away since we’ve never not had clogging issues. I wash my hands with Mom’s favorite hand soap, the lemon verbena from Bath & Body Works, five for $27. I do the dishes and a quick load of laundry, pop a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna in the microwave, and check the kitchen island for Mom’s latest sticky note:

Waldo—spending the night at Tony’s. There’s lasagna in the freezer. Have a great first day tomorrow. Senior year, baby! So proud! Xxoo, Ma

I don’t know why she still bothers with the sticky notes when she could just text—she must think they give a personal touch—or why I keep them all. I must think so too.

I head into my room with my lasagna and my sticky note, tuck the sticky note in the jewelry box overstuffed with them, and burn my tongue on the lasagna. I watch ten-step curly hair tutorials on YouTube that seem so complicated that I figure I’ll just go back to frying it with a blow-dryer and straightening iron every day and deal with the self-acceptance later. I switch to a video of a girl my age thrifting, then JFK getting his brains blown out in the back of that convertible, then a beauty guru’s seven-hundred-dollar Sephora haul. I follow the links in her description box to the items from her haul as she tells me that she seriously has a problem and needs to delete her Sephora app so that she doesn’t keep purchasing multiple shades of products that she hasn’t even tried.

I order the same shades of cream blush stick that she did, except for Venetian Rose, which is sold out and would’ve looked too harsh on my pale skin anyway. I know that a blush isn’t gonna transform my life, but it’s still nice to believe during the three-day shipping time that it could. It’s nice to believe that the only difference between me and Margot Robbie is a stick of blush. It’s nice to believe promises, even empty ones in cute typefaces on the backs of little cardboard packages. Especially those ones. There’s something about how assured they are in those pretty little fonts that feels more credible than the ones coming out of people’s mouths.

I fill out the delivery page and the payment page, then my heart races as I scroll down to that bold, red, looming PLACE ORDER button. I click it and a combination of regret and excitement flushes through my body. A combination so potent that it leaves no space for whatever feeling lurks underneath it.

I polish off my lasagna with whatever taste buds survived that first bite, then wash my face, brush my teeth, and pick my zits even though I know I shouldn’t. I get in bed but can’t sleep so instead I scroll.

I end my night by loading up a cart on Shein despite the damning ethics of fast fashion, because it’s the only place you can get a pair of pants for twelve bucks. The cancer warning comes up on all the items, which I appreciate because it helps me prioritize my cart. Velvet trousers? Not worth the cancer. Crop top? It stays.

3

“I’m a failure” is the first thing he says to us. “An absolute failure.”

It’s dramatic, sure, but it gets me to stop scrolling, which is more than I can say of any of my other teachers—all of them trying to force a rapport, getting all chummy with us by cracking some “You get it” joke about Principal Sanders, the panic of their growing obsolescence bleeding through every word, as if the approval of a few hormonal Gen Z-ers means they’re still relevant. Still in the game. Still a worthwhile human being.

“This was not my dream,” Mr. Korgy says as he paces up and down the rows, his loafers hitting the floor in a smooth, rhythmic beat. “I wanted to be a writer. A novelist. But I couldn’t handle the lack of security required to be one. I couldn’t tolerate the fluctuating, inconsequential strings of income. The consistent rejection. The scrutiny of my parents’ friends. How’s that novel comin’, champ? The uncertainty. I chose being able to afford takeout from the Thai place on the corner over roughing it, living off of ramen noodles. I chose going to the game with the guys over submitting my short stories to publications. I chose catching up on my favorite TV show over finishing a draft. I chose comfort over betting on myself.”

My attraction to Mr. Korgy is instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing. It’s not that he’s patently unattractive. He was clearly once a prizefighter. Once. But his looks have faded. Atrophied. Withered with the gross decay of glaring middle-aged-ness. And now all that’s left are his deep eyes and charming smile, the last remains of a once-good face.

The guys I’ve hooked up with are all nice to look at. Maybe not chiseled-face quarterbacks with newly minted abs, but the kinds of guys who’ve made at least a few girls’ panties wet with their signature good feature—their pouty lips or their tanned skin or their shaggy hair. And yet, what I feel toward Mr. Korgy is more intense than anything I felt toward any of them.

So I guess attractiveness and attraction are different things. Maybe what I felt in the past was … appreciation, for a good physique or face or haircut. And maybe this is attraction. Something more primal, that makes less sense.

“Why am I telling you all of this?” Mr. Korgy asks as he approaches his desk. “Because in this class, I don’t want your writing to be showy or cool or slick. I want you to be truthful. And if I’m asking you to be truthful, I figure it’s only fair that I do the same.”

He tugs his pant legs up and leans against the edge of his desk.

“So there it is. My truth. The truth about how I got here, to where I am today, a forty-year-old man teaching creative writing to high school seniors at East High in Anchorage, Alaska. The truth about why I am a failure.”

My vagina pulses. It’s not about him being a failure. I don’t know whose vagina would pulse at that. It’s about him being able to call himself one. Him being able to be honest about his regrets, his status, his shortcomings. Not mask them the way everyone else does, pretending to be fulfilled by their nine-to-five and their once-a-year vacation to wherever had a discount on Kayak. By the pride of paying their taxes on time or always having a sheet of stamps in a “just in case” drawer next to a tube of Neosporin and an extra phone charger. This is someone who has faced, head-on, the disappointing reality of where their life landed, and is willing to be direct and vulnerable about it.

I study Mr. Korgy’s thinning hair and nose pores. The broken blood vessels that bloom at the sides of his nostrils. His soft jawline and the lines around his eyes. His so-called unattractive features that I’m so attracted to. It’s excruciating. Intoxicating. Inevitable. This kind of attraction. The kind that already knows I’m gonna be with him, it just doesn’t know how.

4

She shakes her breasts in my face and twirls around in the pink-striped dressing room. “Ohmygod, this fits so much better! Look at my rack!” she says.

After a full day of irritable customers making demands for out-of-stock items as they douse themselves in half-bottles of passionfruit eau de toilette, I needed this reminder of one of the benefits of working at Victoria’s Secret: helping women feel better about themselves. It doesn’t take much. Sometimes just a well-fitting bra. Yank those tits up and the self-worth comes with it.

Most of the stores at the mall have shuttered over the past few years—Dick’s Sporting Goods, Barnes & Noble, Claire’s—because no one plays outside, reads, or lets a sixteen-year-old pierce their kid’s ears anymore. So many stores are gone that the mall has started to feel postapocalyptic anytime other than Black Friday and the day after Christmas. Empty store after empty store—carpet ripped up, gates yanked down, 75% off EVERYTHING MUST GO signs hanging crooked in the windows. The last remaining survivors are the ones that cater to selling women self-esteem in a jar (Lush), a bottle (Bath & Body Works), a powder (Sephora), a handbag (Michael Kors), or a bra (Victoria’s Secret). We also have a food court.

“Those skanks at Macy’s have been telling me I’m a 36C … ulch,” the woman says with a cheek-click. “Gosh, fifty-eight and finally getting my first bra that fits right. Can I compliment you to the manager or somebody?”

“Uh, once you make a purchase, there’s a website at the bottom of the receipt. You can go to that and fill it out. Or not. No pressure.”

“No pressure? Please, hon. Don’t go selling yourself short with the ‘No pressure.’ You hear me? I don’t like when women sell themselves short, bugs the crap outta me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t go apologizing now, makes it worse. Selling yourself even shorter,” she says. “Lemme ask you this, do you know your worth?”

The question takes me off guard, especially coming from a woman who’s standing in front of me topless with fried ends and poor boundaries. Also, I don’t know the answer. Or even the question really. What does it mean? How does one know their worth? What constitutes worth? I’m seventeen with bad grades. I live in a nine-hundred-square-foot apartment with a single mom. Most of the things I ingest are sold in a 7-Eleven. And I know people say worth is a thing you’re born with, a thing you just intrinsically have by nature of being a human being, but I’m not so sure. People are too precious about what it means to be human. We’re just people. We’re just gross little people who shit and fart and fuck. Who eat too much dairy and search for meaning in our iPhones and carry at least one undiagnosed mental illness. People who, maybe, aren’t worth much at all. But that all feels like too much to tell her, so I just nod my head and say, “Yeah, I think I do.”

5

I kick off my shoes, take a leak, wash my hands, vacuum, throw some Totino’s pizza rolls in the microwave, and check the kitchen island.

Doll—at Tony’s then working the night shift. Brought you a brownie. Miss you sweetheart. Xxoo, Ma

The pizza rolls explode but I eat their skins anyway, then wipe the cheese innards from the walls of the microwave and head to my room with my brownie and my sticky note. I stuff the note in the jewelry box and the brownie in my mouth then change into some sweats and an oversized Nirvana T-shirt even though I don’t know a single one of their songs.

On my bed, I morph into the internet-fueled fiend that takes me over from 10 P.M. to 2 A.M., blue light seeping into my pores and that questionable heat that radiates from my laptop beaming onto my face and lap, searing my ovaries.

I watch the vlogs of filthy rich teenagers with embarrassing hairdos gifting strangers with Ferraris, courtesy of their YouTube royalties, then switch to a string of 9/11 videos where people jump out of the burning towers to their deaths. I watch a mid-thirties woman organizing her sock drawer. I watch old Olympic gymnastics routines and Jubilee lineup videos where people test their gaydar or guess who’s had plastic surgery. I watch sea otters snuggle and a mother being interrogated about the murder of her child—she confesses to drowning the toddler in the backyard kiddie pool.

Then I begin to shop. I pull up tab after tab. Ravenously, violently. Shein, Forever 21, Princess Polly, Amazon, Target, Etsy, H&M, Zara, YesStyle, Boohoo. I load up cart after cart. Tank tops and trousers, camis and cardigans, boots and bracelets and cheap denim that I’m sure will reek of formaldehyde. I alternate from tab to tab frantically, then check my Bank of America app. $197 left and I’m not getting paid again until Friday. I’m low on gas and need to pick up tampons from Walgreens, plus groceries that Mom will forget to buy. Forever 21’s having a 70% off sale sitewide, so Forever 21 it is. I burn a hundred bucks with a single click and feel the rush of guilt, instantly knowing which items were mistakes. Where am I gonna wear a kimono and how am I gonna pull off culottes, and why is this kind of wherewithal completely inaccessible to me until after clicking that PLACE ORDER button? Maybe it takes commitment to know you shouldn’t have committed in the first place.

I aggressively refresh my email while I wait for the order confirmation to come through, but my eyes grow heavy, and I fall asleep, my laptop pressing into me like a heating pad.

6

Mr. Korgy’s second class is a lesson on how great poets find the universal in the particular. Spittle flies and his hands gesticulate, yet despite his passion, students don’t give a shit. They play footsie, they study their manicures, they make sketches in their notebooks. They don’t hear him and they don’t see him. But I do. I see the sadness in his eyes. And the deep desire for his words to resonate. The desire to connect. Maybe that’s all passion is—sadness plus desire to connect.

I’ve been fantasizing about him all class. Fantasies I didn’t know I had about things I didn’t know I wanted. Perverted fantasies.

I fantasize that I pour his scent into a perfume bottle and spritz myself with it so that I can smell like him—pine and musk and the faintest whiff of BO.

I fantasize that I lift his shirt and touch his paunch. Watch it jiggle. Study the curly hairs on his belly and lick them straight.

I fantasize that I crouch down under his desk and unbuckle his pants, hearing the deviant jingle of his belt as they drop to the floor, then reach into his boxers and cup his wrinkly balls. Tickle them. Toy with them until they’re taut and hopeful again.

I’ve never wanted someone’s gross parts before. Only the good parts. The smooth parts, the clean ones, the buttoned and brushed and buckled ones. But with him, I want it all. Even the gross parts. Especially the gross parts.

“For your first assignment I want you to write a poem,” Mr. Korgy says, leaning on the edge of his desk. “A short, simple poem. It must start with the words ‘I am from.’ The rest is up to you.”

The bell rings.

“Due Thursday,” he says, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. His silver chunk of a wedding band hits the harsh fluorescent light and flashes in my eye.

7

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” Frannie says as we cross the front lawn toward the school parking lot.

“Eh, it wasn’t a big deal. It’s not like we were ever serious.”

“Still! A breakup is a big deal whether it’s with a soulmate or a Randy Julep,” she says, then she stops and grabs hold of my arm to stop me, her doe eyes even wider than usual, and her tone gets grave. “Waldo, you’re my best friend …”

I cringe at the term that she weaponizes so skillfully, that she wields as a threat like the creepy doll that comes alive at the end of the horror movie, walking toward you with predatory green eyes. MY. BEST. FRIEND.

“… and best friends tell each other every-theen.”

I cringe at that too, the way she drops the g from the backs of her words. “Everything” becomes “every-theen.” “Thinking” becomes “think-een.” “Wondering” becomes “wonder-een.” I used to find it endearing. Now I find it grating. Grating. With a g.

When we met we were inseparable. I went to Frannie’s house every day after middle school. I loved how big and clean and safe it felt, with the vaulted ceilings and the fancy alarm system and the appliances that blended in with the cabinets. We sifted through Frannie’s mom’s crafting collection and made beaded necklaces and popsicle-stick catch-all trays, tie-dyed shirts and friendship cards. We set up a Slip ’n Slide on the grass and got welts on our bellies from sliding on it so many times. We pitched a tent in the backyard and camped there for three nights. We sold lemonade on the corner of her street in the summer and hot cocoa in the winter, a buck a cup. Things were good.

Until a sleepover at Frannie’s house early in the ninth grade. Mom left on a last-minute trip to Vegas with her then boyfriend so I went to stay with Frannie for the week. By this point, I was used to the inclusion of church activities. Didn’t really mind. Sure, bowing my head for family prayer three times a day gave me a neckache and I never knew any of the references when we played Book of Mormon charades for Family Home Evening, but it wasn’t a big deal.

But this time I actually went to church with them. Borrowed one of Frannie’s puffy-sleeved pastry dresses that itched all through Sacrament meeting. Then I attended class with her. And the lecture was on befriending the friendless. And how generous that is. What good charity work it is. How you curry favor with God for doing it. And I looked over and Frannie’s eyes were lit up with recognition, hearing herself in the words as she sat at the edge of her seat, almost falling off from sheer, eager, do-gooder-ness. I realized I was the friendless she had befriended. A hole-punch on her God stamp card. A fixer-upper to her savior. I was charity work.

I wanted to scream in her face that she didn’t have any friends either, that she’d have to eat lunch sitting in the cafeteria alone too if she didn’t have me. But then church class was dismissed and Frannie stood in a semicircle swapping Bible verse bookmarks with her classmates. Her friends. I guess she did have them.

“Well, if you need a shoulder to cry on or you just wanna talk, know that I’m here,” Frannie says.

“Sure, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Frannie releases my arm so we can resume the walk to our cars. She digs through her backpack for her car keys and I catch a whiff of her Glossier fig lip balm and Aesop geranium leaf body wash that smells like a rainforest. I’ve always liked the way she smells.

“Well, I’m this way …” Frannie motions to her car, a sparkling vanilla MINI Cooper that her parents bought her for her sweet sixteenth.

“I’m that way,” I say, nodding toward mine, a beat-up 2001 Toyota Camry that cost me eight hundred bucks and some free babysitting work.

“See you later,” she says, then she turns back. “And hey, seriously, I’m here for you. Call me and we can talk more about it.”

“I will,” I say, even though I won’t.

And we head to our cars in their opposite directions.

8

“I am from Carlos and Sierra,” Vanessa starts, her voice catching with preciousness for herself. “I am from love. I am from a sun and moon in Gemini. I am from handstands and lemonade stands and standing up for myself. I am from hopscotch and braces. I am from double Dutch on the freshly cut grass and double scoops of Rocky Road. I am from hopes and dreams.”

I look to Mr. Korgy to gauge if he agrees with me. If this is a moment of solidarity that we can share. A moment that will bring us closer, united in our judgment. Yes, our eyes will say, that did feel like a clipping from American Girl magazine.

But he’s unflinching. Vanessa looks around expectantly. A cough somewhere.

“Thank you,” he says blandly. “We have time for one more.”

He looks good. He’s clean-shaven today and his purple cardigan is a bolder color than the muddier-hued ones he’s worn the past two days. This is a statement piece for sure, the kind of thing he probably only breaks out when he’s got an extra pep in his step from nailing the New York Times crossword or from his weekly weigh-in coming in a pound or two closer to his goal weight. Whatever he’s celebrating today, I’m happy for him.

I hope I look good too. To him. I woke up forty-five minutes earlier than usual with the gall to try my hand at beach waves. I watched three tutorials in the process and by the last strand of hair I was profusely sweating and my arm ached, but I prevailed. Even that one adamant frizzy chunk toward the back was smooth and slick and glossy. No one would ever know my genes. Just how I like it.

I took my time with my makeup too. I got my eyeliner precise and symmetrical, patted concealer onto my spots carefully and blended it out with a brush instead of smearing it on with my fingers while I sit on the toilet peeing the way I usually do, one hand dabbing the concealer and the other balling up a wad of toilet paper to wipe. I even used my “good” tube of mascara (the travel-size Benefit Fan Fest I got free from a Sephora promotion) instead of the crusty drugstore tube I’ve been using six months past expiration.

I slid open my closet door and rifled through the crammed racks, trying to piece together whatever outfit I thought Mr. Korgy would like best. By the time half my closet was on my bed, tears had nearly been shed. I was stumped, half of me knowing that my body makes up for whatever my ordinary face lacks, so why not use it to my advantage? The other half of me thinking that Mr. Korgy is a grown man. A mature one. And grown, mature men don’t get hard-ons over a pair of bouncy tits the way a senior in high school does. They have more refined taste in women. They want a cultured woman. A woman who can read a book and sit through a ballet. A woman who values her body enough to not put it on display. A woman who respects herself.

I first went for something scholarly, a button-down with an argyle sweater and trousers and oxfords and a “fun sock.” But I felt too frumpy so I swapped the trousers for a pleated skirt with tights, which was slightly better but still looked like a girl who’s a little too excited to tell you her dream vacation destination is the Hobbiton area in New Zealand. So I ripped off the tights but left the skirt and button-down to keep things academic, then threw a corset top over the button-down to show off my shape and pulled on a pair of over-the-knee boots to sex the whole thing up—because no matter how much a grown man wants a woman who can read a book, he wants her to be able to suck a dick, too.

“Waldo,” Mr. Korgy says. “Why don’t you share with the class?”

I nod as a hot flash of nervous energy floods my body. My fingers grip my paper like a kid grips the wall of an ice rink. “I am from a white trash trailer park. I am from a mom who’s needy and absent at the same time. I am from a faceless father. I am from stubbed-out cigarettes and overdue apologies. I am from paper-thin pubescent promises. From a back room in a house party. From a little too much Hennessy. From minimum wage and minimum effort. From a regret and a mistake. From one tipsy, horny night.”

Mr. Korgy hesitates for a moment and then nods.

“Good,” he says. And his face is stony, and he says it evenly, but his eyes say something more. That he’s impressed. That he likes me. That he sees me.

After class, I run down the hall, weaving in and out of the crowd of students. I shove open the bathroom door and duck into a stall. I lock the door with my elbow and pull up Mr. Korgy’s Instagram with one hand while the other hand slips up my skirt and under the waistband of my thong.

His main photo is cropped tight, neck up with the top of his head chopped. He’s wearing a brown corduroy button-down—guess he didn’t solve the NYT crossword that day—and smiling big, his blue eyes still striking even in a photo the size of my fingernail. I click on his profile, basking in my grotesque excitement. Excitement too big for a photo this small. For a person I don’t know. For my teacher.

But what’s the harm in a little crush? In a thing that feels this good? I keep touching myself with my right hand while my left hand scrolls down, down, down, through his photos. I click on one of Mr. Korgy dressed up for Halloween as Woody from Toy Story, holding his toddler who’s dressed as Buzz Lightyear and drooling onto his space suit. I click another, of Mr. Korgy and his wife on a dimly lit dinner date, leaning over a slice of chocolate cake with a single glowing candle. I click another, one that I’m guessing was taken by a professional since everyone’s dressed up more, and matching in denim and red tops—Mr. Korgy in a wool half-zip, his wife in a turtleneck, his kid in a flannel. They’re at an apple orchard. Mr. Korgy holds a basket of Honeycrisps. His wife has a hand on his back and his kid is running toward the camera. They all look so joyous the joy might rip them open from the inside out. I zoom in on Mr. Korgy’s face, like if I get close enough I’ll see the truth. The fatigue. The disconnect. The sign that maybe this was the one picture that worked out of a two-hour shoot. Out of a batch of three hundred that he and his wife splayed out on the kitchen table, deliberating. Frustrated with shots where the kid screamed or she scowled or he looked too tired. Frustrated that they weren’t finding any good ones. Until this one. This one worked. This one was the clear front-runner, the only front-runner. The most convincing shot, the one that sold “happy family” best.

But I don’t see any sign of that on Mr. Korgy’s face.

So I zoom back out, staring at the obnoxious, genuine joy radiating outward from this family unit. A kind of familial joy I’ve never known. And suddenly, what felt good twenty seconds ago curdles inside me.

I go back to his profile and scroll down farther, farther, several years back, as far as his account goes. I click on a photo of just him. There’s a half-decorated gingerbread house on the table in front of him. He’s holding a piping bag of icing and there’s a gumdrop stuck to his nose with it. He’s mid-laugh. Big laugh. Laughing-fit-level laugh, the kind of fit that only strikes a couple times a year. Sharing it with the person on the other end of the camera. Probably his wife, maybe just his girlfriend back then. Someone who knows him in a way I don’t.

But in this photo, I can’t see that person. So I can pretend I’m them instead. I can pretend I’m the one who made him laugh, who’s taking the photo of him, who knows him better than anyone else. I start to touch myself faster, and faster, and faster, until my body convulses with spurts of pleasure.

Afterward, I wash up. The soap dispenser’s out so just water. Vanessa’s at the sink next to mine.

“I liked your poem,” she says.

“Thanks.”

She looks at me, waiting for the reciprocal compliment I can’t in good faith give her, so I give it to her in bad faith and she doesn’t seem to know the difference. I leave, and on the way out, I sniff my fingers.

9

Tab. Tab. Tab. Tab. Add-to-cart add-to-cart add-to-cart add-to-cart. Knitwear and bag charms and brown Mary Janes, jumbo scrunchies and animal-print claw clips and faux-suede kitten-heel boots that can’t handle Alaska’s snow, but I don’t care. I keep adding. A cropped puffer, a metallic puffer, a bright yellow coat with a Peter Pan collar, a koala signet ring, a silver cuff bracelet, a velour choker, a cardigan … a purple cardigan … a chunky, purple, statement-piece cardigan …

I shut my laptop and grab my notebook and pencil from my backpack so I can start on the latest assignment from him: a personal essay that explores our point of view at three separate ages of our childhood.

I write hurriedly but with singular focus. Everything else evaporates and for a moment, I feel calm. Grounded. Tethered. There is no racing mind. There is no mind at all.

I’m five years old. Mom’s getting me ready. On a regular day, I can wear whatever. A Pocahontas T-shirt and orange shorts or overalls and cowboy boots. But not today. Because today Dad’s coming over. And when Dad comes over, Mom gets stressed. And when Mom gets stressed, we get pretty.

“Best way to keep a man is to be as pretty as you can be,” she says while she glides lipstick on. Then she smacks her lips together and says it’s my turn to get pretty.

Mom puts me in my good dress and rolls my hair in hot curlers, rubbing oil onto the ends so they look all shiny. She puts lip gloss on me and a little mascara on the tips of my eyelashes. By the end of the routine, I’m a mini version of her.

Dad comes over. We all sit down for dinner. Mom looks at Dad and Dad looks at his phone. He leaves pretty quick and Mom sobs. Says next time we’ll leave the curlers in our hair longer. Get us some new dresses.

Next time we do get new dresses and we do keep the curlers in longer. Mom puts mascara on my full lashes, not just the tips. Dad comes over. He looks less at his phone and more at Mom. Even stays for dessert. At one point they go to the bedroom. I press my ear against the door and hear Mom making ooh-noises. She sounds happy.

As he’s leaving, Dad reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a plastic capsule from a grocery store quarter machine. Inside is a jelly hand toy. He shows me how it sticks on a window. Says it’ll be there for days.

Dad leaves and Mom seems relaxed. We must’ve done better. Been prettier. Pretty enough for Dad to stick around a little longer. I switch back into my Pocahontas shirt. The sticky hand falls off the window.

I’m seven years old. The hot curlers haven’t come out of the closet in over a year. Kids at school have started calling me trailer trash and making fun of me for wearing the same shirt three days a week. I swear to myself that as soon as I’m old enough, I’ll get a job so that I can use my money to buy myself enough clothes that I’ll be able to wear a new shirt every single day.

Even though Dad doesn’t come around anymore, other men do. Some of them Mom’s age, some of them older. They rarely stay long. They always smell weird. Like chili and cologne. Mom pays me less attention so I make friends with kids in the other mobile homes around us. Kimberly and Robin and Angelica. We play hide-and-seek near the swamp and make mud pies. We play jump rope games—Snake and Helicopter. We put water and fruit chunks into ice cube trays with toothpicks sticking out to make homemade popsicles. We have fun. Then Robin moves away. Then Angelica. Then Kimberly. And I’m the only kid left in the mobile home park. Sometimes I still make popsicles.

I’m nine years old. We live in an apartment now. Mom’s boyfriend gets her a job dancing. I ask her if it’s tap but she says not quite. Too bad. I’ve always liked tap dancing.

People comment wherever we go that Mom and I look like sisters. Older women often ask how old she was when she had me. When she says sixteen, the women say “Oh” and try to smile their best smiles, but I can tell they want to shake their heads or say tsk-tsk or both. I’m starting to notice that a lot—how people say one thing to hide another.

Like Mom. Sometimes she’ll show off a new blouse and act like she’s excited about the fabric or the neckline, but I can always spot the new bruise peeking out from under it. I want to say something about it but I compliment the blouse instead, so I guess I do it too.

Mom’s boyfriend breaks up with her. She sobs into my lap. I stroke her hair. It smells like VO5 shampoo. The strawberries and cream scent. She cries and says I’m all she has. That ever since she saw that plus line on that stick, she knew she wanted to keep me. Or that she couldn’t bear to get rid of me. Which is really the same thing. I don’t know what she means exactly, but I know that they don’t sound the same to me. Wanting to keep something is very different than not being able to get rid of it.

By the time I’m finished, it’s almost two. I pull open my shopping cart tabs and am about to choose the winning cart, but none of them look as great as they did a few hours ago. I don’t even like animal print. Or scrunchies.

I clear my carts, then pull up Mr. Korgy’s Instagram and masturbate to it using a bottle of tropical Tums from my bathroom drawer to grind on. The grooves feel nice. I fall asleep with the bottle in my hand.

10

The first time Mr. Korgy asks me to stay after class, it’s the middle of October, my favorite time of year in Alaska. The days aren’t so short that they’re depressing, or so long that they’re neverending. An appropriate amount of day.

“Thanks for staying, Waldo,” Mr. Korgy says, shutting the door as the last of the stragglers file out.

He takes a seat on the edge of his desk and fiddles with the stem of one of the warty gourds he’s got perched on it. They’re an ugly nod to the season, which I appreciate. More personality than a pumpkin.

“I’m sure you’ve got places to be and people to see,” he says. “I’ll only keep you a sec.”

This is the only place I’ve wanted to be and he’s the only person I’ve wanted to see for the past six weeks since his class started. Everything since then has been leading up to this. Every time brushing my teeth, every meatloaf cafeteria lunch with Frannie, every part-time shift at Victoria’s Secret and haphazardly scribbled sticky note I peel off the counter. Every cardboard frozen-dinner tray and every late-night shopping binge and every sack of sugary candy loaded with colorful food dyes. Every mundane activity has been plowed through, hurdled over, gone through the motions of, so that I can get to this. The first moment I’m alone with him.

“So,” he says, narrowing his eyes, “I wanted to tell you I really like what you’ve been doing in class.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Don’t thank me. Just being honest,” he shrugs. “Are you always so engaged in school?”

I’m not. I usually scrape by doing the bare minimum, sneaking naps in classes and letting my assignments collect Goldfish cracker dust at the bottom of my backpack. I don’t even really care about the social aspects—fitting in with this group or that, clutching my pearls over who’s gonna invite me to junior prom. (It was Paul Bornstein. We had sex in the back of his car. We both understood through such nonverbal cues as my disgustedly spitting his watery cum into an old Slurpee cup in his center console, and his flirting with Lexi Shepherd the entire night, that it was, undeniably, over between us.)

“Um. I wouldn’t say I’m usually engaged in school. I would say I engage with things that grab my attention.”

“I see. So writing grabs your attention then?”

I can’t tell him that the only reason I’ve taken an interest in writing is because I’ve taken an interest in him. That he is the goal. The objective. That writing is just a means to an end. A chance to impress him, or, better, to connect with him.

“I guess you could say that.”

“Well good,” he says. “You have something a lot of my other students, most of my other students, don’t have. Do you know what that is?”

I shake my head.

“A voice,” he says.

“That’s a rarity,” he says.

“And you have one. You have a strong voice,” he says.

And yet right now, in his presence, I’m unable to say a word.

11

When I get home, Mom’s sitting at the kitchen table, the overhead light flickering onto her face.

“Jesus Christ, you scared me,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean ‘what am I doing here?’ I’m that bad of a mother that you think I can’t be home to take care of my daughter?”

“No, no. You just … scared me.”

“Sweetheart, why don’t you take a seat?”

I pull up the drop-leaf and sit across from Mom, getting a closer look at her. Splotchy eyes, crumpled tissue, dirty Safeway apron still around her neck from her shift. An empty bottle of wine tipped over on the countertop behind her, the dregs pooling out like a crime scene.

“Well,” she says, clearing her throat to stave off a voice-crack. “He broke up with me.”

I look at her, rings under her eyes that read more forty-five than thirty-four. They’re the kind of dark circles that are made worse by stress and lack of sleep but that originate from good old-fashioned genes, which is probably why hints of them are already starting to creep onto my face. At least she’s got good lips.

“Tony broke up with me,” she repeats, scratching the back of her hand where her spray tan has already started to wear off. The lemon verbena is a double-edged sword.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“It’s alright. It’s not your fault, sweetie,” she says. “God, I just— I really thought he was the one.”

I didn’t. Mom hasn’t aged out of her habit of falling in love with unavailable men. She creates and nurses a fantasy in her mind of what the guy could be, what the two of them could be together, instead of living in the reality of what he is, what they are. Then when she’s broken up with, she’s blindsided and sent into such a spiral that she can’t get out of bed for weeks.

A part of me likes the company. Sometimes we’ll plow through a couple seasons of a reality show, The Bachelor or Amazing Race or Survivor. Lots of Top Chef. Once I even got her out of bed long enough to face off in a grilled-cheese quickfire challenge. I let her win even though the sun-dried tomatoes she used had expired.

But those are the good versions. There are also the bad versions. The ones where she stares at a wall four hours a day, won’t touch the Campbell’s chicken noodle soup I heat up for her. Mats her hair up so bad I have to cut the knots out with dull scissors. Loses ten pounds. And her job. No matter how much I want her company, I don’t want it like that.

And then the only thing that gets her up and running again, that gets her to be an active participant in her life, that gets her to apply for a new, somehow even lower-paying job than the last one, is a shiny new man. This is her boom-and-bust cycle. And it always starts with her thinking she’s found “the one.”

“That’s too bad, Ma,” I say.

“Oh it’s way worse than ‘too bad,’ honey. It’s awful. Fucking awful. Just callin’ a spade a spade,” she says, then she leans forward on her elbows and presses the inner corners of her eyebrows with her thumbs, trying to alleviate her oncoming migraine.

“Ugh, why, Waldo? Why am I like this?”

I don’t know how to answer her. I don’t know why she is the way she is. Is it hereditary, like the bags under her eyes? Or is it something that can be traced back to her own childhood, to her parents’ shortcomings and her kid-brain internalization of them? Something she could adjust with a series of therapy sessions that she can’t afford?

“Shit, I’m sorry,” she says, hands in the air, exasperated with herself. “I don’t mean to put this on you. It’s unfair of me, as your mother. Unfair to you. Ulch, don’t wind up like me, Waldo.”

She blows her raw, red nose into her overly soiled tissue, making it work harder than it needs to, punishing it, refusing to grab a fresh one. “Whatever you do, don’t wind up like me.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. I know exactly what she means. I also know she likes to explain it to me.

“Don’t let men run your life. Ruin your life, I should say.” (Blows nose.) “Don’t let ’em distract you.” (Blows nose.) “You’ve got a good brain and a good heart and men will take both and mess ’em up real bad and you’ll wind up working at Safeway double-bagging groceries and asking people to click a goddamn green button a hundred times a day. Don’t fall for their traps, no matter how blue their eyes are. They could be fucking cerulean, it don’t matter.” (Blows nose.) “Ugh, you shouldn’t have to see your mother like this. I should be stronger than this. Better than this. I wish I was better than this.”

“You’re doin’ great, Mom.”

“You don’t gotta say that, sweetheart.”

“I know.”

“I guess I am trying my best,” she says instantly, her offhanded delivery betrayed by her reassurance-seeking eyes.

“Of course you are,” I say, as much to convince myself as to convince her. She has been raising me alone all this time. Sure, “raising” is a loose term, but doesn’t the fact that she stayed count for something? She’s the one who stayed. That’s not nothing.

“I’m gonna be around a lot more, sweetheart. Alright? A lot more,” she says, and then her face lights up as if she’s got a new idea. Only it’s not a new idea. It’s the same idea she has every time a man moves on from her. “You know what we should do, Waldo? You know what we’ve gotta do?”

She always swears we have to take a road trip to Seward because we took one once when I was four and apparently we fished and laughed and went barefoot in a glacial stream. Apparently we ate pimento cheese sandwiches and went on a walk in a rich neighborhood and pointed to all the two-story houses we swore we’d live in someday. Apparently it’s Mom’s favorite memory of us together. I don’t remember it.

“Road trip to Seward?” I guess.

“How’d you know?” she asks, seeming so genuinely surprised that I wonder if she is. If breakups are blackouts for her, and as soon as she’s through them she has no recollection of the ideas she pitched, the promises she made.

“You know, if there’s one blessing in all of this it’s that it’s helping me set my priorities straight,” she says. “You’re my priority. Always have been, even if there are times it doesn’t seem like it. Times I fail as a mother. I’m not gonna fail again. I’m gonna be better.”

And then she looks at me—her green eyes coated in a knowing glaze, an awareness of all her shortcomings combined with a real desire to change—and I can’t help but believe her.

“I know, Mom,” I say. “I know you are.”

12

I’m speed-walking through the hallways, a rage boiling in me that scares me, that’s bigger than me, that controls me, that takes me over and leads me to do things I later regret. I know anger. I can handle anger, when it’s at a seven or an eight or a nine and I can buy my way down to a four or click my way to a five. But rage. Rage is a ten. Rage is a burning, seething ten that annihilates me.

“Where’s Mr. Korgy?” I ask every teacher I pass. “Where is he?”

Mr. Adams says he thinks he’s in the library where he usually eats lunch, so I charge toward it and shove open the heavy double doors, my face on fire, my heart pounding in my ears.

There he is. At a back table, his lunch spread out in front of him. Just a casual sandwich with a casual bag of chips, his legs crossed casually, no idea what’s about to hit him.

“Hey,” I call out.

He doesn’t hear me.

“Hey,” I say again, louder.

Nothing.

“HEY.”

If Frannie hadn’t said that fucking word, I wouldn’t have to do this. I’d have gone on thinking what Mr. Korgy said was a compliment, ignorant to the backhanded nature of it.

We were sitting at lunch and she asked which classes I was enjoying. I should’ve deflected, but a feeling had swelled in my chest, a little ball of excitement, of pride, that I couldn’t override, and it just spilled out of me.

“Creative writing,” I told her. “Actually, my teacher said my stuff is pretty good.”

Her face twisted with something—I mistook it for curiosity but now know it was suspicion—and she asked if it was personal writing, and I said yes.

“Oh yeah,” she said, her eyes melting with clarity. “I bet that’s really harrow-een.”

There it was. That word, like an expletive. Harrowing.

“It’s not harrowing,” I shot back, hitting the g especially hard.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” she said, even though I knew she did. “Just a reality. It’s emotional, you know? Your life story. Harrow-een. I’m sure that makes it a really impactful read. Like you said, your teacher really liked it.”

Frannie took a long, bubbling sip of her chocolate milk and gave me that look that I get from my co-workers when they overhear me dealing with a difficult customer. That bug-eyed “somebody needs to relax” look, only it hits differently when you’re the one who needs to relax.

“I’ve gotta go,” I said, leaving my lunch tray on the table, my half-frozen slab of pizza untouched.

“It wasn’t a fucking compliment,” I say as I approach Mr. Korgy.

“Waldo, what’s goin’ on?” he asks. He wipes a tiny glob of mayonnaise off his lip and sets his sandwich down in its Tupperware container next to the stack of papers he’s grading.

“What you said to me the other day, that I’m talented? That I have a voice? You said that cuz you pity me. Cuz you think my life was hard. Or is hard or whatever.”

Mr. Korgy reaches out slowly, as if he’s got an endless amount of time, and grabs the Tupperware container. He snaps one corner of the lid so it seals tightly, then rotates the container and snaps the next corner, then the next, then the next. There’s something about the gesture that irks me. The ease to it, the absolute measured nature, the complete confidence, the unaffectedness.

“You think I pity you?” he asks.

“Yes. I do.”

“Huh,” he says. There’s something to the way he says it. A certain smugness. I shift from one foot to the other.

“What?” I ask.

“No, nothing. Just … you’re very perceptive in your writing. I would’ve expected you to be able to read me a little better.”

I can’t tell if I’m offended or infuriated or just stunned. So now I’m pitiable and a fucking idiot?

He picks up his coffee thermos and takes a long pull from it while staring directly at me the entire time. It’s disarming. Unnerving. He sets the thermos back down on the table and crosses his arms one over the other.

“You said I’m a good writer,” I say, “but I think what you really meant is that my life’s been harrowing.”

“Huh,” he says again, slowly scratching his arm. “Well, being harrowing doesn’t automatically make writing good. Or impactful. It can bog something down. Make it heavy-handed. And actually, some of what you write is quite funny. Good writing has nothing to do with how tragic or not the facts of the story are. Good writing is in how you tell the story. In getting people to feel what you want them to feel when you want them to feel it. And I think that’s the kind of writer you are.”

I soften and as I settle into myself, I realize that he’s the one who made it happen. He took my unmovable rage and made it pliable, dissolved it into something tender. He took this thing that controls me and he controlled it. He is the secret. The key. The answer.

“Waldo,” he says, “rest assured, I do not pity you. Far from it. I respect you.”

Mr. Korgy glances at the wall clock and says that he has to get going. He stuffs his sandwich container and his papers into his messenger bag and slings it over his shoulder, but the strap snaps and the bag lands on the floor, the contents of it spilling out. Mints and papers, pens and notebooks. He blushes and says the bag is fifteen years old, that he’s had the strap replaced twice but this still happens all the time, that his wife, Gwen, begs him to get a new one, a nicer one, a trendier one, but that he doesn’t want to.

“Because you can’t get rid of it?” I ask him.

He grins. “Because I want to keep it.”

13

Not one but three sticky notes on the island this time, a trilogy of personal touches.

Happy Halloween, doll!! There’s a Twix bar in the fridge for you. Know you like ’em cold. (next sticky note) Patched things up with Tony after all, thank God. Was scared there for a minute, really thought things were over. (next sticky note) A man could be good in both our lives, you know? I want you to meet him soon. Maybe we could do a dinner. Xxoo, Mom

I grab the Twix out of the fridge and eat it on my way to my room. I go to tuck the sticky notes into my jewelry box, but I throw them away instead.

14

When Mr. Korgy comes into Victoria’s Secret, it takes me a second to recognize him out of context. He’s not wearing his usual teacherly clothes—lived-in and lumpy, the colors faded from one too many times in the wash. And he’s not wearing his statement purple cardigan either. Instead he’s in a black tracksuit with a crisp coat over top, and a gray baseball cap hoods most of his face. But then he looks up and there they are. His eyes. His sad blue eyes.

“Hey Waldo, I spotted you through the window and figured I should come say hi.”

“Hi,” I say.

Hi. That’s it. Wow. What a word. What a choice. The brilliance is staggering. The genius, heartbreaking.

“I was trying to find a present for my kid’s birthday but didn’t realize the toy store had closed down,” he says.

“Oh yeah, a while ago,” I say, and then a feeling of not-enoughness swamps me and an urgent, desperate thing pushes its way up my throat, clawing for connection, forcing a joke. “Fuck kids, right?” I say. “Who needs an imagination?”

And now, the horror. The regret. The shame. At the put-on brazen attitude. The try-hard snark. The pick-me girl look-how-edgy-I-am cuz I can make low-hanging-fruit jokes. This isn’t me. This is pathetic.

Mr. Korgy narrows his eyes and lets out a faint Mm of acknowledgment. But that’s it. A simple gesture of course correction. I appreciate him for this. For not indulging my reach with an unwarranted laugh. For not letting me get away with it unscathed. He knows it’s beneath me, and he refuses to engage. It’s an honor, being regarded highly enough to be disappointing.

“Well look, I’m glad I caught you,” he finally says. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something …”

A cool, wet spot grows in my underwear. I catch a hint of a sweat bead under the brim of his baseball hat. Is he nervous? Or just hot under the bright store lights?

“I told my wife about you,” he says. “About how I have a student this year who’s really good. Very promising. She said maybe we should have you over for dinner.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Not a pity dinner, of course,” he jokes. And beautifully so. Successfully accomplishing what I, only seconds before, failed at. This is how a joke is done. Well-timed. Well-placed. Something just between us. Making light of a thing that had once been heavy.

“A dinner out of respect,” he adds. And then, a wink. A wink that undoes me. A wink that completes me. A wink.

15

It began last night with a Target trip to pick up all-new toiletries. My bathroom cabinets are already overflowing with them but the importance of this dinner begs for new ones, shiny ones, better ones, like if the bottles are full, if the labels are intact, if the packaging is brand-new, then I will be too.

I got fresh razors, overpriced shaving cream, hair/skin/nail gummies that supposedly take a month to kick in but that I figured I could expedite by taking four times the daily dose, a coconut-scented leave-in conditioner, cherry-red nail polish, a watermelon overnight lip mask which I’m pretty sure is the same thing as a lip salve but with an excuse to charge twice the price, whipped body butter, vanilla jasmine body spritz, a four-way nail buffer block, a brown-sugar exfoliating body scrub, and a two-dollar face mask with packaging that enthusiastically shouts its promise of making my skin more glowy, vibrant, and dewy—the kind of promise I believe. The total was a whopping $114 that my VS salary can’t afford but that I justified as a reasonable price point for investing in myself. Some people choose to further their education, I choose perfume.

And now I am doing it. Making myself beautiful, or at least bringing my attractiveness up a point or two. It might seem like a lot of labor for only a mild improvement, but it’s not about the improvement, it’s about the effort. And what the effort communicates to me. That I’m worthy of this attention, this head-to-toe scrupulousness. Or at least he is.

I shampoo my scalp aggressively enough to wash away my sins, then smear a handful of goopy conditioner onto my hair, comb through it, and clip my hair in place with a claw to let the conditioner seep in.

I scoop a dollop of the sugar scrub onto my legs and scrape it into every pore. There can never be too much scraping, too much sloughing off, of a woman’s body. What is a woman, really, if not silky? If not smooth? If not supple, perky, and poreless?

I rinse out the conditioner and squirt the shaving cream onto my right leg and then my left. I drag the razor with surgical precision, as if it’s my duty, my life’s work. This shaved leg, my magnum opus.

After the shower, I smear on the lip “sleeping mask” and rub in mounds of body butter. I throw back my quad dose of gummy vitamins and smack a mask on my face before filing, buffing, shining, and painting all twenty nails.

I dab concealer on my inflamed spots, spread one pump of lightweight foundation across my face, pat a thin layer of cream blush onto my cheeks and lips, and comb two coats of jet-black mascara through my eyelashes. I blow-dry my hair and use a round brush on the tips so they don’t poke out, then I sear it with a curling iron because as much as straight-haired people say they love natural curly hair, they don’t. They love genetically modified, shiny, bouncy, artificial curly hair.

I throw on a fresh pair of black tights, boots, a Lulu-knockoff pleated tennis skirt, a halter top that makes my tits look good, and a zip-up acrylic sweater from Mango that I pluck the pills off of with my fingers.

I am as close to godly as I can be. I am pure. I am lovable. I am exhausted.

16

Mr. Korgy’s wife is not beautiful but she’s waiflike and linen-clad which is close enough.

“We’re just so happy to have you, Waldo,” she says, gracefully wiggling her wrist so her bracelet falls farther down it. “I know eight’s a little late for dinner, but we just wanted to make sure Greggy was in bed so we could actually be present with you.”

“Thanks for having me.”

She sets two big wooden bowls on the table—one filled with rice, the other with meatballs—and a gust of her aura hits me in the face. The feminine simplicity. The tranquil domesticity. The calm. It’s foreign to me, this level of okayness. Even in someone like Frannie, who tries to pretend they’ve got it all together, I sense the thread they’re hanging on by, the anxiety ticking under the hood. But not with Gwen.

Gwen’s ease is real. It’s in her gestures—the fluid way she sets down a bowl or fiddles with the stem of her wine glass. It’s in her voice—the soothing, buttery tone of someone who meditates twice a day and knows how to set a boundary without triggering the person on the receiving end of it. It even carries through to her skin—makeupless, gleaming like a rich lady on vacation who just finished an expensive facial and perused the gift shop on the way back, dropping a mortgage payment on a vitamin C serum and a ceramide-packed eye cream that she’ll only dab under her eyes with her ring fingers to ensure optimum delicateness.

I envy her ease. It makes me feel stupid for trying so hard. For putting in so much effort. I zip my sweater up higher and pretend to scratch my cheeks so I can rub out my blush.

“Let’s dig in,” she says as she sets down a plate of steaming dinner rolls and a salad bowl.

I hang back to watch her first, to gauge how big of a portion is appropriate, how many meatballs or scoops of rice a graceful person goes for. It turns out to be five and two, respectively, so I follow suit while we make small talk about the weather and the drive over and how hectic it is to have a young child.

Korgy is surprisingly quiet. Subdued even. Only chiming in with occasional tag-ons to whatever Gwen says. At first I wonder if he’s having an off day, in a bad mood or whatever, but after the ninth or tenth tag-on I realize that this is just who he is around her. This is their dynamic. She’s in charge and he’s second-in-command.

“The meatballs are amazing,” I say at the first lull. Gwen thanks me, touching her heart in earnest.

“It’s Teddy’s favorite of my specialties, right honey?”

“That’s right.” He chuckles, but I detect a fleck of embarrassment. Does it unsettle him that I’m seeing him this new way? Not as a passionate, authoritative man, alternately theatrical and composed, but as a submissive, emasculated one, shriveled and passive. His light dimmed.

“It was our third date,” Gwen says, puckering her lips as she launches into a story she’s clearly excited to tell. “Teddy tried cooking for me, sweet thing that he is. He was trying to make—oh what was it you were trying to make, Teddy?”

“Chicken piccata.”

“Chicken piccata, that’s what it was,” she says, snapping her fingers as if she didn’t know, but I have a feeling that she did, that this is one of their most heavily rotated stories, the kind that every couple collects after they’ve been together for a while. The kind that can carry them through social gatherings without either of them having to do the grunt work of reflection, or forming a new opinion, or really seeing each other. Instead they just pop a coin in the jukebox and let it rip, one of “their stories”—the lines rehearsed, the beats memorized, even the shared glances a part of the act.

“That thing was burnt to a crisp,” she laughs. “Gave ‘blackened’ a whole new meaning, right babe?”

“Sure did,” he says, knowing his line, only there’s a little heat on it. Maybe he doesn’t like this story anymore. Maybe he’s tired of it. Or he’s outgrown it. Or he wants to tell a new one.

Gwen doesn’t pick up on his heat, or she does but she chooses not to acknowledge it, and I’m not sure which is worse.

“So I go, ‘Teddy, I like you a lot, but I don’t like you enough to eat this,’ ” she says. “We laughed and laughed. Then I told him he should let me make something for him instead. And I made him these meatballs. He ate every bite. Nearly licked his plate. I said, ‘How long has it been since you had a decent meal?!’ ”

Gwen laughs. Korgy laughs. I laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha, so funny.

“But enough about us, we’re boring,” Gwen says. “I wanna hear about you, Waldo. I’m curious about you. Where you’re from, what you’re passionate about …”

“Uhh, born here in Anchorage to some high school sweethearts. Or, my mom thought they were high school sweethearts. My dad thought of her more as a fuck buddy.”

“Oh,” Gwen says, her eyes widening like she’s never heard the word fuck before.

“Then I was born and my mom guilted my dad into sticking around for a bit until, after a couple years, the guilt stopped working and he left. Since then, it’s just been me and Mom.”

“Okay, okay,” Gwen says in that overly polite masking tone meant to ward off discomfort and keep ushering the conversation forward the way it’s supposed to go, on the safe path of small talk and social niceties—What shows have you been watching? And Any fun weekend plans? She takes a bite of a meatball.

“So what does your mother do?”

“Bags groceries at Safeway. She aged outta stripping.”

Gwen takes a long sip of wine and for the first time I sense a nervousness bleeding through. There is no safe path with me, no path that allows us to gloss over the uncomfortable realities of my life, or better yet, avoid them entirely. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. A strand of bone straight, limp hair, the kind that somehow reads chic in its lifelessness. I know it should be on me to dig us out of this hole, but I don’t want to. A sick part of me is enjoying watching her squirm. Not know what to do with this moment. The woman of ease, uneasy.

“Well I love Safeway,” she finally says. “The bakery case is quite tasty, right honey?”

“Yep.”

She throws an almost undetectable glance of “help me out here” agitation at Mr. Korgy, but he doesn’t pick up on it, or he does but he chooses not to acknowledge it. And I’m not sure which is better.

I ask where they met, and they answer in unison.

“College.”

“I was a senior, he was a sophomore. I really robbed the cradle with this one!” Gwen says, clearly hitting another punch line she’s hit before. Now I’m squirming. Mr. Korgy gives me a discreet look that feels reassuring, like he’s trying to tell me that he’s uncomfortable too. That he sees this moment the same way that I do, that he shares in my judgment. And what is connection, really, if not shared judgment?

“Wow, since college,” I say. “So you guys have been together for—”

“Twenty years, believe it or not,” Gwen nods, covering her mouth as she chews.

I say “wow” again, embellishing it in a way that I know I’m supposed to, and then ask the follow-up question I know I’m supposed to ask.

“What’s your secret?”

“Communication,” Gwen says, as if she believes it’s something noteworthy and poignant even though it’s the most stock answer I’ve ever fucking heard. Communication? That’s it? How about a modicum of perspective, Gwen? How about a teaspoon of point of view?

“Anything else?” I ask directly to Mr. Korgy, egging. But he doesn’t answer.

Gwen wipes her mouth with a napkin as she thinks.

“Well, yeah actually,” she says. “The whole ‘opposites attract’ thing helps us out a lot. We complement each other, you know? I’m the practical one, he’s the dreamer.”

She gives the faintest eye-roll on the word “dreamer,” an eye-roll meant to come off as good-natured teasing but that I can sense the wisp of resentment underneath. Mr. Korgy nods, trying to force an unbothered acknowledgment, but he shifts in his chair.

“Why do you ask, Waldo? Do you have your eye on a boy at school?” Gwen asks.

“Not really.”

“Nobody?” Gwen asks. “Come onnn, pretty girl like you? There must be somebody you wanna get to know a little better.”

“Well, I guess there is somebody …”

I look down at my fingernails, then up again, involuntarily right at Mr. Korgy. He quickly averts his eyes, but not quickly enough for the shared millisecond of a look not to have happened.

“Mommy? I woke up …”

Gregory’s tucked behind the staircase banister in his striped pajamas, clutching a worn-out stuffed dinosaur plushie with a missing eye.

“Aww, sweetheart, I’ll come tuck you back in,” Gwen says. She sets her napkin on the table and gives me an apology face. “I’ll be quick, you wait to answer till I’m back. I don’t wanna miss anything good.”

She gets up and crosses to Gregory as he extends his arms up to her. She heaves him onto her bony hip and whispers in his ear until he starts to giggle, then heads with him up the stairs.

“We’re happy we could have you over,” Mr. Korgy says.

Step. Step. Step.

“I’m happy you invited me.”

Step. Step. Step.

As the steps grow quieter, we just look at each other. Neither of us saying a word. Just staring. Until the footsteps disappear completely. And we keep staring. What should be an uncomfortable moment is strangely intimate. A silent agreement made with our locked eyes. We don’t need to engage in small talk, you and I. We have a real connection.

The tension is strangling. I want to be bold, to crouch under the table and crawl toward him on my knees and rub my hands up his legs until his cock starts to stir. I want to unzip his pants to free it, and watch it spring up toward me like it needs me, like he needs me. I want to trace it up and down with my tongue, teasing it, and kiss it until he starts to shake with pleasure. I want to look deep into his eyes while I suck him off, sucking the sadness from him and turning it into something better.

But instead I take a bite of meatball.

“Gwen’s great,” I say.

“She is, isn’t she?” he agrees.

“She is,” I say. “She really is.”

And then her footsteps start again as she comes down the stairs, and finally we break eye contact. Mr. Korgy clears his throat.

“Now where were we?” Gwen asks, taking her seat. “Oh yeah, you were telling us about a cute boy at school, right Waldo?”

“Right.”

“Well you gotta go for it, girl!” Gwen says, playfully swatting me on the shoulder.

“I-I can’t exactly …”

“Oh, he’s got a girlfriend?”

I hesitate. “Sort of …”

Mr. Korgy pays special attention to his salad.

“Good thing is, in high school, girlfriends come and go,” Gwen says, her eyes glistening. “You’re next in line, I bet.”

17

Mr. Korgy—

Just wanted to send a quick email and thank you for dinner the other night. Please tell Gwen the food was delicious. I liked learning more about the two of you and your relationship. It inspired me. I hope to someday find someone I can look at the way Gwen looks at you. Maybe I’ll try with the boy at school. ;)

Thanks again,

Waldo

907-555-8697

18

The first time Mr. Korgy calls me, Frannie’s dad is in the middle of Thanksgiving prayer. He’s already blessed the day and the family and everyone’s good health and is now on to the meal, taking his sweet time to call out each dish on the table individually, as if his blessing is an acceptance speech and each dish contributed to him winning the award.

“Thank you for this cranberry sauce,” he says, then takes a moment to clear his throat. “These mashed potatoes, my personal favorite: the stuffing …”

My phone buzzes with a text. Then another. By the time Mr. Hickle gets to the yam casserole, I sneak a glance. The first text: It’s Mr. Korgy. The second: Are you free?

I excuse myself and rush through the Martha Stewart living room, past the immaculately decorated fireplace with its holiday knickknacks and fresh balsam garland. I duck into the bathroom at the end of the hall and text him back: Yes. He calls immediately.

“Just wanted to check in,” Mr. Korgy says. “You got someplace nice to spend the holiday?”

I tell him my mom’s with her boyfriend so I’m with my friend’s family, and that it’s nice to have a home-cooked meal and be in a house where the toilets work, but that I don’t really feel much of a connection with anyone here so I’m left with that funny feeling that happens when you spend a supposedly intimate occasion with people you don’t feel any genuine intimacy with. That strange, gnawing feeling, equal parts hollow and lonely and wistful, with a tinge of irritability underneath. Craving something more. But accepting that this is it.

He asks when I feel the most connected in my life and I think “right now” but I say “when I’m writing” because I assume that’s what he wants to hear. He seems pleased. I feel proud.

I ask him when he feels the most connected in his life and he says when he’s writing, too, although he hasn’t in so long. The last time he tried was a couple years back when he was cleaning the attic and stumbled on his half-finished dystopian-future novel, tucked in the back of a drawer, dusty and dog-eared and paper-clipped with notes he never got around to. He tried to make some changes the next few days, but life got the better of him.

“Errands and logistics took precedence,” he says. “Pipe dreams fall by the wayside once you’ve got responsibilities.”

He chuckles, trying to downplay it, but I can tell that the novel still means something to him, that he calls it a pipe dream as a way to try to distance himself from it. Feel power over it. Feel above it. When really the disappointment of it still stings. I don’t know why people prefer to grow bitter than to acknowledge disappointment. Maybe someday I will.

“Well I’d love to read it,” I say, then I tell him that he should start it up again, set aside an hour a day to finish it. He says he appreciates the encouragement, but that he won’t make any promises because he doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.

We talk about our favorite Thanksgivings. I tell him about the time Mom kept complaining the chicken was taking forever to cook and then realized the oven was broken. She called the landlord over and over again but he wasn’t answering, then he finally did and said with the holiday he couldn’t come out for a couple days. And suddenly Mom was quiet. Calm even. Serene. She knew there was no chance we were having that roast chicken so there was no use trying. In that moment, she made giving up look like a good thing. We made a sheet fort and ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches until our stomachs ached. It was a great night.

Mr. Korgy tells me about the time his family went camping, and how they made s’mores and went swimming in the lake and how he went to take a leak and got lost in the woods for an hour. He says he didn’t feel panicked at all. Ten years old and felt comfortable with being lost.

“I wish I felt that comfortable with being lost now,” he says with a subtle slur to his words. I ask him what he means by that and he says it must just be the whiskey talking, that he’s had one too many, and he apologizes.

I ask him what he’s doing on Thanksgiving alone and he tells me he doesn’t usually do holidays with Gwen. That there’s tension with her family. That her mom doesn’t like him. A protective anger swells in my chest. I want to call her a stupid cunt.

“Gwen was with a real catch before me,” he says. “A finance guy. Kinda guy who dresses sharp and has a sharp haircut. Just sharp all around. Angular. And Gwen’s mom loved him. Sobbed after their breakup. Still calls him on holidays. Gwen begs her mom not to call him. She’s so embarrassed. But she can’t stop her. Meanwhile, the lady snarls at me whenever I have to see her for five minutes. Told me once, to my face, ‘My daughter deserves better.’ ”

“She sounds unstable.”

“She is. Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

And then it comes. The lull that signifies that we’ve arrived at the end of the conversation and it’s time to wrap up. I hear the Hickles group-laugh at something in the other room as if on cue, reminding me that they’re what’s waiting for me on the other end of this. Them, some mind-numbing board games, and a room-temp yam casserole.

“Well hey,” I blurt out, “if you want company while Gwen’s outta town, we could meet up. Go on a walk or something …”

The offer hangs in the air for a second, the kind of second where a full four-course meal of emotions is devoured within it. Regret, then nervousness, then anticipation, then dread. All chewed and swallowed and partially digested, mixed with saliva and swirling around, just waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

“Shoot, Waldo,” he says, and I already start rotting, “you know what, I should probably be responsible. I’ve got a lot on my plate with Gwen out of the house. Chores and work and whatever else. But it’s been great talking with you.”

The wall is undeniable. A wall that wasn’t there seconds before. A wall that I caused. By pushing too far. By asking for too much.

“Sure,” I say. And we exchange goodbyes and he hangs up and I go dead inside.

I wash my hands to buy time to compose myself, to steady the sting of rejection. The water gets scalding and the soapsuds fill up the sink. I pump another soap glob into my hand. Malin+Goetz. In this house, even soap is a status symbol.

“Sorry about that. My mom,” I say, sitting back down at the dinner table.

“Oh no worries, sweetie, glad she called,” Mrs. Hickle says. “And perfect timing actually. We were just going around the table saying what we’re grateful for. Your turn.”

19

People claw and elbow their ways to the 80% off panty bar. The robe rack is scraped clean and where this morning there was a full-size Christmas-tree-shaped display of 3-for-1 body butter jars, there is now only the sad and dirtied tree skirt that lay underneath.

Black Friday in any retail store is the best case study of consumer behavior, a terrifying peek into how much pain one human is willing to inflict on another human to save five bucks on a lotion with glitter in it. I usually enjoy the people-watching in a sick sort of way, but today I can’t. I’m exhausted. Only got two hours of sleep last night. Couldn’t find a comfortable position. Couldn’t stop the looping thoughts. I spooked him. I crossed over that invisible line we were toeing and I spoiled it. Everything it might have been or might not have been but I still could’ve pretended it could be. Turns out fantasy without a shred of possibility isn’t really fun at all. It’s agony.

“Hi, doll! Happy Black Friday!”

I smell her before I see her. She smokes a pack a day so she sprays on extra drugstore perfume to try to cancel out the smoke smell, even though it doesn’t work like that so now she just reeks of two bad things instead of one. She weaves through the crowd of hysterical women pawing for thongs with their gooey Cinnabon fingers, her arms overflowing with bras and bustiers and lingerie slips that she can’t afford. She kisses me on the cheek and dumps her things into a fitting room, hangers clanging against each other, bra straps getting tangled.

“I was hoping I could use your employee discount.”

She sifts through her pile of lingerie to avert her eyes from me, untangling the bras and laying them straight on their hangers.

“Don’t look at me like that, like I’m using you or something,” she says. “I mainly came by so we could hang out. Even with your discount, I could find cheaper places. You think JCPenney doesn’t have a cheap, decent bra? You’re dead wrong.”

“I’m sure JCPenney has lots of good bras.”

“They do. They really do …”

She pulls the curtain shut behind her and flings it open again once she’s wearing the first look—a white chiffon slip with black polka dots.

“You hate it, I can see by your nose-scrunch,” she says. “Well don’t try and stop scrunching now that I called it out. I saw. I can’t unsee.”

She swooshes the curtain shut and changes into the next one. A baby-doll style with a gaudy floral print.

“I thought you didn’t like floral prints.”

“Well I don’t, but Tony does,” she says. “People always say that bullcrap about how it shouldn’t matter what the guy thinks is sexy, that you should dress for yourself or whatever, but the truth is, I feel sexy when I’m his ideal version of me. I feel like my best self when I’m what he wants. Maybe that’s not healthy, but waddaya want, health or honesty?”

She strikes a pose—ass shoved out, back arched, seductive mouth, bedroom eyes—really trying to give this floral print a fighting chance.

“It’s bad,” she answers for me, then yanks it off and shuts the curtain to try on the next one. A barely-there maroon bikini set. The bottom, a stringy thong. The top, a push-up that hikes her breasts up and shoves them together.

“Better, right?” she asks. I nod. She peels it off and chucks it into her shopping basket.

“When in doubt, let the tits hang out, right hon?”

My phone buzzes. It’s him. Finished up some work a bit earlier than expected … if you still want to go on that walk?

20

A quick lie to my boss, a speeding drive home, a cloud of perfume, a flurry of clothes, and countless creams, lotions, liquids, and powders later, and now, finally, I’m here, walking toward him, the curdled dread from two hours ago vanished and replaced with a glowy euphoria.

“Hey Waldo, how’s it going?” he asks, his breath white in the cold air.

“I’m good, how are you?”

“Pretty good, pretty good. Happy to see you.”

“Happy to see you too.”

He throws the tail of his flannel scarf over his shoulder and smiles at me. I debate going in for a hug but the moment passes, and with it my window of opportunity closes. A disproportionate wave of regret washes over me. Had he wanted me to initiate the hug? Maybe he expected me to. Maybe it would’ve been inappropriate for him to initiate. It was up to me and I failed. Should I do it now? Don’t do it now, it’s been too long.

“Shall we?” he asks, motioning toward the tip of the coastal trail.

We start our walk. He asks me about my future and I ask him about his past, and something in that feels heavy—the assumption that my life is ahead of me and his is behind him. That twenty years is the difference between a life that’s considered yet to be lived and one that’s considered over.

I tell him that I haven’t really thought much about my future, and his eyes fade with disappointment the way Frannie’s did when we were making vision boards last New Year’s Eve (her idea, not mine). Hers was filled with cutouts from LDS magazines—happy families, cute dogs, the Brigham Young University campus, Book of Mormon passages, pretty white temples, crisp tradwife dresses, and arbitrary quotes meant to evoke positivity but that for me evoke a vague sense of doom: “You’ve got this!” and “Keep going!” and “You can do anything, but you don’t have to do everything!” By the time she’d finished her collage, I’d barely glue-sticked the backs of a Lunchables magazine ad and some pictures of Jeff Probst.

“Waldo, you’re not take-een this seriously,” she said. “You oughta care about your future more. You oughta give it some thought.”

I later asked Mom for her point of view, if she thought I should start prepping my college applications and brainstorming career options, or even just not blowing every paycheck on BB cream and pleather jackets that need to off-gas for three days before I can be in their vicinity without gagging.

“Oh, please, Waldo,” she said with a wave of her hand. “College is a trap.”

“You think?”

“For you? Yes. It’s a trap. You’re too you for college. College is for people who fit molds. Systems. Boring people who can wear uniforms and rehash the same three sentences as water-cooler conversation and be okay with that for the rest of their lives. Bring a cream cheese ball to the Christmas party, get two drinks deep, grab their co-worker, do a karaoke duet of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” and call that wild. You’re a different kind of wild. An actual wild. You’ve got a lot in you. You’re bursting at the seams. You’re unique. You’re creative. An artist, if you ask me. And an artist sure as hell doesn’t fit into systems or neat little cookie-cutter molds. Nah. College wouldn’t serve you.”

Then she told me that it’s important I live in the present. That I stay young as long as I possibly can.

“And don’t stop buying those fake leather jackets either,” she added. “They look real cute on you, with the boxy fit, you’d never know they were poly-whatever.”

I know both Mom and Frannie meant well, but being told I don’t take things seriously enough by the person who takes everything seriously, or being told to stay young by the person who never grew up, doesn’t quite carry the weight that they want it to. You can never really believe someone if all they’re telling you is to be the same as they are.

“Well, if you ever wanna talk more about your future with somebody, brainstorm about it, I’m here.” Mr. Korgy smiles.

“Thanks.”

I learn that Mr. Korgy is from Florida, just outside of Orlando. He could see the Disney World fireworks from his backyard. His family even had passes. I ask if he gets back often—he doesn’t—if he’s still close with his parents—he isn’t—and if he has any siblings—he pauses.

“No actually, I, uh, had a little sister.”

I settle into the significance of the “had” as we pass an older woman with gray hair and head-to-toe workout gear, sweatband and all. She’s smiling right into the sun, like she’s walking straight out of a poster on a doctor’s office wall. An ad for a pill that’s supposed to make menopausal women feel like themselves again, the name alone doing some heavy lifting with its clinical-yet-breezy nonchalance. Wyestra or Winlevia or Estrozen.

“Have a good day!” she says over her shoulder. Someday, I will try that pill.

I ask Mr. Korgy when his sister died and he tells me he was sixteen and she was fifteen, that she had lots of friends and straight A’s and a bright future.

“Freak accidents never happen to burnouts,” he says. “Always to the promising ones. The photogenic ones.”

He’s the one who found her. He knocked on her bedroom door one night for dinner and she was taking a while to come out.

“I was surprised it was taking her so long cuz Mom had made her favorite—rice bowls with snap peas and water chestnuts. Little bits of pineapple.”

He heard the shower running so he knocked louder, and louder, and louder, then eventually went into her bedroom and started knocking on her bathroom door, and yelled her name, but there was no response. So he opened the door and saw her there, splayed out on the ceramic tiles.

“Mom never made rice bowls again,” he says, “and I still hate water chestnuts.”

He looks up at a tree and pretends to scratch his eye, and says that he shouldn’t have said all that. That it’s not an appropriate thing to tell a student. I tell him it’s fine and that I’m glad he did, I’m glad that he trusted me.

“I do,” he says. “I do trust you.”

He stops to take me in, and I take him in. A pair of overly aggressive cross-country skiers jet past us, trying to prove how tough the workout is with their exaggerated huffs and puffs. And just like that, the moment is lost.

We keep walking and I ask Mr. Korgy why he moved to Alaska. He tells me Gwen’s parents are an hour away, out in Palmer, and she wanted to be close to them.

“Were you nervous about moving to a place so different from home?”

“Honestly, excited. We’d visited Alaska a few times and when we did, we explored the whole state. Hiked up in Juneau, took a charter plane out to Ketchikan. I loved the mountain ranges and the northern lights and the whale watching and the glaciers and all the natural wonders. But then once you move here, it’s no longer a vacation. It’s your life. And you stop exploring. And you realize, you don’t live in Alaska, you live in Anchorage. Alaska is a monumental paradise, Anchorage is a sleepy town with no culture and barely a pulse, where the local music is bad and the local art is worse. The city lights drown out the northern lights, and you have to drive three hours to see a glacier.”

We walk past a row of houses lining the trail, all with sprawling lawns and big pine trees. A couple of them already have Christmas lights up. Mr. Korgy asks which is my favorite and even though I don’t particularly like Christmas decorations I point to one and he says he prefers the one next to it.

“More classic,” he says. “Give me a string of lights, a tastefully decorated tree, and I’m good.”

I try to make a joke about the one I pointed to but I’m secretly flooded with embarrassment. Of course the girl who shops at Shein and eats frozen dinners six nights a week pointed to the house with the Santa’s Workshop blow-ups. I love that he knows better, but I wish I did too. I wish I knew how to be tasteful. To not have the stink of white trashness trailing me wherever I go.

“Something the matter?” he asks.

“I just … wish I knew all the things that you know,” I say.

“Well we’re even then,” he says, “because I wish I knew all the things that you know.”

And then I slip on a patch of ice and he reaches his arm out to grab mine and keep me from falling, and I smell him, and I feel him, and my ears burn, and my heart pounds so fast I feel it in my throat, and before I even know what’s happening I’m leaning toward him, my lips getting closer and closer to his, until finally, they touch.

“Oh my god,” he says, pulling away.

He stands there in front of me, arms at his side, frozen.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I say.

“You kissed me,” he says, stunned.

“I just thought— The way we talk, the things we talk about, I thought—”

“Waldo, you’re seventeen and I’m married and I’m your teacher,” he says sternly.

“I know. I know that. But the way you look at me. The way you look at me is— You look at me like you see me. All of me. I just felt like there was something between us.”

“Oh, Waldo,” he says, a heaviness taking him over. “I do see you. But I’m sorry to tell you, you’re wrong about the nature of this dynamic. You’re very wrong.”

The Christmas lights blur as tears well in my eyes. I swallow them back down. It’s not that he’s telling me I’m wrong, it’s that I know I’m not.

“I know you feel something too,” I say. “We don’t have to do anything about it, just don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth. That’s what you value, right? The truth?”

“I’m really sorry, Waldo, but I am telling you the truth. I know it’s not the thing you’d like to hear, but it’s the truth.”

A ringing in my ears. It grows louder and louder until it screams. I see my parked car up ahead in the distance and start walking toward it, then as the shame festers it catapults me into a sprint. As if I can run it off. Run off the shame of being foolish. And delusional. And unaware. And naive. The shame of my limitations. My perspective. My desires. I get in my car and shove my key into the ignition. The engine sputters.

“Goddamnit,” I say, giving it another shove. It sputters again. And then it fizzles out.

21

The inside of Mr. Korgy’s car isn’t what I expected. I figured there’d be copies of plays at the foot of the passenger seat. Lined notebooks with hurried thoughts scribbled throughout, too important to not write down. Instead there are crayon marks on the seats, Cheerio grinds in between the cushions, colorful plastic toys with greasy handprints on them. This car isn’t a vivid representation of a vibrant artist, but of a tired dad.

He’s letting me sit in here while I wait for Triple A but despite the nice gesture, he’s making it very clear this is only out of necessity. He hasn’t said a word, or even looked at me, his natural warmth replaced with a detached coldness.

Finally, I can’t take it any longer.

“I wish I could take it back,” I say. “What I did.”

“Triple A should be here any minute,” he says, an unfamiliar rigidity in his tone.

Mr. Korgy traces his finger along the steering wheel. I pinch a pimple behind my ear, a place I didn’t even know pimples could grow.

“Are you gonna report this?” I ask.

He gives me a you-wouldn’t-understand, sympathetic smile with no condescension, which somehow makes it worse. He doesn’t patronize me, he just has a lot of life experience that I don’t. Life experience that gives him a perspective I couldn’t possibly fathom. He’s the adult. I’m the child.

“No, I’m not reporting this,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m not telling anyone about this. If anyone found out, I’d be fired.”

“I came on to you—”

“It doesn’t matter. I should’ve seen this coming. I’m more than twice your age and I’m your teacher. I shouldn’t have invited you to dinner. I shouldn’t have gone on the walk. I shouldn’t have engaged at all.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Well I promise you that’s not what anyone else would think.”

“Who cares what other people think? People are mostly stupid anyway, and they don’t think for themselves, they just regurgitate headlines and buzzwords and the point of view of the people they follow on Instagram. I would’ve thought you didn’t care about what people think.”

“Waldo, please,” he says as the Triple A car turns onto the road, its bright headlights blurred in the snowy windshield. “Let’s move on from this.”

22

My car is taken to a shop and I take a cab home. It smells like Slim Jims and cigarettes and that terrible Little Trees Black Ice car freshener scent. The driver is on the phone with his wife the entire time, arguing. He berates her. She cuts him down.

There are some old unbranded hard candies in the cup holder next to me. I unwrap one and pop it in my mouth and chomp down, then take a fistful of them and shove them in my pockets. I’m gonna have to shame-return a lot of my recent Amazon regrets to pay for my car to get fixed. Least I can do is get some free sugar out of it.

The cabbie pulls up to my place and puts the phone on mute.

“Feel better,” he says over his shoulder, then instantly unmutes and goes back to berating his wife.

I head inside and know immediately that Mom has a guy over when I’m hit with the thick, oversaturated scent of a Bath & Body Works three-wick candle. Mahogany coconut.

“Hi, hon!” Mom shouts with the manic enthusiasm that takes her over whenever she’s introducing a new man to me. “Didn’t realize you’d be back so soon!”

“Hi,” I say to Mom, ignoring her smeared lipstick and the man sitting next to her. I don’t have the space for conversation right now. I only have the space for reality TV and a family-size sack of salty potato chips. Anything to not have to feel. Or think. Sometimes I’m not sure which is worse.

“Tony, this is my daughter, Waldo,” she says, laughing nervously. “I’ve told her so much about you!”

“Hey there,” he says. “Good to meet ya.”

Tony the truck driver has leathery skin and dirt under his fingernails and an odor distinct enough for his own candle. Although I don’t know who would fork out sixteen bucks for a scent called Tobacco and Dollar-Store Shampoo.

“I made tacos,” Mom says. “There’s leftovers in the fridge if you wanna heat ’em up and come join us.”

My mouth hardens. It’s stupid. It’s not like throwing ground beef in a pan is a difficult thing to do, but still, she’s never done it for me. I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.

“Go on, sweetheart,” she says. “Forty-five seconds should do it. Don’t want ’em burning your tongue. Then we can all play a board game or somethin’. Think I’ve got Clue in a cabinet somewhere.”

Tony coughs a wad of phlegm into a tissue and sets it on the coffee table for one of us to clean up later.

“Actually, I was just about to head out,” he says.

He brushes his jeans off as he stands, and Mom’s eyes flicker like a deer about to be struck by a car. “But I-I have dessert for us.”

“Well that sounds lovely but I don’t got much of a sweet tooth anyhow, darlin’.”

“It’s just some cupcakes from Safeway. They’re really not that sweet.”

“I’m quite alright, thanks though, little lady. ’Preciate the offer.” He pecks her cheek and puts on his coat.

“Oh, okay then,” Mom says as evenly as she can. But I hear the lump in her throat. She tugs on her necklace as Tony opens the door. “I’ll save you one for next time!”

“Sounds good. And nice meeting you, Wanda!”

The door slams. I heat up some tacos while Mom turns on The Bachelor and we split a cupcake while we watch. One of the contestants is upset that she didn’t get enough time to talk with the guy, who looks like a walking wax figure. Mom checks her phone every thirty seconds for a text that isn’t there, then every forty seconds, then every minute, then every five, the hope slowly draining out of her until, by the time we reach the end of the third episode of the night, her hope has been replaced with the sad droning of acceptance.

“You alright, sweetheart?” she asks as we watch another brokenhearted girl climb into the back of a Cadillac Escalade, roseless and rejected and weeping about how he was “the one.” They’re always so sure “the one” is the one who doesn’t want them.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, eyes glued to the TV with that faraway TV glaze. “You?”

“Yeah, I’m fine too,” she says, her eyes glued just the same.

23

A pair of gorgeous, magazine-worthy girls gossip at the sink mirrors and apply no-makeup makeup because why wouldn’t they? No-makeup makeup works if you don’t need makeup. If you’ve got porcelain skin and eyes set so wide they’re on opposite hemispheres. I study the girls with grotesque intrigue through the crack in the bathroom stall door. Loathing them. Wanting to be them.

I sit on that line that so many sit on, the line between beautiful and not. I can reach it on a good day, during the follicular phase of my cycle, if I didn’t sleep on my face, with just the right amount of plucking and primping and a great hair day and God’s grace during my makeup routine. It’s the line that keeps me even more stuck on the hamster wheel of the pursuit of beauty. Even more dependent on makeup tutorials and tips-and-tricks videos and “that perfect cream bronzer.” Because anything could be the thing that makes the difference between me being beautiful or not.

I whip a compact mirror out of my pocket and pull out my tiny weapons, swiping and gliding and brushing my way to a better self not with the casual flicks and dainty dabs of flippancy, like it’s a fun little hobby, but the way anyone less than gorgeous does—with urgency, with desperation, my self-esteem hinging on whether or not I’m able to nail that cat eye or that feather technique with the mascara or get my foundation smooth and not cakey. A desperation that hides the true feeling underneath it.

Rage. Rage that I was born with dark circles that make me look sick and rosacea that bursts when I’d least like it to and thick, chunky curls that won’t behave. Curls with four different curl patterns because I guess it’s not enough that I have unruly hair, I need four different patterns of unruly hair that don’t go together, two of which aren’t even tight enough to be classified as curly but not loose enough to be classified as waves and are probably most aptly classified as some kind of pasta noodle. Just weird, noncommittal hair that looks like a horrible accident every time I wake up.

Rage that he doesn’t want me. And that maybe he would if I didn’t have dark circles or rosacea or acne or curls. I know that there are more obvious obstacles. He’s my teacher. He’s got a wife and a kid and a fully baked life. Still, I can’t help wondering. Is there a level of beauty one can reach where they become undeniably wanted? And am I one lip stain shade away from that level? Spicy Sienna didn’t work last time, but maybe Berry Queen will.

I head to class and take a seat toward the back. The door swings open.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his hook-nose. “I’m Mr. Condren. I’ll be your substitute teacher while Mr. Korgy is away.”

I chew off my hangnail, spit it onto the floor, and suck the metal-y blood from the tip of my finger. Is he that affected by me that he couldn’t even come in to work to face me? Maybe the Spicy Sienna did work.

24

The elephant takes a giant shit near the corner of his habitat, a big cement block building in the far corner of the zoo. People “ooh” and laugh while recording on their iPhones.

“Are you watch-een this, Waldo?” Frannie asks over her shoulder.

I nod and pluck a Sour Patch Kid from the bottom of the bag while Frannie shares a box of buttered popcorn with Tristan, her longtime boyfriend from church who, not even an hour ago, said “God rocks” unironically. They occasionally pop a piece of popcorn into the other’s mouth.

“Can you see, Waldo?” she asks again. “She’s—”

“Taking a giant shit, yeah, I see,” I say.

Frannie pulls a look at me, offended, and Tristan kisses the top of her head. I can’t tell if the timing is coincidental, just a habitual peck, or if the kiss is meant to soothe her from my “prickliness.” To protect her from me.

I don’t like Tristan. It’s not that he’s not nice to me. He is, but I can’t count it because Mormons are nice to everyone. You can’t tally something as someone’s good quality if they believe that not possessing it would send them straight to hell.

It doesn’t matter. I’m not here for Tristan. Or for Frannie. Or to stroll through the aviary and point to colorful birds. Wow, look at that golden plumage. I’m here for the distraction. To fill my time with anything so that I can attempt to escape the jagged spears of anxiety that gnaw at me every day that I don’t see him.

It’s been seven days. Seven brutal, punishing days of a substitute teacher. Of attempting to eavesdrop on the conversations of other students in his class, hoping someone will know what the fuck is causing Korgy’s long absence.

But nothing. No clues. No clarity. No closure. Nothing. Just an indefinite void that I’m forced to fill by picking up extra shifts and spiraling down YouTube rabbit holes and shoveling Marie Callender’s entrees into my mouth and savagely clicking my way through shopping sprees that lacerate my bank account.

“You good?” Frannie asks.

“Yes.”

Tristan pulls her hair behind her shoulders and kisses the back of her neck. The elephant is somehow still shitting. An unbelievable amount of shit.

I suck the sour sugar from the last remaining gummy bodies until my tongue is scraped raw. I’ve always derived a strange pleasure from the pain of junk food. Icees vacuumed up through a straw in less than a minute so the brain freeze hits hard. Nachos packed with so many pickled jalapenos that my nose runs. Kettle chips heaped into my mouth, my hand a claw excavator, forcing them in as their rugged edges cut my gums.

“I wonder if she gets lonely.” Tristan nods toward the elephant, his perfectly coiffed Latter-Day Saint hair wobbling in the wind.

“Or she could just like her solitude,” I shrug.

“I dunno …” Frannie says, plucking a piece of popcorn from the box. “Solitude can be good but not a lifetime of it. At some point, you’ve gotta find connection somewhere.”

I tilt back the bag of Sour Patch Kids to let the leftover sour sugar pool into my mouth and dissolve. I no longer feel my tongue.

25

Top 40 hits blare through the loudspeakers. Girls in sparkly dresses dance with boys in ill-fitting suits. The girls are desperate for boyfriends. The boys are eager for sex. Randy Julep dances with a girl he looks like he cares about. Good for him. She has a prettier face than me but tinier tits. We can’t have it all.

I stand off to the side, watching, enveloped by a blanket of catatonia. I prefer anxiety to this. At least anxiety is active. Has a sense of urgency to it. Feels alive and real, like it matters. This feels like nothing, like death.

It’s the second week that I haven’t seen him. I stayed after class a few days ago to get info from the hook-nosed sub. All he said was that he heard Mr. Korgy was out for “personal reasons.” I tried to push as subtly as I could, to not sound obsessed, to keep the questions as standard as possible and my tone as even as possible. I asked if he’d heard if Mr. Korgy was okay, or when he was coming back, but Mr. Condren said they don’t tell him much around here.

“I’m just a sub,” he shrugged.

The numbness settled in and hasn’t left since.

“Waldo, would you take our picture?” Frannie asks. “Before we get all sweaty from the dance floor.”

I snap photos of her and Tristan flanked by balloon arches, standing in front of a big banner with Winter Formal scrawled across it in cursive. They look sweet and wholesome and an uncomfortable amount of related. Frannie scrolls through the pictures and asks me to take a couple more “to not cut off the Winter Formal banner” but it’s actually so she can favor the good side she pretends to be above having.

Eventually the air grows thick with sweat and hormones and the moves start to get more suggestive. Everyone’s gyrating except Frannie and Tristan, who leave room for Jesus between them, which makes them look even more related.

“Hey Waldo!” I hear someone say, loud above the music. I turn to face a tall boy with messy hair and floppy limbs who I only vaguely recognize due to his forgettable face—not unattractive but bland, like a paper plate or a packet of cream of wheat with no toppings. Just … there.

“Mr. Korgy’s class, right?” he asks.

“Uh, yeah,” I shout back.

“Nolan,” he says.

“Hi.”

“Kinda spooky, huh?” he asks. “That he’s just gone? Where do ya think he went?”

“I don’t know. Have you heard anything? Do you have any idea?” I ask, too quickly.

“Nope,” he says casually. “Jake said he might’ve killed himself but I was like, there’s no way. That’d be on the news for sure.”

“So what then?” I ask, my throat clenching. “What do you think happened?”

“Who knows, guess we’ll see,” Nolan says. “So why aren’t you dancing? Cuz the music’s bad or cuz your moves are bad?”

“Both.”

“Ah, well damnit. If it was cuz your moves are bad, I was gonna suggest that you dance with me, because your moves couldn’t possibly be worse than mine.”

“Too bad it’s both then,” I shrug. It’s not the kindest rejection, but it’s what I have energy for and at least I’m not wasting his time. His efforts are better served somewhere else.

I head in the opposite direction, heaving open the double doors. A heavyset chaperone asks where I’m headed, over-policing because a high school dance is the one place in his life he gets to exercise authority.

“Restroom,” I say over my shoulder.

“There’s a closer one the other way,” he says, puffing out his chest.

“I could use a walk.”

“Fine,” he says with an I’ll-allow-it nod. “But hurry back.”

I turn at the end of the hallway and keep walking until I get to Mr. Korgy’s classroom door. Inside it’s dark. I twist the cold steel doorknob.

I had hoped it would smell like him but instead it just smells like pencil shavings and chalk. Any ordinary classroom. Not his classroom. I want to feel his classroom. I want to feel him. I touch his desk. His Bic pens. His earth-toned paper clips. His mechanical pencils. His Magic Rub erasers and bright yellow highlighters, his ruled paper and hole punchers and the paper circles that rain out from them. I touch the arms of his chair, caressing the balding leather that his elbows have rubbed against so many times. I lean down and breathe in the chair, then the back of the chair, and then the seat of it.

“Waldo?”

His silhouette looms in the doorway. He steps forward and lets the door shut behind him. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t move.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

I look at him for a long beat. I will something to come out of my mouth but nothing does. He gives me a look. Aren’t you gonna say something? I can’t tell what’s underneath it. Irritation? Intrigue? Yearning? I hate that he can do this, that he can block me from him like this, seal himself off and become unreadable when I’m always so glaring, so obvious, so transparent. I clear my throat.

“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.

“I’m here to catch up on work,” he says slowly, almost melodically. “I’m very behind. I’ve been gone for two weeks.”

He takes a step toward me. It’s confident. Measured. Almost graceful. He’s completely in control.

“Your turn,” he says, taking another step toward me. “Why are you in my classroom, Waldo?”

I don’t have an answer for him.

“You should get back to the dance,” he says, his tone even.

“I don’t want to go back to the dance.”

“You need to.”

“Have you been avoiding me?”

“What?”

“Is that why you disappeared?”

“It had nothing to do with you.”

“Why have you been gone then? Where have you been?”

“It’s … my dad died,” he says finally as he leans against his desk. “We knew it was coming. He wasn’t in great health. Didn’t take care of himself. Still. It was a shock.”

“Are you alright?” I ask.

“Yes, yeah, I’m … pushing through. More than anything, I needed to be there for my mom.”

He pulls a mechanical pencil from his cup holder and clicks the eraser tip. Then again. Then again. “Now get back to the dance, alright?”

“Can I hug you first?”

“What?”

“Can I hug you? Then I’ll go back to the dance. I just want to comfort you. I want to help you feel better.”

He doesn’t respond, which I take as a yes. I step toward him and hug him but he doesn’t move, so I lift his arms and extend them to wrap around me. His sweat stains press against me, bleeding through the armpits of his button-down. I run my hands along his back and rest my head on his chest, breathing him in. We stay here, suspended in each other’s arms.

And then I feel him grow. Now I know. Undeniably. He wants me. Or at least his body does. Maybe his mind feels guilty about it, tangled up in morals and society and everything else. But his body wants mine. And mine wants his. And bodies don’t overthink and worry and analyze and doubt. Bodies just do.

I push his shoulders down so he sits in his chair, then I crawl into his lap and drape my legs over his, straddling him.

“Waldo, get off me.”

“I can’t,” I say, shaking my head.

“Please, Waldo …”

“You’re hard for me,” I whisper into his ear.

He leans his head back, agony tearing through him. He shuts his eyes and shoots his breath out, resisting, or trying to, but he grows even harder. Emboldened by his bulge, I trace his ear. Cup his face. Run my hands through his hair. He’s lined up underneath me and throbbing with heat, desperate to be free. I reach down to help.

“No, no,” he says.

“Please let me.”

“No,” he repeats, more sternly this time. He breaks away and touches his mouth, stunned. I grab his hand and put his finger in my mouth and suck on it while I look into his beautiful blue eyes. Into his sad, sad soul.

“Are you sure about that, Mr. Korgy?” I ask, licking his finger while I grind on him slowly. He’s so hard it hurts.

“Yes. Yeah. I’m— Jesus, Waldo. I’m sure. We … can’t,” he says.

“Look at me,” I order, teasing him with my rhythm.

“Waldo—”

“Aren’t you gonna look at me, Mr. Korgy?”

“I-I can’t,” he says. “Please, Waldo—”

“I want you to look at me.”

“Waldo, please get off me—”

“No,” I say, rocking on him. Picking up my pace. “Just like you can’t look at me, I can’t get off of you. Because I see that you’re hurting and all I want is to make you feel good.”

A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead. “Slow down, Waldo.”

“Call me baby.”

“I, I ca—”

“Call me baby.”

“Slow down, baby.”

“I can’t slow down. I want you to know how much I need you,” I say, sliding myself down the length of him, then again, then again. “I … need … you,” I whisper.

“Fuck …” he moans, his expression shifting from ecstasy to surrender to shock.

“Oh god,” he says. “Oh god.”

A surge of heat. A convulsion. A small wet patch shines through his khakis.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

26

“I didn’t know you had moves like that, darlin’ … ” Tristan says as he pulls up to a red light.

“I took jazz classes in middle school,” Frannie says, beaming. “Miss Gonzalez said I was the best in her class.”

“I bet she did.”

“Yeah, then she suffered a psychotic break that spring and had to quit teach-een. Such a shame. No one taught fouettés like she did.”

The light goes green. I’m in the backseat staring at a photo on Korgy’s Instagram, one of him at a school event dressed in his signature purple cardigan and flanked by other faculty members. He smiles, hands in his pockets. There he is, my teacher. The teacher I just dry-humped until he came in his pants.

I tried to get a read on him afterward but couldn’t.

“That was really … something,” he said.

I tried to dissect it. The way he averted his eyes. Was it a bashful aversion, a coy one, an embarrassed one? Was the pause between the “really” and the “something” a good pause? A pause of amazement? Of “we should do this again”? Or a bad pause? A pause of apprehension? Of regret? Of shame?

“Yeah it was,” I agreed, even though I didn’t know what I was agreeing with.

“Well, I’ve … made a mess,” he said, looking down at himself timidly, the wet patch on his khakis having bloomed outward. I wanted to touch the spot. To rub my hand back and forth on it. To feel the tack of his cum between my fingers. To lick it off of them. I felt strangely gratified by the mess I made. I did that to him. He did that for me. The ultimate power. The ultimate surrender.

“I like the mess,” I said.

His cheeks went red and I saw the imprint of his penis as it grew hard again in his pants and he said goodbye, excusing himself. I was back in the auditorium before anyone had noticed I’d left.

“I didn’t like that girl Randy was with,” Frannie says over her shoulder to me. “She looked mean, don’t you think? Just had a mean look to her.”

I mutter some form of agreement to get Frannie to move on as I click on a picture where Mr. Korgy’s holding a giant swirl of pink cotton candy that makes his blue eyes pop. And another where he’s got a face full of shaving cream and is lifting a razor up for the first stroke, a photo I imagine Gwen took.

Gwen. I scroll past the photos with her in them, quickly enough to barely catch the blur of her blond hair. I scroll past the ones with Gregory too, telling myself that if I lingered, if I acknowledged their existence at all, even in the form of a tiny box of a photo, the guilt would be “too much.”

And then, I have the audacity to feel proud of myself. Proud, for that fleeting moment of guilt that I did nothing about, that I shoved aside with more swipes and clicks and scrolls so that I could get to more photos of just him. Photos that allow me to feed my obsession scot-free and guiltless.

“Waldo?” Frannie asks in a tone that tells me it’s the second or third time. “You get-een out?”

I’m halfway up the lawn when he texts. I debate waiting until morning to check it. Letting the uncertainty of what it says keep me in this restless, charged limbo. There’s something intoxicating about the limbo. I want to indulge it. But that would require self-control. And inside, as I unravel a Fruit by the Foot from its paper and eat it in three bites at the kitchen counter, I realize that self-control is a thing I don’t have. I swallow the last glob and as the gummy belt of candy slides down my throat, I pull open our text thread with shaky hands to see what he said.

We need to talk.

27

“If anyone found out what happened, I’d lose my marriage. My child. My whole life would be over.”

We’re at Sleepy Dog, a coffee shop a half hour out of town, tucked upstairs in the back corner. The seating is all old living room furniture from some dead grandma’s estate sale. I sit on a floral couch with fringe at the bottom. Korgy sits opposite me, on a puffy chair upholstered with carpet-like fabric, his back to the shop. He wears a baseball cap, the same one he was wearing when he came into Victoria’s Secret that day, and he keeps his head low while he talks. He paid with cash, too. All efforts, I assume, to keep this meeting as discreet as possible. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be offended, or ashamed, or embarrassed, to be someone’s secret, their stressor, and maybe their regret, but I’m not. It almost doesn’t matter what I am to him, just that I’m something to him. Like being something to him makes me something.

“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” I say, reassuring him.

I take a sip of my coffee and he chews his lip, neither of us saying anything for at least half a minute. We just sit here reading each other, or trying to, a silent chess match flitting back and forth, played with our eyes. What’s the next move?

“Look, Waldo,” he says, “it … can never happen again, okay?”

“Is that what you want?” I ask.

The barista downstairs shouts “Marianne,” with a tinge of “I give up on my life” in the tone.

“Yes,” he says, unblinking.

I want to reach over and grab his cock and feel it harden in my hand and say, No it’s not. You want me. And you feel guilty about it, and awful, and disappointed in yourself, but it doesn’t matter what you feel about what you want. All that matters is that you want it. What you want is the truth of who you are. And you want me. But instead something else comes out. Timid, almost squeaky.

“Are you sure?”

The barista shouts “Marianne” again, this time with heat. Maybe they haven’t given up on life yet.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Mr. Korgy says. But I think back to the other night at winter formal, how his body was saying a completely different thing from what his mouth was saying. So I turn my attention to it.

His legs are crossed and his arms are folded over his belly like he’s trying very hard to close himself off, to shut me out. But the gesture looks forced, against his will even. Underneath the pose, I feel his pull, magnetic and undeniable. The truth.

“No,” I say finally. “I think you wish you wanted it to never happen again. But I don’t think that’s what you actually want. Can you admit that to me at least?”

“Waldo, you’re so young,” he says, pleading with me and wrestling with himself at the same time. He runs his hands through his hair and shuts his eyes and repeats it half under his breath. “So young.”

I can’t tell whether I’m supposed to feel insulted or validated. Is this a rejection or an admission of feelings? Or maybe it’s a challenge. I almost push but something in me stops me. Dignity, perhaps? No, that can’t be it. So curiosity then. Or maybe it’s a sense of knowing. He has more to say.

He looks at me with a combination of guilt and anguish, deep concern and deep longing, and I feel a piece of him crack open before he even says it.

“I do have feelings for you, and they … keep me up at night. But there’s nothing I can do about them.”

An explosion inside of me. This is all I’ve wanted, all I’ve needed, and now I have it. I don’t care about what’s on the other end of it—resistance, reluctance, even a hard no. He admitted it. He has feelings for me.

“Yes, there is. You can do something about them,” I say.

“I’ve already gone so far out of line. I’m horrified. I’m ashamed of myself. This is very, very wrong. I have to … pull myself together for my family.”

“I’m not trying to interfere with your family. I’m okay not having all of you. I’ll take whatever I can get.”

“No, Waldo, you deserve all of someone. Someone who can be there for you fully. Someone who’s emotionally available.”

“A seventeen-year-old? You think some beefy senior’s gonna be emotionally available between his rounds of Grand Theft Auto and his daily hour of Pornhub?”

“There are good, age-appropriate guys out there.”

“What in my life is age-appropriate? I bought my car, my laptop, my clothes, my gas. I pay the electric bill. I do the laundry and the dishes and the vacuuming. I’ve been managing my mom’s emotions since I was five. I don’t spend my days worrying about what house party I’m gonna get wasted at, I worry about if water’s gonna come out of the faucet the next time I turn it on. If my mom’s gonna be bedridden from a breakup and I’m gonna have to drop everything in my life to be there for her so she doesn’t spiral so bad she loses another job. None of that’s age-appropriate.”

“You’re right, those are things seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t have to worry about. But you’re still seventeen. And I am still a lot older than you. I have life experiences, a context for life, that can only come with age. I’ve made mistakes that you haven’t. I have regrets that you don’t. I assure you, your feelings for me will fade. Three months from now, you’ll be going to prom with your new boyfriend and you’ll be laughing to yourself about the crush you had on your crusty old teacher.”

“I don’t want a boyfriend. I want you,” I say. “And I know you want me too. We’re two sad, bored, tired, lonely people who want each other.”

The barista shouts “Marianne” a third time, this time with a vengeance. Marianne finally steps forward for her frappuccino. Sometimes you’ve gotta fight to be heard.

“Please,” I say, “just promise me you’ll think about it.”

28

The weeklong shipping times of online shopping make for delayed gratification. I need more. A surge. A rush. The swipe of plastic. The shine of a red sale sticker. That feeling of walking into a mall with nothing, coming out with the promise of a new me.

I pull into the parking structure and park crookedly in a spot near the elevator. I don’t bother straightening out. It’s not worth the trouble. Nothing is. Nothing that doesn’t have to do with him. He’s all I can think about since our Sleepy Dog meetup two days ago. Him. Him. Only him. The thoughts are cyclical. Torturous and wonderful. My legs are shaky. My hands are numb. I’m starving and nauseous at the same time, my stomach churning with a giddy, queasy combination of thrill—When’s he gonna say something? What’s he gonna say?—and dread—Is he gonna say anything at all?

I glimpse my reflection in the rearview mirror. I look cracked out. Feral. My hair is unruly. Ungodly. Offensive. But I don’t even bother putting it in a bun. I just let it hang out, as some kind of evidence. Or some kind of threat maybe. A warning label. This is how far gone I am. I make my way into the mall, speedwalking like the bored ladies who sometimes mall-walk first thing in the morning when it opens. I start with a wallet from Michael Kors then do some real damage at Sephora—a Dior foundation in a frosted-glass bottle, a mini honey hair oil that I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated the scent of, a Milk Makeup Lip + Cheek that I convinced myself was a steal instead of a marketing ploy since you can smear the cream on two areas of your face instead of one (wow!), and a hand cream at the checkout counter that made its way into my bag 0.3 seconds before paying. I am nothing if not a sucker for point-of-sale marketing. I see a pair of checkered Vans in the window at Macy’s and buy them even though they’re a half-size too big and my heels slip out when I walk, then spot an LA Dodgers hat and buy that too even though I’ve never watched a minute of baseball. I use my 40% discount at VS for a banana-colored off-the-shoulder top that doesn’t even suit my complexion and a new four-piece travel makeup bag that I don’t need because when the fuck do I travel?

I’ll probably end up returning half this shit. It’s embarrassing every time I have to make a return. Every time I have to confront the gaping disparity between what I thought could be and what actually is. I can always see in the employees’ eyes that they know it too. Oh, that top didn’t work out? is the nice way of saying You fucking piece of shit, you’re a fucking retard if you thought that blouse was gonna make the difference in your shitty little life.

I get in line at Auntie Anne’s, shopping bags digging marks into my arms. My body craves something to distract it, some form of escape, and what better option than junk food packed with preservatives and chemically engineered to be addicting? Junk food, the true American hero.

As I stand in line watching the gloved employees twist dough, time is a slow, stretched blob. An obstacle. A thing I only want to get rid of, to fill, to kill, so I can get to the next moment that counts, the one where I hear from him.

My phone pings. I swipe it open before the ping’s halfway through. It’s Randy Fucking Julep, checking in because it’s “been a while,” aka putting out the feeler if I’d still be down to fuck. I guess Tiny Tits from winter formal doesn’t put out. I don’t respond. The customer in front of me pays.

I wolf down the pretzel and suck down the lemonade on my drive home. I chuck Mom’s sticky note in the trash and dump my shopping bags onto my bed. I try on the top. It doesn’t look as cute in the honesty of my bathroom mirror. This is a mirror that’s seen me a million times before. That knows exactly who I am. That knows I’m not an off-the-shoulder-top girl. I try on the shoes. Both pairs look stupid. I smear honey oil into my hair. It looks greasy. I wash my face for a clean canvas to put more shit onto. I squirt two pumps of foundation onto my wrist and smack it onto my cheeks with a sponge. It’s orange and patchy.

I chuck the foundation at my bathroom mirror. It cracks and the bottle shatters, frosted glassy bits and beigy-orange liquid splattering everywhere. The goo drips down the walls. My phone buzzes.

MR. KORGY: I’m about to head out from poker night at my friend’s place. Will you be alone in an hour?

I look at myself in the mirror. And suddenly the top looks okay.

29

He comes over drunk.

“I’m drunk,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

“Is that alright? That I’m drunk?”

“Yes.”

And it is. It’s more than alright. I love seeing him like this. Glossy eyes. Jaw shifting. Bumbling around with beer stains on his shirt. His concrete walls knocked down, revealing someone childlike and needy.

I didn’t have long to prepare but I did my best, spritzing and shaving and smoothing every crevice as quickly as I could. I didn’t have time to enter into the war zone with my hair, so I threw it up in a bun instead. I double-cleansed my face to rid it of the orange goo, then serum’d, moisturized, primed, and applied my best ten-minute makeup. Concealer, foundation, lip + cheek, gloss, brows, mascara. Lots of mascara. Always lots of mascara.

“Come inside, it’s cold,” I say.

He kicks off his shoes and hangs his cardigan on a hook by the door. I take in the satisfying sight of that purple cardigan finally off of him, finally hanging in my house. It’s only a cardigan, but it feels like a victory. I offer him a drink and he says okay, so I dig through Mom’s liquor bottles while he takes in the place—the outdated fixtures, the generic art prints—registering just how poor and tacky we are. I did what I could, tucking Mom’s Bath & Body Works candles into a cupboard and hiding her stack of two-dollar Woman’s World magazines, but the meat of the place still shouts white trash. The lamp with the dented lampshade from the sales section at Marshalls. The ugly old ceiling fan. The green couch with the tear in the center of the middle cushion.

“That’s what you get for buying cheap pleather,” I say, using self-awareness as a crutch for my shame.

“At least the color’s nice.” He chuckles. I force myself to laugh along but inside I collapse. I want to show him that I know better, that I am better, than this place. That I can’t be reduced to or defined by it. By where I come from.

I used to not know the ways in which the white trashness of Mom and me was reflected in every detail of our environment. Of our choices. A lamp’s a lamp, I figured. Until the first time Frannie came inside to grab a tampon. It should’ve been obvious to me just by the fact that it took her two years and an emergency to come inside my place when I’d been in hers a hundred times by then. That I knew her door code and she didn’t even know where our bathroom was. That she always dropped me off or picked me up but never went inside, as if the lower-classness would stain her just by being exposed to it. But it wasn’t obvious to me. Not until she stepped foot on our dishwater-gray carpet.

I saw the way she was taking in the place. Or pretending to take it in but actually just judging it. Letting it confirm her opinion of me. Like because we had an outdated ceiling fan or the wrong brand of candle that meant we didn’t know the way the world works.

Something went sour in my stomach and I instantly wished she would leave. That she could un-have the frame of reference she now had. That I could rip her hand away as she caressed the cheap plastic picture frames and the very artificial-looking artificial plants and the spines of the cheesy 2-for-1 self-help books Mom was into at the time. That I could wipe that stupid pitying smirk off her face when, on her way out, she eyed the HOME SWEET HOME doormat Mom got from the dollar section at Target. I’ve never felt so powerless, watching someone judge me in real time, not based on anything I said or did, but based on what home decor I was surrounded by. Who knew so much personal identity went into a fucking knickknack?

Next time I went over to Frannie’s place I took note of her home in a way that I hadn’t before. The textured paint jobs. The recessed lighting. The Le Labo candles. The concrete coffee table with the cream-colored Architectural Digest at 100 book that cost $125 (I looked it up). I realized how much care and thought must’ve gone into it. And how much money.

Mr. Korgy’s home is as nice as Frannie’s. Too nice for a high school teacher’s salary. Gwen clearly comes from money. That explains the real leather chairs by the fireplace. The brass knobs and sink fixtures in the kitchen. The heavy plates on the table. Gwen said they were hand-molded. I was just impressed they all matched.

I don’t want Mr. Korgy to think less of me or be turned off because of where I come from. I don’t want him to see a Ross tag on the back of a throw pillow and think, “What the fuck am I doing? I need to go back to my wife. She buys pillows from Crate & Barrel.”

He’s been impressed by me writing about where I come from, but seeing it live and in person is a different thing. People worry poorness will rub off on them. And the bad taste that comes with it. They’ll read a book about it. Or watch a movie where Jennifer Lawrence pretends to be poor while her eight-hundred-dollar highlights gleam in her close-ups. But they don’t want to actually know it. Be close to it in any kind of real way. Except maybe cutting a check for a grand or two around the holidays to the Salvation Army or the Red Cross. But is that even exposing themselves to it, really? Or just a way of distancing themselves from it even more?

“Where’s your mom?” he asks as I pour him his whiskey. I didn’t even ask him what he wanted. Didn’t need to.

“Any time a man looks tired or troubled you don’t ask him how he likes his drink, you pour four fingers’ worth of whatever you’ve got and you give it to him neat and you give it to him quick,” Mom used to tell me. Back then, I wasn’t sure how this advice applied to a seven-year-old, but now I’m thankful for it.

“Night shift. Then out with her boyfriend,” I say, handing him his drink.

I show him to my room and he takes it in with great reverence, combing through the barrettes and hand creams and trays of jewelry on top of my dresser, touching hoop earrings and charm bracelets and shitty mood rings from that carnival with Frannie five years ago.

He looks at a picture of Mom and me. I’m a toddler, two or three, my hair pulled up into a high ponytail with a lavender scrunchie, messy curls raining down the back of my neck. One of Mom’s arms is wrapped around me, the other flicking a cigarette.

“Wow. Look at that smile,” he says.

He sits on the oversized beanbag chair in the corner, the one I keep swearing I need to get rid of because it takes up half the room. It doesn’t swallow him up the way it swallows me. He’s able to hold his own against the beanbag. I respect this.

I stay cross-legged on my bed and he stays sitting there in the beanbag chair, and we just look at each other. Minutes go by in silence, interrupted only by the occasional sound of sipped whiskey. Our eyes undress each other. Not just our clothes, but every pretense, every drop of posturing, every surface-level exchange, every line spoken with humor or cleverness or whatever tool we used to try to avoid this: the truth. That we are so lost in each other that it’s pointless to try and fight it.

I scooch forward to the edge of the bed. He stands up from the beanbag chair and sets his whiskey on my dresser. A statement. My whole body shakes as he walks toward me. I trace his lips with my index finger, then move my lips to his, rubbing back and forth, letting the nerve endings touch. His breath is hot and yeasty. We kiss and pieces of myself shoot off in every direction. Pieces that I might have to pick up later. But for now, we kiss.

He crawls onto my bed. The springs squeak, trying to kill the mood. But they can’t. He runs his hands along my leggings. Spanks me. I whine for him. We suck each other’s tongues and lick each other’s faces. Our bodies are intertwined. Rhythmic. The opposite of every sexual encounter I’ve had so far. We’re so connected. Too connected. Painfully connected. Like my body already can’t stand the moment it ends. The moment our bodies separate and I’m stuck with just mine.

I reach my hand down to his crotch and rub it over his sweatpants. There it is. Like stone. Pulsing. Throbbing. For me. I want to cry.

“Waldo,” he moans.

He peels off my shirt and leggings. I’m boiling for him. But he makes me wait. Runs his hands along my thighs, then my underwear, the silkiness making me even more sensitive to his touch. I tug down his pants and pull his penis out, letting its warmth surge through me as I just hold it, my fingers barely able to close over its girth.

He pulls my underwear aside, teasing me until my body begs for him. He moves his finger to me and I see his eyes shift with recognition. Now he knows just how much I want him. He grows in my hand. I pull him toward me and he slides himself into me, pumping slowly, groaning with each pump, taking his time. And then he starts pumping quicker, and quicker, and my mind becomes a blank sheet of paper. An empty white void. The Matrix. He is, quite literally, fucking my brains out. All my stupid anxieties and cyclical thoughts, my woes and insecurities, my open tabs and fast-fashion carts, gone and replaced with this. I’m alive. Finally.

Then he stops and I feel a swell of something worse than dread. Something cold and dark. A reminder that this won’t last.

“Why’d you stop?” I ask.

“Your turn,” he says, rolling over so I’m on top. He pulls himself up against the headboard, relaxing his body underneath mine. It’s so arrogant. So show me what you’ve got. It makes me want to scream. He knows what he just did to me. His pumping. His thrusting. His filling me up. His making me whole. He can’t take it away like this.

I bounce on him as a whiny plea to get him to take charge again, to move himself into me with the force and pressure from thirty seconds ago when he was dominating. But he only lies there, unflinching, watching me, almost amused. I bounce harder and harder, higher and higher, up and down the length of it, my whole body on this one part of him, this single appendage of his containing all of me.

And then, finally, he takes charge again, grabbing my waist and twisting me around like a rag doll until he’s back on top. He pounds into me, harder and harder, his dick like iron as he grits his teeth, claiming me, until I scream.

Afterward, he strokes the small of my back and tells me he has to go, but before he does, I lay him down flat and I lick his curled belly hairs straight.

30

For breakfast, I make myself an omelet with cheese and banana peppers. It’s nice to have something that’s not eaten out of a cardboard tray.

I work a full shift that passes quickly. My boss tells me I’m doing a good job while I’m folding panties, which takes me off guard because I didn’t realize folding panties was a thing that one could be good at.

Back at home, instead of hurling myself into the usual internet spiral, I click on a twenty-minute butt and thigh workout on YouTube led by a girl named Maddy, which feels like the only possible name of someone who would lead a butt and thigh workout on YouTube. I squat and squeeze my way to toned glutes as Maddy, who almost certainly has a teacup Yorkie and cries when she passes a homeless person on the street, tells me that I’ve got it, that I can do it, and I believe her. I’ve broken a sweat by minute five, and by minute fifteen I’m drenched. But I persevere. The workout is complete. Maddy was right. I could do it.

Frannie and Tristan pick me up to go looking at Christmas lights, which I usually find depressing. The plastic snowmen winking and the LED Santas that wave with their rickety arms, all the decorations on the lawn display mocking you. But tonight, I find it all kind of charming. I even buy a cup of cocoa.

Frannie tells me I seem well, and though there has never been a phrase that sounds more like a personal attack, I don’t mind. Just like I don’t mind any of the usual heavy-rotation irritations—Mom’s absence or our clogging issues or the rosacea flares that splotch my cheeks. They actually give a little color.

Maybe Frannie’s right. Maybe I am well.

31

MR. KORGY, 9:02PM: I wasn’t too drunk, was I?

ME, 9:04PM: i was trying to play it cool and wait a full 24 hours before texting but i was struggling to hold off, so thank you

ME, 9:05PM: and no, not too drunk

ME, 9:05PM: i was glad to see you loosened up

ME, 9:05PM: i feel like i got to see more of you

MR. KORGY, 9:06PM: Well hopefully not too much of me …

ME, 9:06PM: (…)

ME, 9:07PM: (stops typing)

ME, 9:08PM: (…)

ME, 9:08PM: never too much

MR. KORGY, 9:12PM: (…)

MR. KORGY, 9:15PM: If you’re sure about that, there’s something I’d like to share …

ME, 9:15PM: please

MR. KORGY, 9:20PM: You’re so bright and your mind is such a sponge. I want to expose you to art and films and music and books. I want to inspire you.

ME, 9:21PM: you already do

MR. KORGY, 9:23PM: Rather, I want to be useful to you.

MR. KORGY, 9:24PM: (…)

MR. KORGY, 9:29PM: Alaska is so limited, and you deserve a world that’s unlimited. A bigger, broader world. Maybe I can show you some of it.

ME, 9:30PM: i’m down to watch whatever movies or look at whatever paintings or listen to whatever songs, but just know i don’t need you to show me casablanca to feel like our time together is worthwhile

MR. KORGY, 9:30PM: (…)

MR. KORGY, 9:31PM: Can I see you tomorrow?

32

On the drive with Mr. Korgy, he asks me to duck at the stoplights and by the third time he apologizes. He says he feels terrible about it but that we can’t risk someone seeing me in his car, and that it’s just for around town and that once we’re on the highway I can sit up straight. I tell him it’s kind of him to be so considerate, but that I’m just glad to be next to him. He caresses my hand, and as I sit here doubled over my knees in the front seat of his Subaru, I shut my eyes and I bring his hand to my heart and I feel so, so good.

“Gwen’s spending Christmas Eve out in Palmer with her parents,” he explains. “I’m really glad you were free.”

There’s no way I wouldn’t have been. I switched shifts with a co-worker. I would’ve quit if I needed to.

An hour later, we arrive at the Alyeska Resort, a chateau-style hotel surrounded by mountain peaks. It must’ve cost him a fortune, and I tell him as much, but he says not to worry about it and that I’m worth it and that he wants this, then he checks us in and we get to our room and the moment we dump our bags on the bed, Gwen calls.

“I’ll call her back,” he says, smiling at me as he silences his phone. Then he pulls me in for a kiss. We have sex on the bed and then I go to take a shower and Mr. Korgy joins me and we have sex there too. He gets out quickly so he can call Gwen back while I finish up.

Afterward, we order room service for lunch. Grilled cheese and fries for me. A salade Niçoise for Mr. Korgy.

“I’ve gotta stay in shape for you,” he says, but when our food arrives he sneaks a couple fries.

We watch skiers hauling their gear toward the chairlift and make up life stories for them. I go first: A bored forty-something housewife whose one reprieve is her weekly ski lesson. She doesn’t care that she’s terrible at it. She needs this. She’s grown sick of her corny husband, even repulsed by him, and yet can’t extract herself from the marriage. She stays in it “for the kids,” she tells herself, unable to admit that actually, her staying in the marriage is evidence of her own personal values: consistency, familiarity, stability, routine. She refuses to acknowledge that it’s not actually her husband who repulses her, but herself, for being unable to leave him.

Mr. Korgy compliments my ability to build a character. The specificity. The backstory.

“I’m impressed,” he nods. “And I won’t be able to beat it but I’ll try.”

He points to a man with a stringy goatee and makes up his story. He’s a pothead retiree who refers to the slope as “his mountain” and can’t wait to feel that “soft pow” under his skis. He teaches skiing lessons on the weekends, and when the kids ask him how to steer, he tells them, “You don’t. You just let the mountain take you where it wants you to go.”

We lie in bed and pull the covers up over our heads and Mr. Korgy tells me about his mother, who he says has been putting on a brave face since his father died, but he knows she’s really struggling.

“She’s been knitting scarves constantly,” he says. “She won’t stop knitting scarves. And nobody knits a scarf unless they’re so sad that feeling the sadness would be intolerable, so instead they just go numb and spend hours picking out yarn at Jo-Ann’s.”

I ask him about his father and he tells me they were never as close as he wanted to be, that he felt like he couldn’t get through to him. That only on a very rare occasion did he crack a smile.

“I never knew what was going on with the guy,” he says.

“Sounds like a dad,” I say, and then he asks me about mine, so I tell him what I remember of him from the years when he came around more. How his breath smelled like orange Tic Tacs and how he had a habit of coughing when he was nervous, like when Mom would ask him who he’d been spending his time with or why he smelled like perfume.

“You reek of bergamot!” she’d shriek.

I tell Mr. Korgy how the last time I saw him, he would have been in his early twenties, but how he seemed so old to me. Korgy asks if I miss him, and it surprises me when I say yes.

Mr. Korgy tells me about Decembers growing up in Orlando, how they’d all put on puffer coats and run outside the second the temperature hit seventy, too eager for whatever glimpse of “winter weather” Florida was gonna get. He tells me how much he loved Christmas, writing three-page letters to Santa, building snowmen with wet sand (sandmen), making homemade presents for his family—a handwritten poem for his mother, a painted mug for his dad, a friendship bracelet for his sister. He says that he didn’t outgrow the magic of Christmas by eight or nine the way most boys do, that despite store-bought gifts replacing his homemade ones and Santa fading away, the magic lasted for him. That the only thing that took the magic away was when his sister died.

“We still tried to put on happy faces and Christmas sweaters, make the same turkey dinner, decorate the tree with the same ornaments, but there was an undeniable shift. An unshakable weight. That feeling of pretending things are the same as they used to be while knowing they never will be.”

“How’d you deal with it? How’d you cope?”

“It’s embarrassing so brace yourself,” he says, chewing his lip. “I fell into a pretty significant World of Warcraft addiction. Not blow, not alcohol. World of Warcraft. I’d stuff myself in my room for hours. Sunup to sundown, wouldn’t even come out for meals. My mom would bring food to me for lunch and dinner.”

I grin with pride. Pride, at his embarrassment—that he shared it with me.

I tell him about my favorite Christmases growing up, the ones at the trailer park. How it sounds sad just because of the words “trailer park” but how it was actually pretty great. How every family would make a different dish and we’d all bring them out to a long foldout plastic table and make a big buffet of it. Roast and ham and chicken, candied yams and green bean casserole and stuffing and pumpkin pie and store-brand canned crescent rolls that we’d stuff with marshmallows and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. We’d sit in lawn chairs around the fire, wearing our warmest coats, our breath white in the cold air, and we’d sing Christmas carols or listen to one of the adults read us The Grinch or The Gift of the Magi or The Night Before Christmas.

“Don’t see anybody in the fancy zip codes with community like this,” Mom would say. And I’d nod in agreement.

On the drive back, Mr. Korgy plays me clips of comedians he loves. Richard Pryor. George Carlin. Lenny Bruce. He tells me the best way to understand culture at any given time is to know what people are laughing at. I ask him what’s so important about understanding culture, and he says that’s a good question and that he’s not sure how to answer it, and then he never does.

We switch to music, songs he used to love as a teenager. I’ve heard a few of them—“Simple Kind of Life” by No Doubt, “Bent” by Matchbox Twenty, and that song that goes “how long how lo-o-ong, will I slide” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but the rest I don’t know. Radiohead and The Cure and the Pixies, he tells me, and I try to commit at least the chorus melodies to memory so that if they randomly come on again sometime when we’re together, I can reference them and impress him.

“Men get so impressed by references,” Mom once told me. “It’s their love language. All you gotta do is know a couple lines from The Big Lebowski and you’re golden. I once said ‘The Dude abides’ to a guy and you’d have thought I blew him.”

Mr. Korgy keeps playing songs and he throws his head back and sings along, belting off-key and laughing when his voice cracks, and I watch him.

He drops me off and as I sit up straight to get out of the car, he looks at me and he says, “Waldo, you make me feel young again.”

And I look at him and I say, “You make me feel young.”

33

We sip stale coffee while the speakers play Christmas melodies sung by famous dead crooners, their great-grandkids now cashing in the royalties. Must be nice. I get the Grand Slam. Mom orders an egg-white omelet but switches to a regular when she finds out the egg whites are a two-buck up-charge.

“Can’t believe this world, they charge you to take something away,” Mom says too loudly so the waitress will hear, as if the twenty-year-old with pink streaks and a tongue piercing has anything to do with the Denny’s menu pricing.

“I think you should’ve splurged,” I say. “A Christmas gift to yourself.”

Mom rips the top off another packet of sugar and dumps it into her coffee.

“You’re in a good mood,” she says as she stirs.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I am.”

“Don’t know why. Such a gloomy day. So drab,” Mom says, looking out the window at the cars in the parking lot, all coated in a sheet of snow.

She’s in a shitty mood because she hasn’t heard from her man yet. And I’m in a good one because I have heard from mine.

Merry Christmas, beautiful, he texted. I wish I could be spending the day with you.

Never has a message been more romantic. Never has a text sounded so sweet. I touched the words. I studied them. He chose each one of these words. He chose them for me. They are the chosen words. They are so interesting. They are poetry.

Our food comes and we eat it quickly. Mom orders a glass of wine. Then another. Then another. Guess she could have afforded the egg whites. Midway through our meal, her phone pings and her eleven lines soften, quickly replaced by a twitchy, soul-itching eagerness. She checks the message and frowns again, chucking the phone in her purse.

“Just spam,” she says.

34

Gwen’s spending her New Year’s Eve afternoon with her sister, getting brunch and manicures and going shopping with gift cards they got for Christmas, and Gregory’s at his grandparents’, so Mr. Korgy has an afternoon free and he comes over to my place.

We start to put together a one-thousand-piece puzzle of a grand fireworks display but realize five pieces in that we are out of our depth, so instead we watch bits of old French films—The 400 Blows and Cléo de Cinq a Sept. Mr. Korgy pauses them to ask how I like them and his eyes get so wide with expectation that I feel bad about letting him down.

“Not really my thing,” I shrug.

So he tells me what they’re about, thinking that the only reason I don’t like them is because I didn’t comprehend them, but I say, “No, I got all that. Just not my thing,” and he looks like he might cry. So I tell him that regardless I appreciate that they were influential, and his eyes flood with relief.

Mr. Korgy gets up to make himself a snack, and when he comes back into the doorway empty-handed, he announces that he’s gonna Amazon me some groceries.

“You need some things that aren’t microwavable,” he explains, “or that don’t list sugar as the first ingredient.”

He crawls next to me and we have sex and lie in bed afterward, our limbs tangled around each other’s. Then he leans up on his elbow and traces my belly button with his finger and my stomach lurches with that terrible feeling of something being taken away. Sometimes I hate the things my body knows.

“Hey, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“I just want to talk about our return to school. Or work, as it is for me. Things are gonna change once my regular schedule kicks back in. And I’m worried it will be jarring for you. Certainly an adjustment, at least. I want you to know that just because it might be harder for me to get entire afternoons free, and our time together might be a bit more rushed, that does not mean my feelings for you have changed or are any less.”

It’s considerate of him to bring this up. I was too scared to. I’ve thought about it a lot, what will happen to us once I don’t have the access to him that winter break allows for. I’ve ruminated on it in the hours after midnight, when all ruminations take hold. I’ve tried to curb the spiraling thoughts, tried to talk myself out of them, avoid them with junk food binges and shopping sprees, or, in my healthier moments, reassure myself with Psychology Today articles that swear “Ninety Percent of Fears Don’t Ever Come True.” But this one has. Maybe reassurance is naive.

“Thanks for telling me,” I say, staring at the wall.

“Where’d you go?” he asks.

“Nowhere. I’m here,” I say. And he says that he is too, even though five minutes later, he has to leave.

An hour later, the groceries arrive on the doorstep. I pour myself some chocolate paleo crunch granola with almond milk, and only get through three bites before throwing it away and pouring myself a glass of flat root beer instead.

35

Korgy was right. Once school starts back, it is harder to find pockets of time together since he has a full plate between grading papers, prepping lessons, and meeting the demands of the family. He sneaks away to my place when he can, and we try our best to cram as much as possible into the tight windows of time, only to come to a screeching halt when his phone alarm blares for him to go.

The sex is frenzied and passionate, a blur that obliterates my mind and afterward leaves only slippery traces, quick flashes of visuals that surface over time, one at a time, serving as the crucial evidence that it ever even happened at all. Exhibit A—a tongue, exhibit B—a pump, C—a strip of slick sweat on his back, D—the quake of an orgasm.

“I wish we had longer,” Mr. Korgy says every time he leaves.

And I agree with him. But there’s nothing we can do about it so we kiss a long, sad, parting kiss and he goes. And then I lie on the patch of bed where he just was, the sheets still warm, his imprint still in them. I lie there and replay every minute we spent together, every gesture he made, every line he said and the way he said it. And then, once I’ve laid all the separate moments out, I reorganize them into my mind’s best recollection of chronological order. And then once I have them in order, I replay them again, and again, and again, until I have them down pat, stretching the clipped thirty minutes we had together into hours of material. I like to think Mr. Korgy does the same, but he’s probably too busy wiping his toddler’s ass.

We try to keep up through texting on the days between seeing each other outside of school. Mr. Korgy says Gwen made a comment about how glued to his phone he’s been lately. It’s not that she was suspicious exactly, more judgmental, but that he doesn’t want her to become suspicious, so he changes my name in his phone to Kurt, an old friend from college, so that we can text more without risk. Still, it’s not much. Check-ins here and there, “thinking of you’s,” a couple rounds of emojis if he’s really tight on time.

I cling to the certainty that I at least get to see him during class, and that even though we’re discreet, it’s erotically charged, loaded and dangerous, riddled with esoteric glances while the other students scratch off their Starface zit stickers and scour TikTok on mute.

One time after school we have sex in his classroom’s cleaning closet. I wrap my legs around him and ride him while he stands there bumping into the mop and the grimy yellow bucket it sits in, dirty water sloshing around with each thrust. We’re interrupted by the classroom door creaking open when Mr. Wembley comes in looking for him. We stop cold but the water keeps sloshing and we look at each other terrified. Then we hear the door close and Mr. Wembley’s footsteps disappear.

I brush myself off as Mr. Korgy twists a wiry eyebrow hair between his fingertips.

“That was reckless,” he says. “We can’t do it again, never again here at school. We need to be more responsible with this. I need to be more responsible with it.”

I say okay but my eyes sting. Probably from the fumes of the Clorox.

36

His dick is in my mouth when she calls.

“Shit. I should probably take this,” he says. I pull my lips off of him and as he apologizes, his penis goes flaccid. By the time he clears his throat and answers the call, it’s shriveled up to its resting state.

“Hey, honey,” he says, his wife-voice a half octave higher than usual. And placating. And cowardly.

“Did you already leave the store?” I hear her ask, her tone shrill and void of the buttery okayness from our dinner.

“Had to go to Vons,” Korgy says as he presses the volume button on his phone to lower it. He must not want me hearing the way she speaks to him. “They didn’t have your sweetened condensed milk at Fred Meyer.”

“Okay, can you get cranberries?”

“Yep.”

“Big bag. Thirty-two ounces. Not the twenty-four.”

“Got it.”

“Did you hear me? Not the twenty-four.”

“I heard you.”

“Okay, cuz last time you got the twenty-four.”

“I will not get the twenty-four.”

For a second I’m impressed that she dominates him so effortlessly, scolding him over cranberries while I sit here shoveling his cock into my mouth, praying in between gags that I’ll get it far enough back in my throat that he’ll have to love me.

A sourness stirs in my gut. Jealousy. I know it has no place here. I signed a verbal contract with a certain set of rules, and I’m happy with the setup. Happy to be his mistress.

So as his wife rattles off a list of last-minute grocery requests that for whatever reason she couldn’t conjure up when she made the list—buttermilk and walnuts and peaches and fresh mint “for the hot cocoa garnish”—I do what any happy mistress does. I lean forward and start stroking his cock. Licking it. Sucking his wrinkly balls. Giving him the masculinity she’s taken away. Relieving him of the exhaustion of marriage, of family, of a disappointing career and a thinning hairline. I know my job. My role. To make him feel good. To be his escape. To take him out of the pressures of his life, which includes not putting any pressure on him to be a bigger part of mine.

Pressure would kill us and so instead, I suck. I blow. I kiss. I stroke. I lick. And I let those be the places where I’m allowed to want.

His knees buckle. He explodes into my mouth and I swallow his warm, runny liquid like it’s my jealousy. It’s a two-for-one, his pleasure and my pain sliding down my throat at the same time. One drop escapes and dribbles down my chin and falls to the carpet just as he tells his wife that he’ll be right home.

37

Today was supposed to be wonderful. I was supposed to see him. He was supposed to pick me up and drive me to Beluga Point, where we were supposed to have a picnic overlooking the inlet. But then he texted this morning saying that he just couldn’t make it happen, that today was turning out to be a busy one. Gwen’s best friend’s fortieth that he forgot about and a dental appointment for Gregory. He apologized profusely, and I texted him back that it was totally okay, the way I was supposed to.

But it’s not okay. I’m not okay. It’s stupid, that I care this much about something so small. It was a fucking picnic.

“Well happy birthday, sweetheart,” Mom says as she stands over the trash bin, scraping off the burnt edges of a cinnamon roll with a butter knife. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get off work, but I figured we could have a nice morning together. Make it special regardless.”

I try to drum up a half-enthusiastic response but it falls flat and Mom asks if I’m alright, then I try to drum up a half-enthusiastic response to that and it falls flat too. She keeps scraping the burnt parts of the cinnamon rolls while she looks at me, the sound of the scrapes melodic and looming.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asks. “Because your eyebrows are bent in that furrowy way they get when you’re deep in thought about something. Brooding. Not that you’re a sulker. I didn’t raise a sulker. Just … heavy. You seem heavy.”

I hate that thing moms have, where they can sense exactly how you’re feeling in exactly the moments you’d least like them to.

“Yep. Fine. Good,” I say.

“Is there someone you’d rather be spending your birthday with?” Mom asks.

“No, of course not,” I lie. “Happy to be spending it with you.”

“Well good, cuz I’m happy to be spending it with you, too. At least your birthday morning.” She bends over to kiss me on the top of my head and sets what’s left of a cinnamon roll in front of me, then she pours us each a steaming mug of coffee and motions her head toward the four gifts in the middle of the table, wrapped in old newspaper.

“You gonna open ’em? I’ve gotta run here in a sec, but I wanted to see your reaction.”

The first present is a zip-up sherpa hoodie from Target. The second, a jumbo pack of Sour Patch Kids. The third, a tube of mascara. “That’s your favorite kind, right?” she asks. It’s hers.

I unwrap the fourth present. It’s a rectangular box bearing the photo of an aggressively lime-green electric scooter.

“Isn’t that the one you wanted?”

It is the one I wanted. Three years back. Before I could drive.

“I knew you’d love it, been waiting so long,” Mom says before I can react, tears brimming at the thoughtfulness of her own gift. “I feel so bad I couldn’t get it for ya earlier, but what’s that saying? Good things come to those who wait, right? And I know you’ll have to wait a while longer, till the weather clears, but what’s another couple months, right?”

“Right,” I nod.

“Alright, sweetheart,” she says, patting my shoulder twice. “I love you so much. Mwa. I’ll be back later, let’s try to grab dinner or something—you, me, and Tony, if he’s up for it.”

And she’s out the door. I chuck my cinnamon roll into the trash, rip the top off the bag of Sour Patch Kids, and shovel a handful into my mouth. I run to my bedroom and hurl myself onto my bed, whipping open my laptop, desperate to chase away this heavy emptiness. To fill it with items that can carry me away, that can lift me into a version of myself who is light and whole and happy and satisfied with what she’s got. Who wants for nothing because she has everything she could possibly need.

I add and add and add. If capris don’t do it, maybe a maxi skirt will. Or a shimmering cream eyeshadow. Or a pair of patterned tights. Or a stupid fucking sweater with a stupid fucking boatneck that doesn’t even suit me.

And then my phone lights up with a text. Surprise! Was able to skip Gwen’s friend’s party (thank God), so I’ve got a couple hours to spare to celebrate a certain someone’s birthday …

What if Mom had gotten off work and planned a day for her and me to spend together? What if I was bored and went to Frannie’s? What if I’d been called in to work? He texted like he knew I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Like he knew there was nothing I could possibly be doing that I wouldn’t drop in a second to be with him. And he’s right.

let’s do it, I text. when will you be here?

38

On the drive up to Beluga Point, he tells me about taking Russian in high school and how he spent six weeks there after he graduated. The Kremlin was, as he expected, just an underwhelming tourist trap. But he did love the borscht. He goes on a rant about how refining your artistic taste is the second most important thing to finding your artistic voice, then tells me about authors I should read—Chekhov and Tolstoy and George Saunders and David Foster Wallace—and filmmakers I should know—Bergman and Kubrick and Kurosawa, Lonergan and Linklater and Solondz.

I’m used to the person I’m dating, or sleeping with, or whatever it is, telling me all the things I ought to know instead of getting to know me. It’s how men, or boys, or both, communicate. They quote and they riff and they rant and they explain and they explain and they explain.

But with the others, it’s been cringey—Randy Julep quoting Joe Rogan or Paul Bornstein ranting about Michael Bay’s cinematic prowess. Korgy’s a different breed: a learned man with good taste and well-honed perspective and hard-earned life philosophies. There’s a wisdom to him. And a sadness I find hard not to trust.

“Where should I start?” I ask him.

“Saunders,” he says, beaming. “Start with Saunders.”

We arrive at the lookout. He parks facing away from the sunset. He lifts the trunk and splays out a blanket and a picnic basket packed with finger sandwiches and fruit and four types of cheese and salami and a tin of skinless almonds with rosemary and a bar of dark chocolate and a jar of olives marinated with tangerine slices and a bottle of wine for him and a bottle of sparkling cider for me. I want the wine. He’s hesitant but relents when I tell him Mom lets me have it.

We each have a glass and we laugh and we talk and he kisses me as the sun sets, cupping my heavy breasts and sucking my neck, and for this moment, we feel like a real, regular couple.

“This is the best birthday I’ve had,” I tell him, and he laughs and says that my other birthdays must have been terrible. I assure him that, for the most part, they were, particularly my thirteenth, a surprise party that Frannie’s parents threw me at the bowling alley.

“It was a very nice gesture, but I find bowling shoes disturbing and the only people there were Mormons from their church ward.”

He tells me that he used to be in a bowling league, and I tell him that’s embarrassing.

“I don’t disagree,” he says.

“Anyway, thanks. This means a lot,” I say. And he smiles and says he’s glad but there’s the faintest fleck of ache in his eyes.

“What?” I ask.

“I just wish I could do so much more.”

We don’t say much on the drive back. We don’t need to. We hold hands the entire time, even when they get sweaty and gross. He drops me off at my apartment. I ask if he needs to come in for a shower, to wash any scent of me away. He says that’s thoughtful of me but that he’ll have time to do it at home before Gwen gets back.

39

“Who you text-een?” Frannie asks as she waddles toward me on the toe stops of her roller skates.

“My mom.”

I stuff my phone in my pocket and hope that Frannie will move on but already know that she won’t. She takes a seat next to me on the bench at the edge of the roller rink and comments that I’ve been here awhile, not skating, then asks if everything’s okay, her tone syrupy but her eyes like darts. I tell her everything’s fine and that I just wanted to stretch my feet for a sec before getting back out on the rink.

“Hmm …” Frannie says, thumping her chin like a cartoon character. Some kind of bunny. Maybe a mouse.

“What?”

“Oh, I dunno,” she shrugs, embellishing the casualness, begging for me to ask again.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. Frannie’s lips press into a tight line. A violent urge tugs at me, to push her off the bench. It’s not about hurting Frannie. It’s about getting rid of her. Not having to deal with her speculation. Or even just with her interruption.

This is probably the only patch of time that Mr. Korgy and I will get today. He’s got so much going on. So many obligations between his family and his work and tending to all the things that need tending to in a middle-aged life—colonoscopies and root canals and trips to Home Depot and whatever else. So when he does reach out, I drop whatever I’m doing to make myself available. It’s pathetic and I don’t even care. I don’t need dignity. I just need him.

The timbre of our exchanges is intense—frantic and clawing, all-consuming rapid-fire missiles shot back and forth. The content is dynamic, running the gamut from flirty emojis to horny and hurried sexting to bursting confessions. I get so swept up in the messages that I can’t see or hear anything else, the rest of my life blotted away while I get lost in the six-inch phone screen that represents him.

Until he signs off with a quick goodbye. And everything is calm and empty again.

So I reread them. Three times, four times, five times. On work breaks, over dinner, before bed. I pore over every gray bubble. Find meaning that may or may not be there. Place extra emphasis on the soft words. The tender ones. The apologetic ones. The ones where he gives just a little more. Sometimes I touch the texts, like a widow who grazes her fingers through her deceased husband’s sweaters. Reverently. Longingly. Clinging to any trace of him.

“You should come skate a couple more rounds with me and Tristan before they close …”

My phone buzzes again and my hand instinctively moves to it. It knows how limited our interactions are, how clipped, knows that if I don’t get back to him right now I might miss my window. He might get busy with something else. Shoot off a quick “Sorry, gotta run!” or “Catch you later!” that pulls my heart out of my bowels with how casual it is. How effortless. How easy it is for him to let go. To leave. While I’m stuck here dizzy and beating myself up for not getting back to him that much faster, not squeezing one more back-and-forth out of the exchange, one more beat, one more notch on the fuel tank that will keep me going. Until next time.

“You sure every-theen’s okay with your mom?”

We stare at each other. It’s a showdown. She knows I’m keeping something from her, and I know that she knows I’m keeping something from her, and she knows that I know that she knows I’m keeping something from her. But I’m not about to tell her what it is. And we both know that too.

Frannie’s the last person I would tell about Korgy. She’d march straight to Principal Sanders’s office with her sanctimonious little smirk, arms on her hips while she spills every last detail, getting him fired and then consoling me with a “there, there” pat on the shoulder, explaining that she did what she needed to do to be a good friend. That she did it for me.

“Yep, she’s fine,” I say. “I’m gonna rest my legs a sec longer then I’ll meet you back out there.”

“Okey dokey,” she says, waddling back toward the rink.

I rush to open our text thread, zeroing in on his most recent gray bubble.

Shoot, gotta go give Greg a bath and put him to bed. Catch you later, pretty!

A piece of me dies as I heart the message.

40

“Going to lunch!” I shout over my shoulder to the nearest manager, then I race out the front of the store and past the kiosks with teenage employees too busy playing Candy Crush to try and hawk shoe polish or fridge magnets or whatever kiosk good no one wants to buy. I pick up my pace, now sprinting down the mall corridor and through the JCPenney. A security guard tells me to slow down. I keep running. A woman wags a perfume stick sample in my face.

“Dior!” she shouts, desperate for her commission.

I push open the double doors and see his Subaru there in the middle of the second row, headlights cutting through the heavy snowfall. I run toward him.

“Hi,” I say, panting as I pull open the passenger door.

“You didn’t need to run,” he laughs.

“I didn’t wanna waste our time together.”

I climb in and pull the door shut behind me. He waves a brown paper bag in my face.

“I brought you lunch,” he says. “Pil’s Deli. Best BLT in Anchorage.”

He sets the sandwich bag in my lap and tells me to take some breaths and get comfortable as he takes my hand in his, stroking the top of my wrist and tracing my knuckles. He moves his hand up the length of my arm to my shoulder and starts massaging it.

“Aren’t you gonna eat it?” he asks, nodding to the bag.

“I’m not hungry yet.”

“You’ve been working all day, you’ve gotta eat something.”

“I don’t want to waste our time together scarfing down a sandwich.”

“Somebody’s worried today …” he says, gliding his fingers through a lock of my hair. I shift.

“Hey,” he says, “is something the matter?”

I pluck a gum wrapper from the center console and roll it into a tiny tinfoil ball, pressing it until my fingertips dent. I want to be fun. I want to be light. I want to be breezy and carefree and cool. I want whatever he gives me to be enough. I want to be satisfied. To be satiated. To be grateful. To be content.

But I’m not any of those things. I’m hungry and hurting and I want more. I want so much more. But I can’t say that. Because I’ve observed Mom long enough to know that nothing scares off a man like what a woman wants from him.

“Hey … it’s okay. I wish we had more time together too,” he says, reading me. Then he readjusts in his seat, twisting toward me. “Can I tell you this weird fantasy I keep having?”

And then before I can answer, he tells me. His fantasy is that the world stops, everyone freezes in time except us, and we get the whole place to ourselves. Somehow we wind up in Hawaii. We brew macadamia nut coffee and make big eggy breakfasts. We go for long drives. We lie on the beach. We watch the waves. We swing in hammocks. We make love.

“I know it sounds juvenile,” he says, disclaiming it. “And it’s not even really about Hawaii. Or it is, but only partially. It’s mostly about time. Having enough of it. Having plenty of it. Never needing to rush.”

I take this confession, this fantasy, as the proof I need. A calming, soothing salve. A testament to his reciprocal, equal feelings. His own plea for more time together.

“I could call in sick to work?” I offer. “It’s a slow day, they don’t need me.”

“No, no. I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“It’s really no problem. I’ll call right now.”

“No, I should— I should get back anyway,” he says. “I told Gwen I was grabbing lunch with a friend. Probably can’t be gone too much longer as is.”

“Oh, right.”

My rosacea sprouts bright red, calling me out for being so stupid. For believing for even a second that the constraints on our time together were because of my work schedule and not his … life. There is no Hawaii, no beach. Just the scrape of windshield wipers against ice.

A hot lump grows in me, fiery and charged. Does he know what he’s doing? Is he using his fantasy of us running away together as a thin, lazy way to appease me? As a placeholder for being emotionally available? For showing up? For loving me? I try to swallow this thing, to tell it to go away, to remind it how hard Mr. Korgy tries, that he’s giving everything he can, spending my birthday with me, bringing me BLTs on my lunch break, but this thing won’t leave. And if this thing won’t leave, the best I can do is shove a pacifier in it to shut it up. And there’s only one clear pacifier I can think of.

“Fuck me,” I say.

And he does. Hard. Here on the folded-down shotgun seat of his Subaru in the JCPenney parking lot with the sleet that pelts the window as our soundtrack. He thrusts into my solid rage, over and over, every pump puncturing it, making it weep like a bad blister.

We twist around so I’m on top, my knee pressing into the Cheerio crumbs ground into the seat cushion, and he tells me that I feel amazing, and he asks if I’m his good girl, and I say yes. And then I ride him like the good girl that I am. The girl who loves him. Who only wants to please him. To make things easier for him. To be exactly what he wants. What he needs. The girl who hopes that if I wedge myself into a doll, a dream, a marionette with lifeless eyes, porcelain skin, and no needs of my own, a doll who indulges his fantasies and guzzles his cum, maybe then he will love me too.

41

The Race begins. The Race for beauty, for wholeness, for emerging into someone worthy, fuckable, lovable. I pray forty minutes is enough for the transformation. It’s gonna have to be. I speed through the yellow lights and roll through the stop signs to get home from school a half a minute quicker. Every second counts in The Race.

I throw whitening strips on my teeth then wet down my hair, smear in handfuls of goopy conditioner, and twist it up in a claw clip. I hop in the shower and double shave, up each portion of my body and then back down that same portion, then scrub every square inch of myself with a salt scrub that feels like the taste of wasabi as it seeps into my pores. I rinse the conditioner out and wash the body scrub off and pat my skin dry with a towel instead of rubbing to prevent redness, then massage myself with body butter and body oil and spritz myself with body spray.

I glance at the clock. I’ve gotta move faster.

“I’ll be there at four on the dot,” he said. “It’s a long drive. Don’t want to go somewhere close by and risk us getting caught …”

“Got it,” I nodded like a soldier. His soldier. Ready to do as he instructs.

“Dress nice,” he said. “And come hungry. They do an amazing cioppino.”

“Great,” I said, even though I had no idea what a cioppino was.

This is the third date Mr. Korgy’s planned for us, the others being my birthday and our day trip to Alyeska. Our third real date, where consideration had to go into it and arrangements had to be made. I get why this type of outing is a rarity—a luxury—for us, and I’ve been careful to not ask Korgy for more of them. Nobody needs a nagging wife and a nagging girlfriend, one whining for him to do the dishes, the other whining for him to buy her a bowl of spaghetti.

I’m his reprieve, I remind myself. I’m his reprieve. And who needs dates anyway? They’re contrived performances, people swirling their whiskey sours and flirting with lines they heard in a James Bond movie. What we have is beyond that.

And sometimes, that works. But sometimes, I start to wonder, is it? Are quick fucks squeezed between grocery trips and daycare pickups beyond that?

I throw on a robe and rip open a hydrating cucumber-scented face mask so aggressively the mask splits into two halves. No matter. I splay each half on my face and hammer them into my skin with taps of my fist, hoping to get the vitamins and nutrients to ooze into my pores faster. I blow-dry my hair and drag a straightener through it, rip off my Whitestrips and flick them off my fingers into the trash can.

I’m a madwoman as I search my closet, the hangers scraping on the rack as I slide items back and forth hurriedly, violently. Jackets and jeans and blouses and bodysuits, dresses and shoes and necklaces and pants. So many different identities in one closet and I’m just the paper doll ready to display any one of them, whichever will be the one he wants most.

First I try cool girl—bodysuit, boyfriend jeans, tomato leather bomber jacket, mock crocodile boots that look pretty real if you’re standing more than four feet away. This could work. I could start talking in a raspier voice. Pick up smoking and guitar. I stand on the toilet so I can check my reflection in the poor man’s full-body mirror. All I see is a girl trying too hard. A girl who’s never smoked a Camel and isn’t able to pull off looking like she has.

I try “effortless chic girl” next—trousers, masculine belt, snug white tee, blazer, leopard-print pointed-toe slingbacks, gold chunky necklace. She speaks French. She has a side hustle. She’s been featured on some kind of one-to-watch list for burgeoning businesswomen. I throw on some red lipstick and yank my hair into a slicked-back middle-part bun then stand on the toilet seat again. She doesn’t speak French. She doesn’t have a side hustle. She’s on no list. There’s nothing effortless about her. She’s full of effort, of need, of “please believe I’m this.” She’s a kid playing dress-up with a slicked-back bun that makes her head look like an egg.

How can some women pull off anything? Whoever they want to be that day, they get to be. Yet my clothes betray me. Judge me with a snide smirk that says, not quite, sweetheart.

I press my fingers into the inner corners of my eyebrows, the same way Mom does. I want to get it right. I want to look right. A cool, chic, elegant woman who deserves commitment. Demands it with her mere presence without even needing to say it out loud. This woman looks so good she doesn’t have to beg or ask or even try. This woman commands respect. And love. The kind of love that makes a man want to be with her. Really be with her.

3:50 P.M. Fuck. I attempt to rip the tags off a dark gray, jersey bodycon dress I got on clearance at Marshalls, but the plastic digs into my palm so I rip it with my teeth instead. I add a pair of slim black boots and a pendant necklace. I run to the bathroom and climb onto the toilet. Good enough. I don’t look like a clown or a kid or totally insane. I tug out the egg bun, brush out the gel, and re-flat-iron only the most offensive hair dents, no time for the rest. I add a lip stain, stick, and gloss, two coats of mascara, even a smoky eye. Ballsy. I grab a slouchy purse and at 3:57, he texts.

MR. KORGY: Hey pretty lady—I’m so sorry but I can’t make it. I was so looking forward to seeing you, but Gwen and I got in a tiff and I’m stuck doing damage control. I’m doubly sorry for the last minute nature of this. Just noticed the time. It’s been hectic, to say the least … I’ll make it up to you soon. I promise.

I collapse over myself, hyperventilating, tears and snot oozing out of me as I type my response. no prob!

42

He gets a Manhattan and I get a Coke and we hold hands across the table.

“Hey, thanks for being so accommodating,” he says, “with having to reschedule. I really felt like I let you down.”

“Oh no, it was totally fine,” I lie.

It hasn’t been fine. It’s been hell, every day spent anxiously waiting for him to reschedule the date, and then, after he finally did, every day spent anxiously waiting for him to cancel it.

“Well, it means a lot that you’re so understanding. It’s very mature of you.”

“Oh, of course,” I say through a convincing smile. And yet something darker lurks underneath. A question. Is he really complimenting me? Does he really think I’m mature? Or is he trying to validate what he wants me to be, to reinforce it and ensure it going forward, to solidify the version of me that makes his life easiest?

He puts on his reading glasses to read the menu. Such a small gesture, but to me a sucker punch. What other quotidian basics of his life don’t I know? Does he snore in his sleep? What vitamins does he take? When is he due for a physical? Does he have a tooth that’s been bothering him? What brand of face wash does he use? All of these stupid little things suddenly seem so important. So relevant. If only I knew his schedule, his preferences, the brand names of the household products he uses, then I might actually know him. Then our relationship might actually be real. Until then, it’s just a theory. A suggestion. An idea.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” I say.

“Oh, I don’t,” he says. “Not really. Just sometimes to grade papers. And, evidently, to see which pasta I’d like to order. Don’t wanna miss it if they’ve got carbonara.”

He chuckles at himself and takes in his menu. I try to take in mine but suddenly my old way of looking at a menu no longer seems appropriate.

I only go out to eat a couple times a year with Mom. Usually Denny’s, where I always get the Grand Slam so I don’t even have to open the menu. And if we go anywhere else, I lock onto the kids’ section and order chicken nuggets or cheese pizza if they let me, a hamburger from the regular menu if they don’t. But this is a real restaurant. And this is a real date with a real man. So I need to be a real woman, not just the body of one with a seven-year-old’s diet.

I correct my posture. Run my finger along the items as if I’m taking the menu as seriously as I want Mr. Korgy to take me. I jut out my chin. Spew occasional hmms, pretending the ingredients I don’t know are appealing. Ah yes, escabeche. Cipollini. Toum. My old friends. Is this how a woman does it? How a woman reads a menu?

The waiter takes our orders and Mr. Korgy takes a call.

“I’m so sorry,” he says to me as he backs up through the restaurant, readying his finger to swipe. “So, so, sorry.” And yet, despite how sorry he is, he takes the call.

I watch him through the window as he paces back and forth in the parking lot, rubbing out a knot in his shoulder. I pee and come back but he’s still on the phone, so I get on mine and find myself where any lost soul finds themselves: their save-for-later section on Amazon. I move everything to my cart and order it all. Miniature tweezers and fuzzy slippers, niacinamide serum and Command strips so I can finally hang that picture of Mom and me that I’ve been meaning to hang for four and a half years. A satin pillowcase, a bar of oatmeal-scented soap, and a seam ripper for itchy tags. A night light that looks like a piece of toast. A felt elephant keychain. Floral stickers. A bag of sour-cream-and-onion seasoning powder that supposedly tastes just like the discontinued one from Auntie Anne’s.

Our entrees arrive. I get a refill of my Coke, and as the food slowly stops steaming, something in me begins to stir. Something scalding and scary and powerful.

“Whew, I’m so sorry about that,” Mr. Korgy says as he finally takes a seat.

I will myself to push it down, to force it down, to shove this thing so far down it won’t ever break the surface.

“No worries,” I say, but it comes out tighter than I mean it to. Clenched and constricted, like the lie that it is.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” he says, studying me. “I feel terrible. Your food probably got cold.”

“It’s fine.”

He twirls his fork in his pasta.

“What?” he asks.

“What do you mean ‘what’?”

“Something’s the matter.”

“No, nothing’s the matter. Everything’s—”

“Fine?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Something’s wrong. What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“I can’t read your mind, Waldo. Much as I wish I could. Please talk to me.”

“Really. There’s nothing to say.”

“Okay, fine then. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good.”

We each take a bite of our food and take too long to chew and I pick off a petal from the single-rose centerpiece.

“Can you stop taking her calls around me?” I finally ask, a few decibels too loud and with a piercing hostility.

Panic floods his face for a moment so fleeting it’s almost imperceptible. Almost. But I saw it. That look of terror, of Oh no, we’re out of the honeymoon phase where I can do no wrong. She’s starting to see through me. She’s starting to break through the surface, like all women do, all of them the same with their endless pool of wants, their infatuation all too quickly blurring into hatred.

It was a micro-moment of truth, of raw, animal emotion that he was able to edit so quickly, to correct so seamlessly that it scares me. If he’s able to manipulate his own emotions so well, what might he be able to do with mine?

“You’re usually so understanding,” he says, his face settled with a milky look of concern.

It’s a masterfully chosen phrase, a way of pinning the problem back onto me, like he’s just the timid guy trying to make sense of his girlfriend’s “outburst,” which he quantifies as any emotion that makes him remotely uncomfortable, which is any emotion that isn’t happiness or horniness. I would be impressed if I wasn’t so livid.

“Yeah, I say I’m understanding, to please you,” I tell him. “But I’m actually really hurting. It hurts. When you talk to her in front of me.”

“I took the call outside so you wouldn’t have to hear …”

“I get so little time with you and then whatever time I do get is constantly interrupted by her calls and her texts and you tending to her.”

“She’s my wife.”

I nod and look out the window like Jessica Chastain in any of her meaty roles, the weight of womankind in her deep, beautiful eyes.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” he says. “That I have to take Gwen’s calls. I’m sure that’s hard on you.”

“Well can you just stop? Can you fucking not take calls from her when you’re sitting across from me?”

The older couple next to us looks over. Mr. Korgy’s pleading eyes meet mine.

“Waldo, I’m doing this for us. How am I supposed to keep seeing you if she’s on to me? If she gets suspicious?”

I stir my Coke with the straw, sulky and petulant. I want more, I want to say. Or whine. Or scream. Give me more. But I just keep stirring.

“Look, Waldo,” Mr. Korgy says, repositioning himself. “You’re in control here, okay?”

He says the words with such conviction that I want to believe them. I want to believe that he knows something that I don’t. That his version of reality is the real one. That there’s some shade to this that I’m missing. Something I’m not seeing because of being so wrapped up in it. So obsessive about it. So fanatic. If only I could zoom out. Then I could see what he sees. That I am, in fact, in control. Instead of feeling so out of it.

“I want to do this on your terms and your terms only,” he says. “If this ever stops working for you or feeling good for you, we can stop. We will stop,” he says, as if it’s a kind thing to say. And I’m sure that it is. I know that it is. That he’s saying it to protect me. So why then does it feel like a threat?

“I don’t wanna stop,” I say, my eyes hungry and wild, survival mode clicking in.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

I’m not sure how in a matter of ten seconds I somersaulted from being the one seeking reassurance from him to being the one asked to give it to him but regardless I want to stick the landing.

“I’m sure,” I say. “I don’t want to stop.”

And so we agree to drop the issue and have a good night together. He tells me about his teenage summers at his aunt’s house in Cape Cod, eating salt-and-vinegar chips and watching the Independence Day parade while the uncle he didn’t like very much told him how he ought to live his life. He tells me about the year he was vegan, the year he spent backpacking through Thailand, and the year he worked as a baggage handler for American Airlines and how that taught him to never overpack again. I tell him about Mom sneaking me into matinee movies under her coat, R-rated ones I probably shouldn’t have seen at four, Bridesmaids and Like Crazy and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I tell him about summers at Frannie’s and how our friendship is slowly dissolving the more we figure out who we each are. I tell him about the time Mom booked tickets for us to go and visit my dad in California once they’d reconnected in their mid-twenties and she believed they might get back together. Mom scheduled a haircut and a spray tan, and mani-pedis for both of us at a place downtown where the acetone smelled like cotton candy. We packed our bags, woke up at four in the morning for our flight, and got all the way to the airport when Mom saw that some bitch tagged him in a picture on Facebook. We didn’t take the flight. There was a Cinnabon near the gate, though, so we got one to split. On the way out Mom sucked the cinnamon goo off her finger and said, “Never get on a plane for a man. No man is worth the price of airfare.”

Mr. Korgy and I order two desserts, a seven-layer cake and a crème brûlée. We crack the crème brûlée and we eat the cake and Mr. Korgy pays the tab and he doesn’t even have to count on his fingers to know how much to tip. We scooch out of the booth and a hostess taps Mr. Korgy on the arm and says, “I just have to let you know, you seem like such a good dad.”

43

It’s a few days later when Mr. Korgy gives me the news, and I take it terribly. Hiccups and snot, salty tears and broken blood vessels around my eyes. I tried my best to keep this part of me contained, but the seal finally broke.

“I don’t wanna go,” he says, trying his best to comfort me from the driver’s seat as stale heat blasts onto us. “If it’s any consolation. I really don’t wanna go. We booked the tickets eight months ago. Nonrefundable …”

“How long will you be gone for?” I ask.

“Six nights,” he says. “A week.”

He goes on but I hear nothing, his words fuzzy. Cotton in my ears. I interrupt him, crying that I was looking forward to spring break. I thought we’d be able to spend time together. Have some slow mornings. Long afternoons. Maybe a dinner or two. Nothing crazy, just enough to recharge my batteries fully, or even eighty percent. I’d take eighty. Or sixty. Or even anything in the green. Or even yellow. Anything more than the red I’ve been running on.

But this is no recharge. No percent. Negative percent. The absence of him. Everything goes black and cold and terrible.

Mr. Korgy apologizes and says that maybe he should have told me sooner. That he didn’t want me to be stressed for any longer than I needed to be, so he waited till a few days beforehand, thinking that’s what would be best for me.

“I genuinely wish I was spending the time with you instead,” he says.

“People don’t say genuinely unless they mean something disingenuously,” I say. “It’s another one of those stupid words. Fake words. People use it to placate. To oversell.”

“I’m not placating you, Waldo. And I’m not overselling anything. I mean what I say.”

Tears streaking my cheeks, I lean over and go to unzip his pants, but he stops me, or tries to, but I keep tugging on the zipper and I reach in to try to pull his dick out so I can suck it and show him how much I need him, but he grabs my hand.

“Waldo, no,” he says. And he gives me a funny look and says he’s concerned about what all this is doing to me. And I laugh through my tears to try to be more lighthearted and I look at him while I’m laugh-crying with snot dribbling into my mouth and I say:

“Don’t be concerned. This is good. This is great. This is what I want.”

44

I stab the country fried chicken with my fork and shove a bite into my mouth while I dial Mom. I can’t chew. The chicken tastes like wood chips. It slides back out of my mouth and onto the TV tray. The phone rings. I try for some corn instead and force myself to swallow. I need to get something in my body besides Gushers. Those and a half a brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart are all I’ve been able to eat in the two days since he left on spring break.

“Hello? Hon? Can ya hear me?” Mom asks before I have time to say anything, like she’s confused about what exactly a phone is and how it works. Or maybe she’s just confused that I’m calling. I don’t do it often. Not since I was thirteen and I called to tell her our AC was broken.

“Fine, I’ll call the handyman,” she snapped in a haggard, hopeless tone that I knew wasn’t about me. It was about her crap life and all the pieces of it that wouldn’t stop falling apart. I understood in that moment how shitty it was to be an adult. Or a poor one at least. Always underwater with life’s nuisances. Solving problems you didn’t make with money you don’t have. I didn’t want to add any more nuisances to her day.

Still don’t. But today I need to. I need someone. I thought about calling Frannie, but she’s in Missouri at her parents’ lake house, jumping off decks and singing campfire songs and eating watermelon and hot dogs fresh off the grill, bubbly and sun-soaked.

“Hon, can you hear me?” Mom asks again.

“Yeah. Hi, Ma.”

“Well is everything okay? Tony’s grabbin’ some popcorn but our movie’s about to start.”

“Everything’s …”

I stop before my voice cracks.

He brought me a bouquet of lilacs as a parting gift before he left for his trip and I said they were beautiful and he said I was beautiful. We had sex in the back of his car and afterward we looked at the stars and as he brushed my hair absentmindedly with his fingers, I could tell he was somewhere else. I even asked him, twice, if something was the matter. And he said no. But I knew something was. The air doesn’t get thicker for no reason.

“While I’m out of town, can we email instead of text?” he asked. “I’ll be stuck in a shoebox hotel room. Email’s more discreet.”

He read my face and added, “But only if you’re okay with it.” Even though he knew I would be. If I wasn’t okay with it, I wouldn’t have access to him at all. I had to be okay with it.

“That’s fine. Email it is.”

“Wonderful,” he said. “In fact, tell you what. I’ll write you as soon as I land.”

But he landed last night. 8:20 P.M. Almost twenty-four hours ago. I tracked his flight. And still nothing in my inbox. My mind’s gone to the worst places. Flashes of him in a high-rise New York City hotel room with crushed velvet curtains, fucking Gwen because that’s what you do when you save up for a trip with your wife. You put pressure and expectation on it and you get your money’s worth by rekindling the spark that died long ago. Or at least pretending to rekindle it, the way anyone can when they’re two glasses of wine deep in their best derbies on their way back from a Broadway show, tipsily swiping their hotel room key. She pulls her unmentionables out of the suitcase and throws them on in the bathroom while he grabs a shot bottle of Grey Goose out of the minibar, worrying that he may have tapped some other shot bottles in his efforts and that he’ll be charged for them but figuring he’ll call the front desk to dispute the charges later. He chugs the Grey Goose, thinking that right now, she’s more important. They’re more important. The reason for this whole overpriced fucking trip is more important. To rekindle the spark. Or pretend to. So he jams his half-soft erection into her and she moans her counterfeit moan until mid-coital, something shifts. The performance starts to take, and become real, and in each other’s gaze they see reflected all the love they thought they’d lost but realize they’re still fighting for.

I can’t compete with that. What am I gonna do, send him nudes? It’s so feeble and simultaneously overreaching. A jpeg of my tits sent over Gmail. So instead I sit here in Alaska, the most libidoless state, the state of moose and bears and frostbite and boring, ugly people, waiting for him to reach out, trying to ignore the twisted, acidic feeling in my gut that tells me he won’t.

I’ve thought about emailing him. I’ve drafted two.

One an angrier, more aggressive hue. The other the more xoxo, no worries if not! type. The bifurcation of every woman. The split personalities.

I’ve refrained from sending them, just barely. I know that that would be a step too far. It would be too much. The way men become paralyzed by any whiff of a woman’s more disturbing emotions. The way they can’t tolerate being needed. Or even, sometimes, wanted.

“Honey, you there?” Mom asks, and I let her voice wash over me, and for a second I feel soothed. Just her voice is enough. It doesn’t matter if she gets me or doesn’t, is present with me or isn’t, our biological connection transcends our fundamental disconnection.

“This damn phone,” she says. “I think we’re breakin’ up, doll, I can’t hear you …”

“No, the phone’s not— I stopped talking.”

“Tony, wouldja get me a Diet Coke? Oh you already paid? Never mind then!” she calls out. “Sorry hon, what was that?”

“Nothing. It’s okay.”

“Well why’d ya call, doll? Is everything alright?” she asks, and then, in the pause, her tone shifts with realization. “What’s goin’ on, sweetheart?”

“Come on, babe! We’ve gotta hurry. Previews started,” Tony shouts half-drunk from somewhere beyond.

“Sweetheart?” Mom asks again.

“Uh, nothing,” I say. “Just wanted to say hi.”

“Oh, well that’s so nice, hon …”

“Babe!” Tony calls again.

“I’m so sorry, my sweet, I’ve gotta run,” she says. “I’ll probably swing by the place in the morning if you’ll be around? We could talk? Catch up?”

“Sure, sounds good.”

“I got you some of those country fried chicken TV dinners. That good brand you like, not the skimpy kind.”

“I saw. I’m eating one right now.”

“Oh, good good.”

“BABE!”

“I’m comin’, Tony!” she shouts. “I gotta run. Love you, honey.”

She hangs up. I chuck my country-fried chicken in the trash. It’s a shame. It was the good brand.

45

I get my worst customers on my bad days. Bored women. Sad women. Unhappy women. Women dissatisfied with their husbands and taking it out on me with their demands, barking at me to sift through racks of bras they’d be able to sift through themselves if they weren’t carrying seven bags of shit they don’t need. Has anyone ever gone into Talbots and come out a better woman?

“I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t have that bra in a 34C,” I say to a woman with a frozen Botox face as I scroll on the store iPad.

“Well check in the back!” she orders me, not understanding that the automatization of store inventory means there’s no margin of error.

“Our system shows we’re completely sold out of that particular demi-bra, but I’ll certainly go check in the back for you,” I say, placating her and giving myself a chance to breathe.

In the break room, a co-worker talks on the phone with her boyfriend, spewing sweet nothings under her breath, and I want to throw up.

I’ve purchased five online carts in the days since Korgy left. So many items of clothing that will inevitably wind up in a landfill somewhere, expanding my carbon footprint and contributing to global warming when in three months I’ll decide I don’t want them anymore, which seems like a thing I should’ve known to begin with, considering they were never really the thing I wanted in the first place. They were just smaller, more attainable things to want. Placeholders for the bigger, insatiable, incorrigible want underneath.

And yet knowing the pattern doesn’t stop it. I’m powerless over the need to gorge myself on stupid things I put too much meaning on. Stupid things I know I’ll be disappointed by as soon as I see them in person—the colors not as bright, the fit too droopy, the construction absolute shit.

“I miss you,” the girl says into the phone.

And with that, I leave, back to Botox Face on the main floor.

“Did you find it?” the lady barks at me.

“No, we’re sold out,” I say, “but we have a lot of other demi-bras you can choose from.”

“Ulch,” the lady huffs. “No. I don’t want a different demi-bra. I want that one. That’s the one I want.”

“Right,” I say, monotone. “I know.”

46

I haven’t slept in five nights. Gray-brown rings have formed under my eyes. My clothes are baggier, my lips are drier, my hair is a tangled mess.

I’m parked outside of his house, trying my best to convince myself that what I’m about to do is not deranged. That, actually, it’s a good thing. That it will comfort me. Make me feel good. And that he would want that for me. For me to feel good. So, by association, he would want me to do this.

I know I’m only rationalizing, and on a good day I know that there’s nothing more insane than a woman’s rationalizations to herself about a man, but today is not a good day.

I cut across his lawn and slip around the side of his house to try the back door, half expecting an alarm, my body rushing with the thought. The cops would come and maybe there’d be a female and she’d ask, “Why were you breaking and entering?” as she snapped the cuffs on me and I’d say, “To be close to him. I just wanted to be close to him.” And she’d look at me with understanding. Maybe that’s all this rabid part of me wants—to be understood. To know that it’s not crazy or troubled or wrong. That this is just what it feels like to want an unavailable man.

No alarm, but the door is locked. I go to the side of the house. The bathroom window is cracked open, just barely. I grab a large rock from the garden bed and stand on it so I can reach.

What am I doing? Is this who I’ve become? What do I even do when I get inside? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I never think far enough ahead. That’s my issue. I’m so ruled by the present. Buddhists talk about living in the present like it’s the antidote to all of life’s problems but it’s not. Living in the present is the worst problem. You don’t learn from your mistakes and you don’t consider the consequences. You just act; you just do. Living in the present might work if you’re a muslin-wrapped monk with a vow of celibacy and nothing to do all day but roam the Zen gardens, but if you’re an actual living, breathing human being, living in the present is a disaster.

I crawl in through the window and dust myself off.

The mudroom is cluttered with raincoats and hats and Gwen’s scarves and purses and Gregory’s mini Converse sneakers. I kick off my shoes and hang my puffer jacket up next to a bouclé coat of Gwen’s. Just another regular houseguest. I run my hands along all the hanging pieces like a woman in a clothing store, entranced by the beauty of the things surrounding her and the possibility that those things could be hers, until I get to Mr. Korgy’s cardigan—deep purple, cashmere, with black tortoiseshell buttons. I breathe into it, getting high off the fumes of him. The suggestion of him. Nothing turns me on like a man who’s not really there.

I go up to Mr. Korgy’s bedroom and flip on the light. The bed is made, tight and immaculate. I enter the en suite bathroom and open and close every drawer, inspecting what’s inside, like knowing what brand of antacid Mr. Korgy prefers will bring me closer to him. Or what brand of hair gel. Or pomade. Or mousse. I didn’t know a guy needed all three.

I rummage under the sink—rolls of toilet paper and folded hand towels and nail clippers and mouthwash and, toward the back, Mr. Korgy’s cologne bottle. Jean Paul Gaultier. I hold it close to my heart, like a child clutching their big gift on Christmas morning.

I get on the bed and straddle the cologne bottle. I imagine Mr. Korgy nailing me, pants around his ankles because he couldn’t even wait to take them off. Gwen’s in the corner, watching us, hurt in her eyes as he rams into me over and over again, the smacking sound of skin-on-skin as his saggy balls slap my ass cheeks. And I smirk at her, relishing the fact that, for this moment, I am the chosen one. The one he is pleasing. The one he lusts for. The one he makes love to. And she is just his wife.

When I’m done, I straighten out the comforter and put back the bottle, my wetness still gleaming on it.

I flick off the light, go to the kitchen and grab a bag of sriracha popcorn, then I go to the den and power on the family desktop computer. I rifle through the folders until I spot one that piques my interest: home videos. I click on it and a slew of files pops up. Gregory’s 1st birthday! Xmas 2022! Disney Day! So many exclamation points! If ever there was an overcompensating punctuation mark! I click on Wedding Day!

I eat handfuls of popcorn so big that I cough while the blue light from the screen glows on my face. I watch with gross intrigue as Korgy gets ready with his groomsmen. As Gwen’s makeup artist applies makeup and Gwen flashes a sly smile to the camera. As Korgy and Gwen laugh into each other’s faces the way newlyweds do, trying to prove a point to everyone around. WE’RE HAPPY. WE’RE SO HAPPY. Exclamation point.

Korgy’s best man gives a toast, and then Gwen’s maid of honor. Korgy and Gwen dance their first dance. Korgy kisses Gwen’s cheek in the same way he kisses mine, like she’s the only woman in the world. Like he adores her. Like she’s all that matters to him. I touch my cheek where hers was kissed.

The video ends. I roll up the popcorn bag and toss it in the trash. I head downstairs, put on my shoes and jacket, crawl back out the window, and drive home.

47

“But I love you,” I say, and within two seconds, I already wish that I hadn’t. The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them. That you’ve gone too far.

I want to add something, to clarify, to backpedal, or more than that to take the words away. I’d been so careful about not saying them, about saving them up for just the right moment, which of course was whatever moment followed him saying them first. I thought it would be tender and romantic. But this was not tender. This was not romantic.

He texted me an hour ago, apologizing for being absent while he was on vacation and asking if I was alone and at home because he needed to talk to me about something. There was a stiffness to the text. A backslide into a formalness that we’d outgrown. My body already knew.

I paced around and changed into a jumpsuit and put on what makeup I could, one eye mascara’d when he knocked on the door. There was something in the knock. A resignation. My heart dropped out of my asshole. Still, I mascara’d my other eye.

He sat on the couch. He didn’t want a beverage. His speech was rehearsed. Staccato and even and with too many platitudes for a writing teacher. I’ve had a lot of time to think. Everything happens for a reason. I think we need a break. This space will be good for us.

I noted how he carefully avoided the word breakup, choosing instead to go for more open-ended words, softer words, curated words. Break. Space. Process. Time. Friends. Recalibrate. Words that I know better than to believe because I’ve heard Mom relay them to me dozens of times with wild, hungry hope behind her eyes.

“No, no, it’s not a breakup,” she’ll say to me. “It’s a break. Just a break.”

Or, “He said he still really wants to stay friends.”

Or, “He just needs a little space. Time to process. But he’s coming back. I know he’s coming back, Wally.”

And the worst part is he does. He always comes back. That’s why he said those softer words in the first place. To keep his options open. So that, when he gets especially lonely and horny one night, he has her, still hoping, still an option. Her, receiving him with open arms and a steaming vagina. Her, who he can come back to, cashing in on the empty promises of his softer words with a brief stint where he tries her on for size a couple last times just to confirm what he already knows—that he’s moved on and is ready to discard her.

But knowing better than to believe his words does nothing when you love the guy. If you love him, you just believe them. You believe him. You need to. You cling to his promises. You say stupid things. You say, “But I love you.”

Mr. Korgy rubs his hands back and forth and finally looks up at me, his face beet red and ballooning.

“Oh, Waldo,” he says, pleading.

And then he pops. His shoulders hunch over and his body twitches in tight convulsions. I hug him and his tears drip onto my chest. A long string of snot wobbles back and forth. He wipes it with his sleeve.

“Don’t say that, Waldo. Please don’t say that.”

“I can’t help it. I just do. I don’t think we should take space or a break or whatever. I can make this work. Because I love you.”

“I wish you didn’t. God, I wish you didn’t,” he sobs. “I’m a disappointment. To Gwen, to my parents, to myself, to you.”

“You’re not a disappointment to me.”

“I should be! Waldo, my hair’s thinning, my gut’s growing, and I’m sad most of the time. My in-laws pay most of my family’s bills. I’m a fucking high school teacher. Your high school teacher. I should’ve walked away. I shouldn’t have caved. I’m supposed to be stronger than that. Bigger than that. I’m supposed to be the adult here.”

“Hey, hey,” I say. “I’m glad you caved. I want this. I want you.”

“But you shouldn’t,” he wails. “This is unfair, what I’m doing to you. It’s not right.”

“How can it not be right? Being around you is the only thing that feels right. The only thing that’s ever felt right to me.”

“Things that are right shouldn’t hurt you. You’re hurting so much and I see that. I see the pain this is causing you. I’m causing you. And I need to stop it.”

He wipes his nose with his sleeve again and his crying steadies as I stroke his back. I pull him close and rest my head on his, tracing the back of his hand like he’s my child who woke up from a scary nightmare and I’m his parent gently soothing him back to sleep.

“Waldo, what we’re doing is wrong,” he says. “What I’m doing. I feel guilty about it every day. I have a family, a beautiful family who I can’t be present with for even a second because all I can think about is you. All I want is you.”

“You have me.”

He jerks away, his face twisting with self-loathing. “But you don’t have me because how can you?! That weighs on me, the things I can’t give you that I want to so badly. I feel terrible. I’m taking something from you that you can never get back. Your first experience of love. A thing that’s supposed to be special and delicate and wonderful.”

“But it is all of those things with you. I promise.”

“Waldo, please, stop. You’re young and beautiful. You have your whole life ahead of you. Eventually, you’re gonna resent me and you’re gonna say I robbed the cradle and you’re gonna regret me. I’m scared of that. I’m fucking terrified of that. I don’t want to be one of your regrets when you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years.”

“I’m not gonna regret you.”

“But you should regret me. I deserve for you to regret me. Do you understand? I do not deserve you. Do you hear me? You’re pretty and smart and capable and young. Your life’s not made up for you like mine is for me. You could have anyone, you could do anything. You have your potential. Don’t waste your potential on me.”

Mr. Korgy pulls me in and kisses the top of my head over and over again, smoothing my hair down between each kiss.

“I’m just … I’m so confused, Waldo. I’m so fucking confused. No one tells you you’re gonna be forty and still so fucking lost. I need to make this whole situation better. I wanna do right by you and the best way of doing that is to end things now, before they get worse. This is what we need to do. I’m just trying to do right by you.”

I keep hugging him and he keeps crying until he has to leave. The door shuts behind him and I stare at it. I was so caught up in his speeches and his feelings and him that I only now realize that, technically, he never said he loves me back.

48

“He’s an abuser,” Frannie says, jutting out her chin. “What a sick, sick man. This is absolutely disgust-een.”

“Frannie, please. It’s not like that. He didn’t—”

“He did. He abused you.”

I should’ve never told her. It was a moment of weakness. That’s the problem with pain. It rattles you. Makes you lose sight of yourself and lean on the wrong people. The people who pervert being leaned on.

“You know what we’re gonna do?” she asks, pacing around her bedroom with a put-on toughness even as she wears the fluffiest slippers I have ever seen. “We’re gonna report it. Get him fired, maybe even arrested.”

I’ve never seen her this excited. Selling the most Girl Scout cookies in her troop was a close second, but this is the next level. She’s trying her best to hide it behind faux outrage, but the glow is still there. The glow of opportunity, the opportunity to turn my heartbreak into her shining moment.

I can see it. Frannie on the local news, wearing her favorite sweater and that plum shade of lipstick she doesn’t realize she doesn’t pull off, bobbing her head as she listens to some long-distance news anchor feed her questions through her earpiece.

“Right, when Wally told me, I knew I had to do some-theen,” she’d say. “For the greater good. For her and for our community.”

I tell Frannie that I don’t want her to report anything. That it’s over between us anyway and that if this got out I’d be known as the homewrecker who fucked her high school teacher.

“I know, as my best friend, you wouldn’t want to do that to me,” I say, exploiting Frannie’s own technique against her. Now I’m the creepy doll in the horror movie.

Frannie ever so slightly squints at me, knowing what I’m doing but unable to address it because she’d out herself as having done it too. Here we are, locked in the dark underbelly of friendship.

Frannie grabs her glass of lemonade off of her nightstand with the petunia-shaped top and takes a sip as she decides her next move.

“Waldo, he could prey on somebody else—”

“He didn’t prey on me, Frannie. He had deep feelings for me,” I say, and I hate the way I sound when I say it. Like a woman in her thirties who calls her boyfriend her partner. The stink of desperation to make his commitment more than it is while she crosses her fingers, praying for her shut-up ring.

Frannie looks at me, her lip quivering with self-importance, like she’s a social worker in a Lifetime original movie, here to save the poor, molested foster child. She needs this. She needs Korgy to be a bad guy and me to be a victim, because it lets her be the savior. Gives her something to be up in arms about. A righteous cause. A purpose.

“Wally, you sound groomed.”

The Mormon who believes she gets her own planet when she dies is scolding me about being groomed. I want to laugh, but instead my face grows hot and twitchy, and I fold over myself and start to cry.

“I miss him,” I say. “I don’t know what to do. He’s all I think about. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I love him, Frannie. I just love him.”

I hate my cry-voice, how high and shrill and strangled it sounds, and my cry-face, how blotchy and warped it gets, a tragedy mask but it’s my fucking face. Frannie doesn’t mind. The opposite. She softens. She sits next to me and pulls me in for a half hug, and tells me that if I really don’t want her to she won’t report it. Then she takes my hand in hers and squeezes it.

“And Waldo,” she says, “did you know this is the first time you’ve cried in front of me?”

This is why I don’t cry in front of others. Because people like Frannie use tears as a fucked-up currency. They mistake tears for a compliment to their caretaking, their hand-holding. The tears make them feel bigger than, better than. Make them think you’re weak. Vulnerable. And your weakness gives them something to do. Something to feel power over.

“No,” I say. “No, I didn’t.”

“It is,” she nods. “It’s the first time you’ve cried in front of me.”

And her eyes twinkle like it’s a compliment to her.

49

I’ve been lying in bed for nearly a week. Dipping my hand into a family-size box of Frosted Flakes in between episodes of Survivor. I break down in choked sobs as Jeff Probst snuffs torch after torch. Mom’s too cheap to buy tissues so I use toilet paper instead. A roll a day. Store brand, single-ply, the kind that rubs you raw but it does the job.

I haven’t gone to school. Or work. Covid, once a deadly pandemic, is now just a good excuse. A solid lie to lean on when you’re actually just heartbroken.

This is worse than the dull ache of loneliness or the skin-crawl of anxiety. This is all my worst fears combined, drowning me, swallowing me whole. I’m unlovable. I’m unworthy. I’m too much and not enough at the same time. I’m a child. I’m stupid. I’m naive. I’m ugly. I’m too sensitive. Too emotional. Too angry. Too fucking angry.

I want to be grateful that I’m feeling so much. Unthawed after years of being numb. Mr. Korgy unlocked something in me, a depth that I didn’t know was there before. Maybe gratitude will come with time. Maybe someday I’ll stop crying because it’s over and will smile because it happened or whatever. Or maybe that’s just one of those things people say to keep sad people chugging forward so they don’t have to deal with them, like “It gets better” and “Time heals all wounds.” Maybe time doesn’t heal wounds and it won’t get better and I’ll never stop crying because it’s over.

Jeff snuffs another torch. The tribe has spoken.

50

My first day back at school, he gives me nothing. I didn’t expect much. A glance maybe, longing or apologetic, I’d have taken either. A quick, nondescript compliment on my last homework assignment. A graze of my shoulder as he passed by me. Some small gesture indetectable to anyone else, but one that I could load with meaning and possibility and lap up in the privacy of my own mind. One that would confirm all that we shared, all that we were. Or even just that we were anything at all.

But instead, nothing. He’s gone cold. Completely unyielding. He looks over me, through me, but never at me. And I sit in my plastic chair, destroyed.

51

“Hey, you alright?”

I shut my locker and see Nolan from winter formal standing there, hands stuffed in his pockets, a look of concern on his cream of wheat face.

“Mm-hmm,” I say. I leave but he follows. He asks if I’m sure, then if there’s anything I want to talk about, then says that he’s here to listen if I want to talk, then tells me he’s a pretty good listener, and proceeds to go on a long-winded speech about just how good of a listener he is.

“I was six years old the first time I heard I was one,” he says as we walk through the hallway. “On the porch of my childhood home in Louisville, licking a lollipop. Grape. I still remember the flavor. The mailman came up to drop some mail, but he seemed down—heavy—so I asked if he was sad. And then all of the sudden he just started cryin’ and tellin’ me about how his wife had just left him, then he started goin’ into his whole life story. He must’ve gone on for twenty minutes. Then he wraps up and slings his mailbag over his shoulder and turns to me and says, ‘Kid, you’re the best listener I’ve ever seen’ and walks away. So, yeah, anyway, I’m a good listener … if you wanna talk.”

I look around the corridor at the pockets of students. Girls twirling their hair and gossiping, boys in baggy clothes laughing, a pair flirting, a guy kicking a hacky sack. I want to be like them. Like people my age. People who have things in common with other people my age. I’m tired of being on the outside looking in. Studying, observing, but never just being. Maybe it could be good to try to fit in. To try to be like them. To try to be my age.

I turn to face Nolan. “Do you want to go out sometime?”

52

For our first date, Nolan takes me axe throwing and afterward we go to Wild Scoops, the ice cream parlor up the street. I feel a bug crawling up my arm and go to swat it away when I realize that it’s not a bug. It’s Nolan’s hand, stroking me with a timidity that gives me goosebumps, the bad kind, the nails-on-a-chalkboard kind. The kind that come from being touched by someone who isn’t Korgy.

“Do you want me to move my hand?” he asks.

Yes, I think.

“No,” I say.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks.

I grab his face and shove my tongue down his throat, attempting to transfer all my passion into his mouth, hoping it can work that way. Hoping that I can take all of my pulsing feelings for another person and pour them into this one. That I can like him the way I want to if I just pretend he’s someone else. Isn’t wanting to like someone the same as liking them? Or at least close enough?

After a minute, Nolan pulls away, disheveled and awakened. I didn’t feel anything, but he seems to have. And maybe that’s enough. One for two. Maybe it doesn’t matter that my body feels cold and limp against his. That my mind races, detached. Maybe it’s good that I don’t feel passion for him. Maybe passion is bad for me. Unhelpful. Makes me crazy and unstable. Maybe it’s better this way.

53

“Isn’t this place the cutest?” Frannie asks, looking around the diner. It’s 1950s themed. Lotta chrome. Lotta neon signs. Lotta checkerboard patterns. The quintessential jukebox.

“So cute,” Tristan says, and Nolan and I nod in agreement. We all order food and force our way to a polite piecemeal conversation until, as if sent by God, our milkshakes arrive. We pretend not to use them as the crutches that they are, longer and longer sips saving us from the strain of lacking chemistry, those pockets where our group disconnect hits a little too palpably. I remind myself to be present, to be positive. That we’re trying. We’re all trying.

Nolan tells a story about shitting his pants onstage during his kindergarten’s production of Peter Pan. Frannie looks horrified and Tristan listens intently, too intently, like someone who’s not really listening at all but trying to show you how hard they’re listening and is actually thinking about how their hair looks. I laugh along and Nolan takes my hand and I let him. And I tell myself this is good. This is healthy. This is right. Tentative hand-holds, fumbling identities, wobbly punch lines to stories that were rehearsed in front of mirrors. Sweet double dates with unchallenging conversations. This is eighteen. I can do this. I can be here.

“Is that Mr. Korgy?” Nolan asks.

I turn and there he is. Sitting at a corner booth at the far side of the restaurant, across the table from Gwen and Gregory. Gwen’s moving her hands a lot, in the middle of an animated story that Korgy is phoning in his reactions to. He pokes his fork around absentmindedly, occasionally throwing in a gesture of polite contribution. A head tilt that’s a little overdone, a chuckle with unhumorous eyes. And I feel a pang of hope that he’s this removed from his life. That his mind is clearly elsewhere, maybe on me the way mine is on him. I will him to feel me, to feel my presence, to look up at me and know that I see him, but he doesn’t.

“Should we say hi to him?” Nolan asks.

“Definitely not,” Frannie says sharply, her eyes penetrating mine.

And then our food arrives—hamburgers and a plate of chili cheese fries for the table—and I try to refocus as Tristan bows his head performatively then looks up like a boy band member in a tween magazine photoshoot, biting his lip and raising his eyebrows until his forehead crinkles with that put-on look of surprise-meets-bedroom-eyes-meets-squinting-into-the-sun.

“Would anyone be offended if I say a pre-meal prayer for the group?” he asks. Frannie looks like she might cum.

Tristan prays and then we eat. With each fry, I beg my body not to turn around. I bargain with it. If I can just not turn around for this next fry, I’ll buy myself a dress later. Or a bag. A hobo bag. Or a structured bag. Or a fucking snakeskin bag with pearls on the sides. I don’t care. Whatever kind of bag will make me not turn around. One more fry. Don’t turn around. Then another. Don’t turn around. Then one more. Don’t turn around.

But then I hear the bells on the entrance door jingle and I have to. Mr. Korgy holds the door open for Gwen and Gregory as they leave, then he glances up directly at me and freezes. Our eyes lock. They’re arrested. Nothing else exists. Only his eyes and my eyes. There is no noise. No movement. Everything is still. Until Gwen calls to him, and he startles, and he throws on a fake, husbandly smile and follows after her. And the noise is back. And the movement is back. And as he vanishes out of my life and returns to his, I excuse myself and head to the restroom. I lock myself in a stall and start to text him that I miss him and that I have to see him and then delete the text and go to his Instagram page and masturbate to it with my chili cheese fingers. The chili burns my vagina. But I keep going and going while that song that goes “sh-boom sh-boom life could be a dream” plays in the background.

54

This is crazy. This is batshit crazy, deranged, lady-on-the-verge-of-a-mental-breakdown behavior. I have become the worst stereotype of a scorned woman. If I can even be called one. What marks the rite of passage from girl to woman? A certain age? A broken heart? A fed-upness? A real bra? Using pads to catch post-period spotting instead of stuffing your underwear with wads of toilet paper?

I don’t know exactly what it takes to be considered a woman, but I know that right now, as I sit here in my parked car outside his house, baseball cap hooding my face, eating a jumbo bag of honey mustard Kettle Chips, I feel like one. Or at least angry enough to be one.

I didn’t even know it was his fucking birthday when I decided to drive over here. And I didn’t even really decide to drive over here. The thought no sooner entered my mind than my hands were on my steering wheel, zero lag time between thought and action. I drove over in a trance, the traffic lights blurry as I manically considered what I believed to be genuine possibilities based solely on the one look we shared at the diner. I can text him that I’m out front of his house and he’ll run into my arms. He’ll pour himself into me, oozing confessions between sloppy kisses—how much he’s missed me, how much he needs me, how much he can’t live without me.

But then, I saw it. The HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner hanging in his living room archway, the handful of guests milling about, sipping cocktails and eating cheese cubes and looking like the forty-something crowd that they are—people with mortgages, with kids, with good insurance and book clubs and tips on how to keep a ficus alive. And him, in a BIRTHDAY BOY hat, holding a Corona and greeting guests.

I sat and I watched. And watched. And I’m still watching. What for, I don’t know. Some masochistic instinct maybe, where I need to hurt to know I’m alive. Or maybe it’s that I want evidence that he’s truly moved on so that I can too. Or maybe I just want a little entertainment, watching middle-aged middle-class people in their Sunday best clink glasses as they share the highlights of their mundane lives, that dinner with their in-laws was canceled or that they got good news about the questionable forearm mole they just had removed.

I pluck a potato chip from the bag and pop it in my mouth. I could tell Gwen. Or the whole party even. I could run in and spill all the details of our affair. Ruin a man’s life in a single speech. The thought of it makes my adrenaline spike. Is this what power feels like? Barbed and vicious and belligerent?

But I won’t do that. I’d never do that. Because I don’t want to ruin this man’s life. I want to be in it. It’s a truth so opposite of power. So powerless.

I get to the jagged crumbs at the bottom of the potato chip bag and shake them into my mouth, then I tilt the bag up again and tap it to get all the seasoning, then scrape the seasoning with my fingernail to get even more of it, then turn the bag inside out and lick the remainder of it off the foil. Surely all the answers are in this potato chip dust. I crumple up the bag and toss it at the foot of the passenger’s seat and for a split second I think Mr. Korgy’s looking at me, but when I look closer, I see that he’s just talking to a guest standing near the window. He laughs at their probably mediocre joke. I turn on my engine and drive home.

55

Another class period with Korgy where I’m ignored. He looks like shit at least—parched lips, puffy eyes, skin that’s yellow and gray at the same time—all of which I choose to believe are because of me. Because he can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t think without me. I cling to this as some sort of consolation prize. But like any consolation prize, it’s just a floppy ribbon reminder that you missed out on the real award, the gold cup trophy you actually wanted, that you’d proudly display on the fireplace mantel, or a shelf, or ironically use as a doorstop to show just how unimportant winning is to you. A convenient thing to show when you’ve won.

After class, I’m the first one out. I grab my things from my locker and hurry to my car. Just as I start it, there’s a hard knock on my window. I roll it down slowly.

“Yes?” I ask, and my tone comes out impressively even.

“I need a second,” Mr. Korgy says, then he scratches his scruff and looks at me like I’m the one who’s supposed to start talking.

“So what’s up?” I ask coldly. “I’ve gotta head to work.”

I catch a whiff of his scent and try to convince my body it doesn’t like it.

“Waldo,” he says, his tone patronizing. “You haven’t been turning in your assignments …”

“I’ve been busy,” I say, curt and clipped.

“I don’t care how busy you are,” he says. “Your education should come first.”

He runs his hands along his pants, trying to temper his frustration. I like that I’m getting to him. That I’m still able to affect him.

“Don’t let what happened between us distract you. I still want you to be able to take something from my class,” he says.

A sophomore couple crosses the front of my car, hands all over each other. Mr. Korgy cracks his neck and waits for them to pass.

“It’s important that you keep writing. Keep flexing the muscle. Keep doing what you love.”

I try not to laugh. “I don’t love writing. I loved your attention. I couldn’t give two shits about writing. I was using it to get close to you.”

“I understand that you’re upset.”

“I’m not saying that because I’m upset, I’m saying that because I mean it.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I saw that you loved it.”

“You saw what you wanted to see. Just like I did,” I say. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes. There is,” he says. “If you don’t start turning in your assignments, I will fail you.”

I hold a look at him. There’s something I taste on my tongue. Something I enjoy. Something bold and cunning and confident. I smile.

“No you won’t,” I say.

And then I drive off.

56

“We’ve heard so much about you,” Nolan’s father says. He looks exactly like Nolan plus two and a half decades. Even has the same floppy mannerisms, the ones that I’d attributed to Nolan not yet familiarizing himself with his recently grown body, but I guess he’s just got floppy genes.

“So much, dear,” his mother agrees. The “dear” feels habitual, not specific to me, just a term of endearment she uses on anyone younger than her. She embraces me with a depth of sincere affection that makes me uncomfortable, and I get a waft of freshly baked cookies and too much rose perfume.

His parents give me a brief house tour. They’re fully equipped with polite small talk and an invisible but palpable air of stability. It’s in their settled eyes, their understanding head nods, their courteous, boundaried phrasing. This explains Nolan. People who come from functioning families just don’t have the same charge as the rest of us. Functioning families make for boring, flavorless people who just go through the motions of life, never knowing what it really means to live it.

Or maybe that’s a false narrative I cling to in order to feel better about my dysfunction. My lot in life. Myself. Maybe coming from a functioning family doesn’t resign someone to a bland, muted, watered-down existence. Maybe it’s better. A lot better. Maybe that person learns how to navigate their emotions more effectively, and not be led by them or ruled by them or so disrupted by them all the goddamned time. Upended by them. Maybe that person learns how to communicate better, and how to curb impulsivities, and fit into systems, and be more okay, and grin even as bullshit is being shoveled into their mouth, and keep grinning as they chew that shit and swallow it, letting the sludgy stream slide down their throat.

We break out the board games and eat sliced fruit off a fancy porcelain platter. Nolan’s dad tells me about his accounting firm, and his mom tells me about teaching second grade, and midway through our third round of Codenames Nolan gives me a look and glances upstairs. This will be good for me. This will help me to move on. And it’ll be good for him too. It will help him gain experience, get more comfortable in his skin. This will be good for both of us.

“Think we’d better head up and do some homework before it gets too late,” Nolan says.

He takes my hand in his and I take one last look at Nolan’s parents through the staircase banister. They share a nervous but accepting parental look.

Upstairs, I take Nolan’s quivering virginity under his Star Wars bedsheets. Thought seventeen was too old for C-3PO. Guess not. Afterward, he’s sweaty and grateful, and I feel bad.

57

“Are you having fun?” Nolan asks. We’re at a party at his friend’s parents’ cabin up in Big Lake, complete with beer pong and sweaty, horny teenagers and an Alaskan father whose identity is in conflict, torn between wanting to be a responsible dad and wanting to be a cool one. A man who sets up a key-check at the front door to ensure that no one drives home drunk … from the booze he supplied the party with.

“You kids are gonna be drinkin’ anyway so might as well do it somewhere I know you’re gonna be safe!” he shouts, clinking beer bottles with his son.

We’ve been here an hour, and it feels like three.

“We can go if you’re not having fun,” Nolan says.

“No, this is great,” I lie.

“Good,” he says. “Just wanna make sure you’re enjoying yourself.”

I thought it might be nice to be the more wanted one, but it’s uncomfortable. To feel how eager he is to please me, to accommodate me. The unevenness reeks.

I try to make things feel more even between us by responding enthusiastically to his texts, throwing in cheery smiley face emojis I don’t stand behind, asking him questions from an AI-generated list of date conversation sparkers, but I’m starting to think that the air of any given dynamic is impossible to overcome with words exchanged, or gestures, or effort. That what a dynamic is exists in the inexplicable.

“We could … go upstairs?” I suggest, nodding up to the string of bedrooms, most of them with shut doors.

“Sure. Yes. Definitely.”

Upstairs, we get to it quickly. Our kissing has improved since we’ve gotten acquainted with each other’s noses and mouths and tongues. We’ve found our hero angles and know how to avoid the clunks and bumps of our bad ones. Our sex has gotten better too. Nolan has learned the value of foreplay and teasing my vagina before jamming his fingers into it. I have learned the value of faking it until I make it. A bit of spit until I’m actually wet, a couple fake moans until a real one pops out, and before I know it, voilà, we’re finished. Or, rather, he is, and on two occasions (including this one) so am I.

“That was amazing,” he says, still panting as we lie next to each other in bed.

Amazing is an overstatement, but good, yes. Our bodies are actually compatible and we can fall into a nice groove when he lets my hips take the lead. And his penis gets very hard. Surprisingly hard. The hardest penis I’ve felt. It’s a stark, mannish contrast to his boyish body—his rounded shoulders, his gangly limbs, his pokey hips, his soft, smooth skin (except for his back, where he could use a 10% benzoyl peroxide wash, but in the heat of things it’s not noticeable). I like his body and I like his penis and the technical elements of our sex are all there. So then why am I not?

“Waldo,” he says, perching himself up on his elbow.

I know what he’s about to say. The way he slowly takes in my features, milking the moment, really letting the pause sink in. Randy Julep’s done it and Paul Bornstein’s done it and now he’s about to do it. Let me know how beautiful I am … to him. To him. Always to him. Not realizing that this isn’t actually a compliment to me, but a way of showing that he’s the judge, the one with the eyes that discern the beautiful from the ugly, the one able to grant beauty where he sees fit. And I’m just the one lucky enough to have been granted it.

Every time it reminds me of that scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when Jim Carrey’s character kisses Kate Winslet’s character all over in that urgent, rescuing way after she makes some self-conscious comment about her appearance. He begs to keep that one memory. Just this one, he says, please just let me keep this one. Of course that’s the one he wants to keep, the one where the woman is insecure and he gets to be her savior.

“You’re so beautiful,” Nolan says.

And I wait for the “to me” to come. But it doesn’t. I appreciate this about him, or at least that he doesn’t say it out loud, but I still see a glint of a “to me” in his eyes and it annoys me.

Or maybe I’m making up the glint. Putting something on Nolan that isn’t there. Something that I secretly want to be there because it would make it easier for me to write him off. To feel okay about stringing him along. About using another person feeling good about me to feel better about myself.

There probably was no glint. Because Nolan is great. Not perfect, but great, which is better. More trustable.

I thank him and there’s a knock at the door from the next set of teenagers, so we throw on our clothes and we head downstairs, where Cool Dad smokes from a bong with his kid’s friends.

58

“Ow!”

“Sorry, zipper caught ya?” Mom asks. “A silk restraint, that’s what this is.”

Four hands, one zipper, and Mom and I still can’t manage to squeeze me into this dress. But I paid eighty bucks for it, sale price, and I already popped the tags, so we will have to find a way.

Mom grits her teeth and tugs the zipper so hard her hand shakes until finally it unsticks and zips all the way up. She helps me into my heels and I do a quick mirror check to make sure nothing’s ripped, snagged, or broken. Nothing is. No evidence of the hero’s journey that took place to get here. Just a girl in a pretty dress. A dress that’s completely catered to what Mr. Korgy likes.

I did good at first, refraining from checking the chaperone list, making sure to distract myself by walking out of school with Frannie or Nolan, and I probably could’ve kept with it if the list wasn’t pinned on the bulletin board right near the exit. Or if Nolan hadn’t gotten caught up talking with a friend. Or if Frannie hadn’t had to pee. But it was and he did and she did. And so three days ago, I caved. I ran my index finger down the list of teachers’ names, down down down, until at the very bottom I got to his. Theodore Korgy—scribbled in hurried, slanting cursive, as if it was impulsive, done quickly, his heart racing, when no one was around to see how manic he was while doing it. Just like how I checked it.

Suddenly the shift dress I’d planned on wearing was a trash bag. I went shopping that night and found a gown that was perfect. Deep teal, the color of the sweater Mr. Korgy compliments the most because it brings out my eyes. Strapless with a bustier because he loves my C-cup boobs—especially in the week before my period when they swell up, but I don’t have timing on my side here so the corset will do the trick. Sure, it’s not comfortable and sure, the smooshing will lead to sweating which will lead to a breakout, but I can deal with the revolting fallout later.

My hair is back in a messy ponytail, his favorite hairdo on me, and mostly out of my face except for a few strategically plucked strands to frame it, the strands he used to twirl around his finger. My makeup is what Mr. Korgy calls “natural” and I call “a lot”—dabs of concealer, pumps of foundation, strokes of brow gel, brushes of powdered bronzer and blush, pats of highlighter. His favorite rose shade of lipstick with a gloss coating on top, a shimmering champagne eyeshadow, a slick line of black eyeliner, and three coats of mascara.

And the shoes. Stilettos, four and a half inches high to show off the legs that he swore he loved so much.

It’s all for him.

There’s a faint “shave and a haircut” knock at the front door. Mom squeals and opens it. Nolan stands there, his hair slicked back with gel, an ill-fitting tux rental hanging like a box on his body, the corsage clipped to his lapel already half wilted. He holds a bouquet of roses out to me.

“What a sweetheart he is,” Mom says, pointing to him. “This is a good young man, Waldo. A very good young man.”

“I know,” I say. And I do.

“Ooh, I wanna get a picture of you guys.”

Mom hurries off to grab her phone while Nolan shuffles his feet.

“Wow, you look great,” he says. “But are you sure you’re gonna be comfortable in those shoes?”

59

“Sorry if my car smells,” Nolan says as he pulls into a parking space at the Marriott.

What do you tell someone when they’re looking for reassurance that you can’t legitimately give them? His car does smell. Of Funyuns and vinegar and old McDonald’s fries trapped somewhere in the purgatory that is a seat cushion crevice.

“It’s not that bad,” I say.

“You look so pretty in that prom dress,” he says, rubbing his hands on his pants. And as he leans over to kiss me, I force myself not to wince.

We were having sex last week in his bedroom while Back to the Future played in the background, and he said “I really like you,” which is what people say when they want to say “I love you” but think it’s too soon.

I tried to negotiate with my body. Convince it to make things easy. Who cares? I said to it. Who cares if he cares more? You’ll break his heart and he’ll get over it. Just enjoy a good fuck. Be present and feel good. Let yourself feel good.

But there was no pleasure to be felt. My body turned off. I was a block of flesh with no soul inside it. A fuckable ghost. As he railed me during Marty’s “Johnny B. Goode” guitar solo, I stared at the ceiling and tried to remember if I was out of Cocoa Pebbles and needed to pick some up on the way home. Afterward he asked if everything was alright. Said I seemed distant and that he was uncomfortable having sex with me like that. I said it was nothing, that I was just feeling a bit disconnected.

“Was it because of what I said?” he asked.

I assured him that wasn’t it, and that I was just tired, and he said alright.

We haven’t had sex since then. And as respectful and considerate as he is, I can tell it’s starting to get to him. His glances have been getting a little longer, his puppy eyes a little more pleading. He’s begging to be wanted. Desperate for it.

We head to the hotel ballroom, and I scan it the frantic way Jason Bourne would for a killer. I see flashes, just flashes. A hand on an ass. A head-tossed-back laugh. A girl who cares too much dancing with her date, who doesn’t care enough, his eyes bloodshot from pot. An overly serious DJ. A few teachers, scattered around and trying to look unassuming. But no Mr. Korgy. All this for him. Stupid heels that make my toes bleed, dress so tight I can barely breathe, and the hope. So much hope. Nothing hurts as bad as hope being met with reality.

I feel the sweaty heat of Nolan’s hands as he moves them toward my hips.

“I’ve gotta pee,” I yell over the music.

“I’ll wait to dance till you’re back,” he says.

“No need!”

I push open the double doors. Kids make out in the hallway and sneak sips of liquor from flasks. A hotel manager scolds an employee. I run to the bathroom, dizzy, and shut myself into a stall, tilting my head back so the tears don’t fall. I go to grab a strip of toilet paper, but the roll is empty, so I use a toilet seat cover instead, and the weird, wasteful center circle flaps over itself with each dab.

Fuck this. I’m not gonna be this weak. I can’t be this weak. My chest heaves with a cry but I swallow it down and head back to the dance. I shove open the double doors and scan the ballroom again—but this time for the person who does want me. For the person who treats me right. For the floppy, kindhearted person standing in the corner of the room bobbing his head haphazardly to the music.

I grab Nolan’s face and jam my tongue into his mouth, and when I’m done he looks shocked. Tousled. Satiated.

I take a step back and see Mr. Korgy leaning against the wall, arms crossed, lips tight, staring right at me.

60

“I’m so sorry,” he says as he pumps into me.

Mr. Korgy’s pants are around his ankles and his belt buckle jangles against his shoes with each pump. I sit on the counter, my dress bunched up around my waist and spilling into the sink.

“It’s okay,” I say, panting into his face.

“No, it’s not,” he says, between thrusts. “I’m so sorry.” Thrust. “For pulling away.” Thrust. “I can’t sleep …” Thrust. “Can’t eat …” Thrust. “Can’t focus …” Thrust. “Without you.” Thrust.

The proclamations of romance are nice, but the setting leaves something to be desired. Grubby tiles, occasional questionable wet spots on the floor, grimy toilet that gushes every twenty seconds from the trigger-happy motion sensor. I guess it’s fitting in a strange way. First winter formal. Now this. There must be something about high school dances. The sex-fueled pop music. The unbridled hormones. Or maybe I just look good in a dress.

I pull away from him. His eyes are slightly red, his hair slicked back with mousse. He smells different than he usually does. Tequila and black licorice.

“You’re the best part of my life,” he says. “I need you.”

“You can have me,” I say too easily. I’ve entertained hard-to-get fantasies where he says something like what he just said, maybe in the rain, maybe sans dick inside me, but similar verbiage. In the fantasies I play it coy and mysterious, giving some kind of “we’ll see” nonanswer, unspoken, just with a tilt of my chin or a coquettish look tickling the corners of my eyes. But now that he’s here in front of me actually saying the words, those fantasies are abandoned. I’m not hard to get. I’m already got. And I’m okay with it. This is the truth for me. This is reality.

“Oh, baby,” he says, pulling me into him. “Good, baby.”

He kisses my clavicle. Bites my ear. Cups my face. Devours me. I lean back and the motion sensor on the sink gets triggered and water starts gushing out of the faucet, pouring onto my dress.

Mr. Korgy lifts me off the sink while I continue riding him. He presses his body into mine and pulls mine into his with the rhythm of my riding, his back concave as he shoves himself as deep in me as he’ll go, like we can’t be close enough, like he thinks if he presses our bodies together tightly enough we’ll become one.

“Waldo, I’ve been a fucking idiot,” he whispers into my hair.

“Then stop being one.”

“Okay,” he laughs.

“Okay,” I laugh.

And we both keep laughing the way people do when they’re eager for some levity, the kind of seeking laughter that borders on maniacal.

And then, while we’re still laughing, I slow down my rhythm, swerving my hips the way he likes. His laugh turns into a moan of agonizing pleasure. I gradually escalate my riding to bouncing—a happy, gleeful, giddy bounce.

He moves to the toilet and sits on it while I straddle him. The motion sensor goes off. The toilet flushes another of its long, over-the-top flushes and he surrenders to me.

61

“So … did you have fun?” Nolan asks as he pulls up to my apartment, his hands prescriptively at ten and two.

“Yeah, I did,” I say, then I catch his disappointment. “And sorry … I didn’t mean to disappear on you.”

I can’t look at him, but I can feel him looking at me.

“Well you did,” he says. “I was worried about you.”

I hate that phrase. “I was worried about you.” Frannie uses it all the time. It skirts around the truth. Rather than own their own feelings, the sense of rejection or disappointment or whatever they experienced in reaction to something I did, they find a way of making themselves bigger and me smaller. I’m the one they have to worry about because they’re the adult and I’m the child.

“I was fine,” I say, unbuckling my seatbelt and pushing my door open, eager to get out of this conversation. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Hey,” Nolan says, stopping me. “I think we need to stop seeing each other.”

It’s not that I don’t agree with his decision to break up with me. It’s just that I’m surprised. I thought he liked me so much. I thought he was the chaser. And I thought the chaser always keeps chasing. But maybe they don’t. Maybe only chasers with low self-esteem keep chasing.

“Huh. Okay then,” I say, and the sting in my eyes takes me off guard. I’m not sure why it’s there. If it’s just that rejection hurts no matter who it’s coming from, or if it’s specific to Nolan. I really did think he was kind and good. I really did want to want him.

“Look, I really like you, you know?” he says. “And at first I thought you were shy. Or hurt from somebody else. Closed off. I figured you’d take some time to get to know. To drop your walls. But then I realized it’s just not happening. Because you don’t want your walls to drop for me. And I don’t know why. And I tried guessing for a while. But I don’t want to anymore. I realized I don’t need to know why. I’m a good guy, you know? And I don’t wanna waste my time and energy on someone who doesn’t care about me the same way I care about them. Simple as that.”

“That … makes a lotta sense.”

I ask if he wants to stay friends, a question I’ve never asked someone during a breakup, and he says he doesn’t think that would be a good idea for him. He doesn’t think it would be healthy. So I say okay and as I leave, the car door scrapes the curb. I apologize, and he says it’s just a door.

I cut across the lawn even though the sprinklers are going, heels slung over my shoulder as I twist the straps between my fingers. I hear Nolan’s car pull away and I turn back to wave him goodbye, but he’s already halfway down the street.

62

We’re back at Beluga Point the day after prom when he tells me he loves me, or at least apologizes for not saying it back to me after I said it, which feels like a step in the right direction.

“Hey,” Mr. Korgy says, turning my face toward him. “I just felt too guilty to say it. Afraid that saying it made me a bad guy.”

“You’re not a bad guy …” I say.

“On paper, yes, I am. On paper, I’m the worst kind of guy. And I didn’t want to face that. To accept it. But I’ve realized I’d rather be honest about being a bad guy than dishonest about being a good one.”

“What’s ‘on paper’ is just cold, hard facts with no context. No nuance. No subtlety,” I say. “I don’t know if what’s ‘on paper’ matters.”

He picks up a twig and tosses it toward the water. “Look, I’m not saying all this for you to defend me or reassure me. I’m saying it to own my actions. I’ve been lying long enough, it’s time I at least stop lying to myself. And you. And that starts with me telling you that I love you.”

He pulls me in for a hug, and I shut my eyes. There they are. The golden words. I let them pour over me, let them mean everything I’ve wanted them to mean. I breathe him in. Pine and musk and the faintest whiff of BO.

“I love you, too, Mr. Korgy.”

63

My tassel dangles in my face. I’m two seconds away from ripping the damn thing off when my name is called. I step forward, crossing the pop-up stage in the center of the football field. I reach for my diploma with one hand, extending my other to shake hands with Principal Sanders. His tired, uninvested eyes betray his huge false smile. What a strange performance, graduation. The Professor McGonagall dress robes. The ominously formal handshakes from adults, as if they’re welcoming you to the tribe, or warning you about it. The ugly italicized font on the diploma you’ll never look at again until someday your kid stumbles on it up in the attic and realizes they spelled your name wrong. The disgruntled younger siblings stuffed in the bleachers between moms who elbow them to pay attention and dads who record on their iPhones like it’s their life’s work. The forced goodbyes, fake I’ll miss yous and empty Let’s keep in touches. The lofty commencement speech by a twelfth grader you’re supposed to pretend has wisdom even though she’s saying things I’ve seen on doormats at HomeGoods.

I guess it’s no different than any other life milestone—an engagement, or a wedding, or a baby shower, or a funeral. All of life’s defining moments, reduced to performances.

Mid-handshake, Principal Sanders and I twist our bodies out to the audience so the official photographer can snap our photo. I hear Mom shout from the nosebleeds that I fucking rock and that I’m her girl. Then I see Mr. Korgy, sandwiched between other teachers, wearing his fancy purple cardigan and clapping big. He smiles at me, and my face lights up. The camera flashes.

64

“Sorry our celebration is a bit belated,” Mr. Korgy says, reaching his glass out to clink mine.

“It’s fine, I’m glad it worked out,” I say, reaching mine out to clink his.

And we clink and we sip and we smile and I pretend that I don’t have déjà vu. Sure, there’s the distinction of celebrating my graduation, but the rest of the outing feels oddly reminiscent of the way things were before—waiting five days for him to have a pocket of time long enough that he could drive to a town far enough so we could go to a restaurant obscure enough that we wouldn’t run the risk of anyone recognizing him.

Isn’t “I love you” supposed to mean something? I took it as a new development that might lead to a tangible shift in our dynamic. What kind of shift, I don’t know. But something. I assumed that by admitting he loved me, he was committing to me in some new way. I assumed love translated to me having more access to him. To some new level our intimacy could reach. Or at least a few more hours together here and there. But now I see it was just that … an assumption. He never said he’d have more time for me. Or that he’d try harder to make some for me. Or that he’d commit to me in any kind of new, more meaningful way. He only said that he loved me. Maybe it was just something he needed to get off his chest.

“Well thanks for being so understanding,” he says.

The life drains from my eyes and a prickly sensation trickles down my spine. Last time he said this, I doubted him. Doubted that he was actually complimenting me and not just conditioning me, trying to reinforce a behavior that made his life easier. This time, I’m sure of it.

65

By June, things with Korgy have settled back into a groove. A groove I know well. The same groove as before. Rushed visits on my lunch break at work or while Gwen’s on a playdate with Gregory, or picking him up from daycare, or getting brunch with a friend. Ducking down at stoplights. Hurried text exchanges that end abruptly and with no notice whenever he’s summoned back to his regular life.

When he finds the time to take me to dinner out of town, he tells me to order whatever I’d like, as if a piece of salmon can cure a broken heart. Maybe it can. I’ve heard omega-3s have a lot of benefits, maybe this is one of them.

I don’t order whatever I’d like, but I do order the second most expensive thing on the menu, usually a white fish. The first, usually a prime rib, would be too obvious. That I’m resentful and trying to take it out on him by forcing him to drain his teacher-salary pockets on a piece of protein I’ll shit out by morning. But the second most expensive item, that’s discreet.

“You okay?” he’ll ask, reaching across the table to caress the top of my hand.

“I’m fine,” I’ll say, in a tone so fake-polite-pick-me-girl that I want to rip my throat out of my body.

And yet I can’t help myself. Because last time I broke, last time I cried and complained and made a fuss, I lost him. I will not let that happen again. So I shove my concerns down. And my disappointments. And my grievances. And everything that isn’t my perky tits or my warm, wet vagina. Those are his. But everything else, everything that’s unappealing to him, that’s too needy and too emotional and too sensitive and too much, everything that might lead to another breakup, I keep to myself and I scream it into a pillow later.

I never ask him to stay even a minute longer than he says he can. I let him take phone calls from Gwen without saying a word, sometimes I even remind him to call her. “It’s been a while, you oughta give her a ring.” I hold him when he’s tired, I there, there him when he’s sad, I reassure him his limited time slots with me are more than enough, that we’ll make it work, together, as a team!

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he’ll ask. Bait that I know better than to take.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I’ll say.

And then the entrees will come and so will Mr. Korgy’s second glass of wine and my second glass of Coke and I’ll eat my food and drink my drink and laugh the same as I would if I didn’t have this palpable tension growing in me. It’s almost funny, how no matter how much you’re starting to hate someone, you can sit across from them and laugh while you have a nice dinner.

We have sex in the car—the driver’s seat lowered as far back as it goes. Usually I’m on top. I’ve gotten used to the feeling of Cheerio grinds digging into my kneecaps with each thrust. I dust them off with my hands after we’re done but the grinds leave little dents in my knees that last until Mr. Korgy drops me off back at home. And then, by the time he’s gone, so are they.

The intercourse itself has started to take on a blacker hue, for me at least, force underscoring each suck and hump and lick and swallow. That’s alright, I tell my body as the angry beads of sweat drip down my back, my forehead, my shoulders—anger is the truest form of passion.

“You’re so sexy,” he’ll say, sticking his finger in my mouth. I have to convince myself not to bite it off, but I do. I convince myself every time.

“Yeah?” I’ll whine in hot-porn-girl voice, wanting to spit in his face so instead letting him cum on mine.

I bite my tears down as I beg him to fuck me harder and harder and harder, secretly hoping that if he fucks me hard enough, he’ll fuck the resentment right out of me. He never does.

66

I tug my tampon out of me and wrap it in some tissues before stuffing it in my glove compartment, then wipe myself down with a half-dry tropical-scented Wet One from the pack I’ve had crammed in my center console for years, then shove the wipe in the glove compartment too. Glove compartments are scary places.

He lets me in through the back door. Tells me I look amazing and that we don’t have long, in that order. Always in that order. First the compliment, then the disappointment.

I look down at my outfit, the plaid miniskirt and collared crop top that I plucked from The Bin in the trunk of my car. “The Bin” is a strategy I started three weeks back when Mr. Korgy texted me on short notice to hang out and I was at the grocery store, in sweats with prickly legs and a bun of hair that was long overdue for a wash. By the time I went home and changed, I’d missed my window. I vowed to never again be unprepared, to never again miss an opportunity to spend time with him, so I started The Bin, a plastic bin in my trunk that I keep stocked with makeup essentials and a collection of tight jeans and short skirts and snug-fitting tops.

Today was The Bin’s day to shine. I got Korgy’s text twenty minutes ago, ducked out of work with a quick excuse, then cleaned myself up and changed into a brighter, shinier, refreshed version of me, all courtesy of The Bin. Voilà.

He pulls me in close by my ass cheeks and leans against the mudroom wall, grinding against me.

“Baby, that ass,” he says.

“You like it?” I ask, turning around and wagging it on him.

“Fuuuuck,” he says, moaning as I feel him grow.

We rush upstairs to the bedroom. Korgy shuts the door and kicks off his pants and boxers. I tug his bare cock up between my legs so he can feel my heat. He reaches down to tease me with his middle finger.

“I’m on my period,” I warn him.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I want your blood on me.”

He brings his finger to his mouth, covered in blood, and licks it up one side and down the other, then crouches down onto his knees and starts licking me. I lift my skirt to look at him. He smiles, blood smeared on his lips and cheeks like he’s having the best meal of his life. It’s not a creepy gesture, something out of a slasher film. It’s something deeper. More substantial. It’s evidence that I can cling to in my moments of doubt. That this is how much he wants me. That he wants even my gross parts.

He stands up, penis bobbing toward me, rests his hand on the small of my back, and impales me like it’s nothing. And I wrap my legs around him like it’s everything.

I rip off my shirt and bounce on his cock while he grabs some towels and spreads them out on the bed. He lifts me off of him, sets me on top of the towels, and slaps my tits with his bloodied dick.

“Slap my face with it,” I say.

“What?”

“Slap my face with your bloody dick.”

“Are— Are you sure about that, Waldo?”

“Do it. Slap me in the face with your bloody dick.”

And so he does. It makes a soft smacking sound when it meets my cheek and the blood splatters onto my eyelids and forehead.

“Do it again,” I say.

So he does.

“Again,” I say.

So he does.

There’s something deep in me that wants this, to be slapped by a dick covered in my own blood. I want the small smack of pain, the flick of the blood drops, the smell of metal. It’s disgusting, but it’s what I want. I don’t want poems. Quivering hands. Longing looks. Picnic blankets and Gerbera daisies and dimly lit dinners. I want so much more. Something truer. Uglier. I want to go to a shared place, shameless and foul enough that we can’t turn back. That we’re somehow united in it. That my mark on him is indelible.

He shoves himself into me again and I moan his name while I ride him, showing him just how badly I want him. Sex is the one place I can. The one place it’s okay. The one place where my needs aren’t too big and all of my yearning is acceptable. The one place where I can show how deep the well is within me. The void. The one place I can beg and whine and scream to have it be filled.

“Hello?!”

Korgy pulls out of me. His dick flails wildly through the air, coagulated clumps of blood flying off of it.

“Hello?” Gwen’s voice calls out again.

“Shit,” Korgy says, looking at me, panic-stricken.

“Shit,” I say back, equally panic-stricken.

“Babe?” Gwen calls out.

Korgy runs into the restroom, wets a hand towel, and scrubs the blood off himself. He chucks the hand towel on top of the bed towels and scoops them all up in one quick motion.

“The closet. Get in the closet,” he tells me.

Korgy dumps the towels into the corner of the closet and I tuck into the other corner and crouch down, huddling over my knees as footsteps make their way up the staircase. I try tugging the sliding door shut but it’s on the wrong track, so I push that door away from me and grab another one, which is still wrong, and then re-push and re-pull until I get this home-cooked slide puzzle challenge right, all those seasons of Survivor culminating in this one moment. But will I win immunity?

“Teddy!” Gwen shouts.

I peer through a crack in the closet doors as Korgy throws on his clothes, grabs his iPad from the nightstand, and shoves his earbuds in.

“My skirt!” I whisper, spotting it on the other side of the bed. Korgy kicks it under the bed then leaps onto it just as Gwen swings open the bedroom door.

“Oh. Hi, babe,” Korgy says, pretending to be startled, even taking an earbud out to sell it. Nice touch. Talented liar.

“Did you not hear me? I was literally screaming for you.”

“No, I didn’t hear, sorry,” he says, taking out the other one. “Had music on while I was catching up on some reading.”

“I was screaming.”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear. Everything okay?”

“Bethany’s dog got sick. Wish she would’ve at least called me before I drove all the way over there.”

“Right, right.”

“Are you okay?” Gwen asks.

“Yeah, fine,” Korgy says too quickly and with a jumpiness that would give any woman pause. Gwen studies him.

“Ohhh, I see …” she says, a realization dawning on her.

“What?” Korgy asks innocently, then catches up to her. “Oh, you think I was … ? I wasn’t— I honestly wasn’t.”

The pulse of an oncoming gush of blood swooshes through my uterus, then through my cervix. I cup my hand underneath as the blood oozes out, gelatinous clumps and mucousy, goopy strings of it. I try to contain the slimy flow in my hand but it slides through my fingertips and onto the carpet underneath me.

“It’s okay,” Gwen says, unbuttoning her top as she inches closer to the bed. “Turn it back on. We can watch together.”

“Baby, I’m— I’m really beat.”

“Too beat for this?” she asks, snapping her bra strap. She kicks off her ballet flats and crawls onto the bed in her bra and jeans, back arched as she kisses her way up the length of Mr. Korgy’s jeans and moves her hands to his thighs. Another chunk of blood pulses out of my vagina and dumps into my hand as I watch the man I love be seduced by his wife.

“Baby, please. My mind’s just in work right now,” he says. Hurt flashes in her eyes and for a moment I feel like I’ve won. Until the sleeve of a wool turtleneck brushes my cheek and I remember I’m the one cupping my own period blood in her closet. Another chunk of blood surges and as it does, so too does the evidence from just minutes ago, the evidence I swore I would cling to in moments of doubt. The proof of just how badly he wants me. Here I am, in a moment of doubt, and suddenly the evidence seems thin. Useless. Who cares that he wants my blood on him? That’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

“Alright.” Gwen sighs, kicking off her jeans to prove a point. “I’m gonna shower. Please feed Gregory.”

“You got it.”

“Love you,” she says, attempting to throw it over her shoulder, but there’s a lingering hurt in her eyes that betrays her efforts. An unmistakable question mark that asks, Do you love me too?

“Love you too,” Mr. Korgy says unceremoniously, the way anyone says anything they’ve said a million times before. Gwen bites her lip, dissatisfied, and shuts the bathroom door softly behind her. The shower faucet creaks on. The water pressure sounds good even from here. Korgy looks over toward me, clutching his chest.

Whew, his eyes say.

I look down at the mess I made, the red, clumpy puddle on the carpet underneath me. “I bled on your carpet.”

67

“I can’t do this anymore,” I say. My tone is flat, my eyes glazed over with an eerie distance. Inside I’m still. There’s no urgency, no ache, no chaos.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, a hint of a smile in his eyes. He’s more amused than hurt, which is telling. He thinks I don’t mean it. That I’m just a little girl with a skinned knee and he can kiss it better.

I used to be that girl but I’m not anymore. She seems to have disappeared overnight, kidnapped from her bed. I woke up this morning from the light coming in through the curtains, and even though the sun was right in my eyes, I didn’t squint. I showered, changed, and put on my makeup with a robotic evenness. I drove to work, listening to nothing. As I pulled in to a parking space, the thought entered my mind. Today is the day I break up with him. There was no charge to it. No fear. No vengeance. No drama. No emotion at all. It was plain. It was simple. It was what I was going to do.

“Baby? What do you mean?” he asks, a nervous tickle in his throat like he’s starting to believe it. He sets his tea down on the coffee table, not bothering with a coaster. I don’t mind. Our table was seventeen bucks from Goodwill. It is ugly.

“This is not working for me anymore,” I say, the words coming out rote. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“But … things have been going well … I mean, I always wish we had more time, of course. Did you sleep okay last night? Are you tired?”

Mom used to say that to me. When I was a kid, six or seven, if I’d chuck a toy at the wall and scream that I wanted attention. Or if I’d hide in the corner of the bathroom in the hope that she’d come looking for me because she missed me, but then I’d watch the clock tick by—ten minutes, then twenty, then thirty—and she’d never come looking for me. I’d come out of the bathroom crying.

“You didn’t even know I was gone,” I’d say.

“Aww, are you tired?” she’d ask. And I hated her for it. I wasn’t tired. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t tired.

“I’m not tired,” I say to him. “I’m resentful. Or, I was resentful. But I’m not anymore. It went away. Now I’m just … nothing. I’m clear.”

“But you haven’t communicated any of that. You have to tell someone when you’re upset, or when you resent something they’re doing, so they have an opportunity to fix things.”

“You saw that I was hurting,” I say plainly. “But you pretended you didn’t because that would have made your life more difficult. Because then you would’ve had to actually do something about it.”

As the reality of the situation finally sets in, the begging begins. The repeated nos and pleases and I love yous, the promises of a better tomorrow. He rattles off the mistakes he’s made and how he plans to make amends, and all the great ideas he has for ways he can be better to me, ideas that I don’t hear because the words sound muffled and underwater. The way words do when you stop believing them.

“I’m gonna talk to a lawyer,” he says, his jaw setting with confidence, sure this will do the trick. “I— I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I didn’t want to say anything until I knew exactly how and when I’d do it, but fuck it. I’m gonna talk to a lawyer about leaving my marriage. I want to be with you. I have to be with you. And I can. We can. We can do it now. You’re graduated now, I’m not your teacher.”

“We both know you’re not leaving your wife and kid for an eighteen-year-old,” I say, my voice distant and measured. “Let’s be realistic, alright? This was an escape for both of us. An escape from the shittiness of our regular lives. But it’s not an escape for me anymore because now I know that I’m pursuing something I’ll never have. Kinda takes the fun out of the chase. So let’s just shake hands and accept that it’s time to move on.”

He cocks his head and his eyebrows bend in, like he doesn’t recognize me. I’m sure he doesn’t. I don’t either. I stare at him. Unblinking. Blank. His expression caves in on itself and instead of shaking my hand he collapses into me, telling me how determined he is to make this work, and how he won’t be able to handle it being over, and how much he needs me, and how much he loves me. And still, I feel nothing.

68

SUNDAY

MR. KORGY, 9:59PM: We can figure this out. We’re good together.

MR. KORGY, 10:46PM: Please give me a chance to make this right.

MR. KORGY, 11:02PM: Baby?

MR. KORGY, 11:04PM: Please just talk to me.

MR. KORGY, 11:05PM: Please?

Missed call—Mr. Korgy (4)

MONDAY

VOICEMAIL #1—“Hey lady, it’s me. Uhh, I’d love to meet up, if you’re up for it of course … I hope you are. I was caught pretty off guard but I really want to talk this out with you now that I’ve had a chance to think. Call me back. Okay. Bye.”

MR. KORGY, 1:52PM: Just want to make sure you’re ok? Would love to talk this all out with you if you’re open to it.

WALDO, 2:48PM: we already talked.

MR. KORGY, 2:49PM: Right! Right. Yes we did. But I think there’s a lot more to say. There’s certainly a lot more I want to tell you from my end, if you’re open to hearing it …

MR. KORGY, 3:03PM: I’m here if you want to talk more. I can make time whenever.

MR. KORGY, 5:55PM: Just thinking of you.

MR. KORGY, 7:38PM: Still thinking of you.

MR. KORGY, 10:10PM: Goodnight, beautiful girl.

TUESDAY

MR. KORGY, 8:01AM: Good morning! Hope you got a good night’s sleep. Can we meet up for coffee?

MR. KORGY, 8:13AM: I could spend the whole day with you really, if you want. I can find a way.

VOICEMAIL #2—“Hey beautiful, I’m in your neck of the woods actually. Just figured I’d get some errands done around here while I wait to hear back from you. I’d love to meet up with you so we can talk. I can pick you up? Or you can meet me somewhere. Wherever you want. Okay. Talk soon. I hope. Bye.”

VOICEMAIL #3—“Hey lady, I’m just kinda bobbing around town until I hear from you. Gimme a call when you get a chance. I could stop by the mall if you’re working? We could talk on your lunch break or something? Let me know. Woop, just saw a family of deer on the side of the road. Pretty cute. Anyway, talk to you later. Bye.”

MR. KORGY, 6:58PM: Just want to make sure you’re getting these? I called you a couple times too but know voicemails can take a minute to show up …

MR. KORGY, 8:06PM: Okay I can tell you’re angry. But just talk to me about it, okay? There’s no need for the silent treatment. We should talk about this.

MR. KORGY, 9:00PM: Are you there?

MR. KORGY, 9:16PM: Whatever. Fine. Do what you want. All I’m trying to do is talk this out like an adult.

MR. KORGY, 10:02PM: I’m just scared. You’re never like this. I’m worried.

MR. KORGY, 11:11PM: Okay goodnight. I hope you find some clarity on whatever it is you’re looking for.

WEDNESDAY

VOICEMAIL #4: “Hey baby. I’m … embarrassed. I’ve never, um, I don’t know, I’m … I’ve never left a voicemail like this. I’m just … shaky. Jittery. My hands are literally trembling. Like I’ve had 12 cups of coffee. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat anything. I’m a wreck. Please call me back.”

VOICEMAIL #5: “Waldo, please talk to me. I’m dying to hear from you. Please don’t keep doing this to me. I’m … I know I sound desperate. I am desperate. I need to talk to you. Please. We can work this out.”

MR. KORGY, 4:41PM: I was already sure of it but these past few days have proven it to me even more. That I need to end things with Gwen to be with you. Because my God I can’t live without you. I need you.

MR. KORGY, 4:57PM: [Link to YouTube video of “I Need You” by LeAnn Rimes]

MR. KORGY, 4:59PM: (That was supposed to make you laugh, but also I mean it …)

MR. KORGY, 7:12PM: Okay but seriously baby, I get that you don’t want to talk, and that’s okay. Let me just say some things that I need to say to you. Things that you deserve to know.

MR. KORGY, 10:08PM: I got married out of a sense of obligation. It never should have happened in the first place. That’s not a good reason to get married. To do anything. Obligation. For the longest time, I told myself I’d propose to Gwen after my career got going, after life made more sense, whatever excuse I could use to drag my feet just a little bit longer. But then I saw how much it was hurting her, the waiting. She kept asking to get married, begging, saying how much she needed it, to feel safer and better and happier, and I figured, we’ve been together for so long, she supported me for several years, she let me pursue my lofty creative ambitions. I owe it to her to give her this one thing. I ignored that snag of doubt in my gut, the snag that knew we really weren’t a perfect match, that I couldn’t communicate with her the way I dreamed of communicating with a significant other, that there was some discrepancy between her and me, that she took in life a different way than I did. I ignored all of that and I threw my life savings into an engagement ring, and her parents threw us a wedding with a fancy cake and overpriced floral arrangements and wedding food that tasted like airplane food. And we said our vows and smeared cake in each other’s faces and that night, my head hit the pillow and I felt proud, for being a good guy. I thought, “I did the right thing. For her. She’ll be happier now.” But then she wasn’t. She was no happier. In fact, she seemed more miserable, maybe because she was slowly realizing the thing that she thought would make her happier, the thing she’d been pinning all her happiness on, actually made no difference after all. And so her misery became my misery. And yet neither of us said anything. Just kept taking smiley pictures for her to post on Instagram with happy captions about her “darling hubby.” Meanwhile, behind closed doors, our dinner conversations got quieter and quieter. Then one night after work she said she wanted to talk with me, and I thought, “This is it. This is the divorce talk.” And a part of me, as ashamed as I am to admit it, felt a tiny spark of hope. But instead she told me she wanted a baby. Needed one. She was convinced and adamant, and her eyes lit up in a way they hadn’t in months. I never wanted kids, she knew that, but I started to feel like I had to give her one. Out of obligation. So I did. And this time it did work. She actually got happier. But I didn’t. I adore the little guy, more than anything, but he didn’t save our marriage. Just distracted us from it. And that was enough for Gwen. So I tried to convince myself that it was enough for me, too. “Who’s that happy, anyway?” I’d ask myself. “Is anyone? Maybe life isn’t about happiness, maybe it’s about responsibility. Something you endure, for the sake of your family.” So that’s the philosophy I threw myself into, like if I could just fill all my time performing my dad duties and my husband duties, I’d have no time left to even consider myself let alone my discontent, let alone do anything about that discontent. So I changed diapers, and did daycare drop-offs, and washed binkies, and hung out with Gwen’s vanilla friends, and took her shopping at Lululemon so she could pick out workout leggings for her Saturday morning yoga class that I’d drop her off at and pick her up from while Gregory sat in his carseat throwing Cheerios at me and crying that there was no new episode of Wonderoos on his iPad. And I sat there enduring all of it with a smile slapped on my face, why? Because I felt obligated. Then you entered the picture and I woke up. For the first time in years, I woke up. Because I wanted something. I didn’t feel obligated to something. I wanted something. You. I just. Wanted. You. And I still do. And I’m realizing, I’ve lived so much of my life out of this place of obligation. And I almost died inside from it. And I can’t do it anymore. The only person I’m obligated to is myself. I owe it to myself to live my life for myself. I’ll be a better ex-husband than a husband, no longer quietly teeming with indignation. And yes, it will be complicated, but ultimately I will be a better father to Gregory, more present, more lighthearted. I can be better for them if I do this for me. I won’t be going through the motions and gritting my teeth. I need to do this. For me. I owe it to myself to be with you. I’m leaving Gwen tomorrow.

WALDO, 11:05PM: lol you’re not gonna leave your family for me

MR. KORGY, 11:06PM: Watch me.

THURSDAY

MR. KORGY, 7:38AM: Just woke up. Feeling strong. I’m gonna do it tonight, Waldo. I’m gonna end my marriage, but I need to know you’re still in this with me. Are we doing this?

MR. KORGY, 10:22AM: If you’re in, I’ll book us a room at the Captain Cook hotel for tonight. You can meet me there at 9:30 pm. I’ll put your name on the reservation too so you can check in if you get there first

WALDO, 10:28AM: (…)

WALDO, 10:33AM: (stops typing)

MR. KORGY, 10:41AM: Baby, I see you typing. Are you here?

MR. KORGY, 10:45AM: Where’d you go?

MR. KORGY, 10:58AM: Are you here?

WALDO, 10:59AM: see u at the captain cook, 9:30 pm. 9:31 pm, I’m gone.

69

I thought I was over Mr. Korgy, and yet, here I am, lying on the fluffy comforter in this Captain Cook top-floor hotel room, wearing a slinky red lingerie slip and waiting for his arrival.

I was icy at first. Numb and disconnected. Then he started to clamor, and grovel, and scramble, and the iciness from the breakup began to thaw, making way for a brand-new, bright and shiny feeling. Power. Young power, just a sprout, the kind with a giddiness to it. A tickled sense of amusement. I’d thumb through his strings of frantic texts on my breaks at work, or play his stuttery voicemails while I forked a TV dinner into my mouth, and I’d smirk at the irony. All it took for him to want to be with me was me no longer wanting to be with him.

But then the text came through. The one where he said he’d leave his wife for me. And he seemed so convicted. And I bent. I didn’t want to. I told myself not to believe it. That it was, at best, bait to rope me back into the dynamic that would return to its usual form as soon as I took it, and at worst, something he’d say he didn’t mean come morning. But the morning came and he was still so sure. And I couldn’t help it. I wanted to believe him. And even if that wasn’t the same as believing him, it was good enough to get me to the hotel.

The beep-beep of his key card comes at 9:30 on the dot. The door swings open and Korgy stands in the middle of the doorway, backlit, purple rings under his eyes, gaunt skin, ten pounds lighter in less than a week. Even his hair looks tired.

“I did it,” he says, stunned. “It’s over.”

He lets the door shut behind him. And then it all comes pouring out like soda out of a shaken can, tears and snot and sweat flying out of him, leaking down his cheeks and onto his shirt as his chest convulses in violent contractions.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I say, pulling him into a hug.

“She was so confused,” he hiccups. “She just kept saying ‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand.’ ” Hiccup. “I said this would be better for both of us and for Gregory too. And I know it will be. I know it will be. But it’s still the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

He sobs into me and onto me and all over me. His whole body shudders and jerks with the trauma of what he just went through. I pat him on the back while his bodily fluids—albeit not the ones I expected—pour all over my lingerie until, finally, he grows quiet as he softly falls asleep.

70

I wake up enveloped by Korgy’s hairy arms, his belly heaving against the small of my back as he snores in long, rhythmic strands. I feel his hot breath on my neck and shut my eyes to savor it.

I waited so long for this. And now here we are. Together. Really together. No more time constraints or guilt-ridden rendezvous. Just a regular couple, able to fall asleep in each other’s arms the way regular couples do.

I feel something wet on my neck and press my finger to it, then bring my finger to my mouth and lick Korgy’s tangy drool. It’s not as sweet as I expected. Kind of rancid. Kind of gross. Just like I wanted. All the parts of him. Even the gross ones.

I turn around to face him. To take him in, up close and unhurried. The fine lines and wrinkles. The enlarged pores, the tired eyes. I see the weight of him. I can feel how much life he’s lived. It’s humanizing and, for some reason, it makes me sad.

I brush his sweaty hair behind his ear and wipe the rest of his drool with the sheet. He keeps snoring and I keep watching him. Mr. Korgy. The one I’ve wanted for so long. And now, finally, I have him.

71

Mr. Korgy wakes up around eleven by the sound of his own snoring.

“What was that?” he asks.

“Your own snore,” I say.

He laughs and wipes the crust from his eye then glances at the clock. “Whoa, we slept in.”

He apologizes for being such a mess last night, and I tell him it’s alright. That I understand. That it’s been a lot. That it’s been hard.

“Still,” he says, shaking his head, then he kisses my neck gently and pulls my hair behind my shoulders and tells me he can’t believe this is actually, finally happening, and I agree.

There’s so much I want to talk about, so much we need to unpack, but it all feels too weighty for 11 A.M. So instead we share how we each slept—him, better than he expected, me, decent enough—then we move on to discussing the weather. “It looks pretty cool out.” “Fifty-nine.” Then we discuss what we want from room service. And then we order room service. And then we discuss how excited we are for room service to arrive.

“Those oatmeal pancakes sounded pretty good.”

“So did your Denver omelette.”

“Did you get homestyle potatoes?”

“No, toast. Did you get potatoes?”

“I did. Wanna split both?”

“Yes.”

The food arrives and we eat, then I sit in Korgy’s lap and initiate a bit of frottage until we’re both worked up enough that we undress and move to the bed. As I sop up his cum with a towel, he blushes and asks if I can put in my earbuds while I presume he takes his morning shit, but I do him one better and take a walk around the lobby, even stopping for a cup of cucumber water by the reception desk since I’m not familiar with his shitting patterns so have no idea how much time he needs.

“You okay, dear?” the receptionist with the pearl earrings asks in a tone that lets me know she doesn’t think I am. I assure her that yes, I’m fine, great even, and then I make my way back up to the room.

“So what should we do today?” Mr. Korgy asks, biting into a crisp piece of bacon. “I mean, assuming you want to spend the day together …”

I tell him that of course I do, and he suggests we take a walk, or drive out to Wasilla to get some food or catch a movie.

After we check out of the hotel, we wind up doing all three. First the walk, then an early dinner at some hole-in-the-wall Thai spot, then the movie.

The walk is lengthy and the conversation gushes, all the things we’ve been waiting to talk about spilling out, dovetailing with each other. Korgy says that he thought I’d never talk to him again, and that the last few days were the scariest of his life. I apologize but he says I shouldn’t. That he needed the kick in the ass. He starts rattling off plans animatedly, and I wonder if it’s because of the excitement about his new life with me or if it’s just the spike from his three cups of breakfast coffee.

“I’m gonna give Gwen some space,” he says. “Let things cool off. I wish I had the balls to be totally transparent and tell her why I left, I know I owe her that … but that will just take some time, I think.”

He says the reality of the situation would probably be too painful for her, that he wants to have mercy.

“Also I don’t think she’d understand,” he says. “I mean, frankly I still don’t in some ways. Still can’t believe it … But life is weird, right? We can’t help who or what we love, who or what we want. Might be the most honest thing about people—what we want.”

We talk about our plans moving forward, for how and when to integrate the other into our lives, a topic I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never even thought about. When I’d fantasized about us, I’d always just thought about us. Him and me. The bubble. I’d never zoomed out. Expanded the context. Thought about what it might be like to hang out at backyard barbecues with his friends and their kids. Or going out to dinner with his seventy-year-old mother, attempting to carry on some form of socially acceptable dinner conversation, the content of which I have no fucking idea.

“I don’t think we have to rush in to telling people,” I say.

By the time we sit down at the Thai place, the conversation slows. They surprise me, the lulls. Not charged. Not giddy. Not loaded. Just empty lulls that stretch in length and that we both try to hide by studying our menus very intently, discussing food for the second time today.

“The chicken satay looks pretty good.”

“Mmm. Yeah.”

Have we really already said everything? There was so much pent up, so much that needed dissecting and exploring, this profound life shift for the both of us, and we covered it all in a few hours?

“I’m leaning pad see ew,” he says.

“Cool. I’m thinking tom kha kai.”

Every time we’ve been together before this, we’ve been racing against a ticking clock, trying to hide so we don’t get caught, shoehorning all of our feelings for each other into hungry sex and hushed conversations, our limited access to each other fueling our desire even more, a sexual supply and demand. Every second was risky and dangerous, frenzied and exhilarating. But now there’s so much space. And so much time. And so much of each other. Scarcity is tension. Excess is … whatever this is.

“And do we share the chicken satay as an appetizer?”

“Sure.”

It’s strange talking about such trivial things with him today. Domestic, logistical things that seem anticlimactic given the circumstances it took to get to them. The odds we were up against. The obstacles we overcame. The nine grueling, nail-biting, adrenaline-charged months of up-and-down whirlwind on-again-off-again will-we-won’t-we chaos, all to talk about chicken satay?

We play footsie under the table and I feel an uptick in my heart rate, so I try to take things a step further by moving my foot to his crotch, but then the food arrives. The chicken satay’s lukewarm and a little chewy, but the mains are good.

We get to the theater and sit in the back row. We shake a box of Raisinets into a jumbo bag of buttered popcorn and Korgy gives me his sweater since I’m cold. He occasionally whispers his assessment of the movie into my ear—a well-delivered line here, a bad cut there. It’s a little distracting but I don’t mind since the movie’s boring.

By the time we leave the theater, there’s still a bright sky due to Alaska’s bloated daylight hours in the summertime, and my soul feels the bloat.

“Our first full day together,” Mr. Korgy says as we get in his car. He elbows me like he’s being playful but his eyes are scouring and needy. “I hope you’re not gettin’ sick of me …”

I assure him that I’m not as a tight ball twists in the pit of my stomach. Must be the buttered popcorn.

72

The Captain Cook, I realize, was the one-night-only I-just-left-my-wife deluxe hotel special, the I-want-to-impress-you splurge, the let-me-convince-myself-I-made-the-right-choice-by-treating-myself-to-a-one-hundred-percent-goose-down-comforter-and-room-service-pancakes extravaganza. This, the Bird Creek Motel, is the reality. A dingy room that reeks of must and has a left-behind half-empty carton of sour milk in the mini fridge.

“So, it’s not not the Bates Motel,” he says, force-laughing as we examine the room, “but I figure it’s fine short-term. Can’t imagine it’ll take me longer than a week or two to find a decent apartment.”

I lie that it’s kind of charming even as I stare at a questionable stain in the shape of Texas on the tattered burgundy carpet. He calls me out for lying, and we laugh, and I say that even with my white trash background, this is unsavory, and we laugh some more, then we lift the mattress to unironically check for bedbugs but instead find a plastic pen bearing the motel’s logo leaking ink onto the top of the bed skirt.

“Well, it’s not bed bugs,” Korgy shrugs.

“It’s not bed bugs,” I agree.

73

The first few days at the motel are long and sprawling, spent tangled in each other’s arms on the bed with the quilted comforter folded down because we don’t trust it. I’ve called in favors and had my shifts covered at work so that I can indulge in the basking. We order delivery for every meal, and between meals we have long talks and sleepy, warm sex and watch movies from the 1940s—His Girl Friday and Rope and Woman of the Year—until we order the next meal. After sex or before it or sometimes during, Korgy looks at me and says something romantic. “I’m so happy we’re together” or “You make me feel better than I’ve ever felt before” or “I love you so much it scares me.” And I swallow his words, let my body fully digest them and get high off them, and then regurgitate them right back to him so he can do the same.

By the third night, I finally need some fresh air and alone time. I try to take an evening walk but Korgy says he might as well stretch his legs, so we wind up doing that together too.

74

I’ve returned to work so that I don’t lose my job. I come straight to the motel every night after I get off, sometimes bringing him dinner, whatever has the shortest line in the food court at the mall, or something quick on the drive home, Chipotle or Bear Tooth or BiscuitClub.

“Hi beautiful,” he’ll say when I walk in the door, and then he’ll point out whatever new addition he made to the place to make it feel more homey. A ceramic-potted cactus on the credenza, a citrus-scented three-wick candle on top of the toilet tank in the bathroom, or cheap blackout blinds suction-cupped to the windows so that we can sleep better without the light pouring in through the thin curtains.

But today when I swipe my key card, it’s not just a plant or a tchotchke waiting for me. There are dozens of large brown boxes piled on top of each other, some of them on the bed, some of them on the corners of the credenza, many of them opened with household items spilling out—grilling tools and face razors, swim trunks and computer keyboards. There are so many boxes that there’s only a narrow pathway to access the kitchenette or the bathroom or the desk in the corner of the room. The desk that Korgy sits at, hunched over his laptop, typing rigorously as the glow from the screen lights up his rabid, strung-out face.

“What happened?” I ask.

“One sec.”

He keeps typing, and typing, and typing, until he lands at the end of his sentence and theatrically punches the period key.

“Whew, sorry, didn’t wanna lose the thought,” he says. “Hi, baby.” He gets up to kiss me and a box topples over.

“What’s going on?” I ask again.

“Gwen texted,” he explains, resetting the box. “Said that she put all my stuff out on our front lawn, and that if I didn’t grab it it’d be at Goodwill in the morning. Didn’t even text me back when I asked if I could at least see Greg when I went to get it.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“You know what, it’s fine. It’s totally fine,” he says, sitting back down to resume his typing. “She’s in a tough spot and I get that. And she’s taking it out on me, and I get that too. But I know that eventually whatever needs to be ironed out will be ironed out. Custody, whatever else … it’ll get figured out. It’ll all be fine. And in the meantime, it’s fine too. Better than fine. It’s good. This is good for me. I need time to settle in to my new life. My fresh start. This is my second chance, you know? My opportunity to pursue my own wants, my own needs, my own dreams.”

“Uh-huh …”

“I’m getting back into my novel,” he says, picking up his printed-out copy from the edge of his desk and wagging it in my face. “I’ve been typing on it for the past five hours. Can’t stop. It’s just flowing. Absolutely flowing.”

75

I head home for the first time in weeks to grab some fresh clothes. When I walk in the door, the apartment is glistening. Or, as glistening as a dumpy dingbat from the 1970s with a ripped couch and a flickering light can be. No dishes in the sink, no overflowing trash bin, no dust bunnies crawling across the linoleum like miniature tumbleweeds.

“Where ya been, hon?” Mom says over her shoulder as she scrubs the countertop. “You’re hanging out with that Nolan boy a lot, huh?”

“Uh … yeah.”

“Oh, goody. I’m tellin’ ya, that kid has class. Absolute class.”

I dump my backpack on the floor and take in more of the place. Shiny countertops and floors, clutter-free surfaces, the smell of fresh laundry wafting through the air.

“What’s the matter, doll, why you lookin’ at me like that?”

The only other time the house was this clean was the summer after I turned ten, when Allan, the male nurse, proposed to her. Mom got all giddy and suddenly became the version of herself she could never manage to be for herself, or for me. She did a deep clean of the house, made a car payment instead of blowing her paycheck on the usual Burlington Coat Factory shopping spree, took us to Goodwill to find some new furniture, even signed me up for the gymnastics classes I’d been wanting to take. It was an exciting time. For the month or so that it lasted. Until Allan left town with no warning and never came back. I tried to comfort Mom, tell her Allan was kinda creepy anyway, like all male nurses. But she was already too deep in her spiral. The house got dirty again and the gymnastics classes were dropped before the eight-week session was over. I never even got to try the uneven bars.

“Sit down, sweetheart, I’ve got somethin’ to tell ya,” Mom says. She guides me to the kitchen table, yanks up the drop-leaf, and sits down opposite me.

“So, Tony started acting kinda strange and I got that awful nauseous feeling in my gut, thought I smelled a breakup comin’. So of course I start pullin’ out all the stops, trying to keep him, wearing my good perfume, my new panties, strip eyelashes, all of that crap. I was doin’ it all. And with all the anxiety I was not sleeping, not eating, running on coffee and Trident gum, the kind you’ve gotta pop out of the foil packs. Tastes like ass but makes your breath smell good, go figure. So then I’m workin’ the late shift one night with Margie, right? And she goes, ‘Hon, are you alright? You look like you haven’t slept in ages.’ So I tell her what’s goin’ on and she tells me I oughta join her for some sex-and-love-anonymous meetup group she’s a part of. And I’ve got nothin’ better to do so I join her, right? And there’s people telling spiels about ramming their cars into walls after breakups, sneaking in their husbands’ trunks to catch them mid-affair, calling their S.O.’s workplace fifty times a day, and each time I’m thinking, ‘Hey that’s me! Hey that’s me again! They’re all a buncha fucked-up crazies just like me.’ Never felt more home than I did in that meeting.”

Mom digs in her purse and pulls out a glossy pamphlet with blue and purple lettering. She flips it open and shoves it in my face, tapping excitedly on a portion she’s already circled.

“Look at that,” she says, craning her neck to read it to me. “Typical signs of love addiction include: mistaking intense sexual experiences and new romantic excitement for love. Constantly craving and searching for a romantic relationship. An unhealthy fixation on another person which may include excessive fantasizing and obsessive compulsions, potentially even stalking.”

She looks up at me. “I mean, you remember how I acted with Gary. I’d call that stalking, wouldn’t you?”

She keeps reading. “Achieving a sense of euphoria from the fantasized relationship, feeling desperate or uneasy when separated from the partner, using the relationship to hide from negative feelings or situations, excessive interest in the new relationship to the exclusion of other interests and responsibilities, neglecting other key relationships in your life for the sake of pursuing the fantasized relationship.”

“Sweetheart!” Mom says, her eyes watery with recognition. “I figured it out. Or, rather, Margie figured it out for me, but still … They said in the meeting ‘Name it to tame it’ and a lightbulb went off for me. An epiphany. Can’t fix a problem you don’t know you have, right? Well now I know, so now I can fix it.”

“Wait, so what happened with Tony?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah. He broke up with me! Just like I knew he would! He starts givin’ me some crap about the timing not being right and how we should still be friends, manspeak for keeping his options open cuz he’s too much of a pussy to just say the truth, and then, in the middle of his speech, I just start laughin’. Just laughin’ right in his fuckin’ face. And he’s looking all confused, like, ‘I just broke up with this lady, just broke this lady’s heart, and here she is laughin’ at me. Is she crazy?’ And yet I just can’t stop, tears streaming down my cheeks I’m laughin’ so hard.”

“What? Why were you laughing?” I ask.

“Cuz he didn’t break my heart. Oh God no. My heart was broken a long, long time ago. By your father. Maybe even before then. Maybe by my parents. Or maybe I was born with a broken heart, I dunno. But I do know that all I’ve ever done is gone man to man to man, with my broken little heart in a bunch of pieces, asking him to fix it like a little girl asking a neighbor to buy her Girl Scout cookies. Begging. Pleading, you know? ‘Please buy my Peanut Butter Patties.’ ‘Please fix my broken heart.’ But the thing is, it’s not his responsibility. My broken heart. It’s my responsibility. It’s a thing I gotta fix. Can’t expect nobody to go takin’ care of you before you take care of yourself.”

“That’s … profound?” I say, more as a question.

“That’s good, isn’t it? Has a nice ring to it. Margie told me that. The thing about how my broken heart is my responsibility. She’s my sponsor. I have a sponsor, can you believe? Look at me go.”

Mom takes what seems like her first breath of the past five minutes and holds my hands in hers across the table, looking at me with an intensity that is equal parts convicted and unstable.

“Honey,” she says, “this program is gonna change my life. Already has.”

76

Korgy finds a loft apartment on the second floor of a building downtown, and we move him in on a Saturday afternoon. The place is small. A kitchenette attached to the living room, shoebox bathroom in the corner, cramped bedroom with a reach-in closet up the narrow metal staircase.

“Good thing I’m allowed to paint,” he chuckles, nodding at the walls. He’s insecure about the place. It’s strange, seeing him insecure in this way. I’ve seen him insecure in the past but it’s been the kind that feels performative, the kind where he’s being cute with his insecurity, amplifying it to seek reassurance. Like when he calls himself over-the-hill just so I’ll tell him that he isn’t. But this kind is different. There’s nothing performative about it. It’s the kind of insecurity you try to hide. The real kind.

We haul the boxes up to Korgy’s place and finish with the mattress, reorienting it on our shoulders several times to get it through the front door. We unpack Korgy’s books first, lining them up on a built-in shelf in the living room as we go.

“Ohmygod, you have to read this,” he says as he places a beat-up old copy of Don Quixote on the shelf. “Greatest novel ever written. Seminal.”

He shakes his head with a self-important reverence, like loving a piece of art is the same as creating it himself.

“Ooh, David Foster Wallace too,” he says, picking up his copy of Infinite Jest. “Though he can get heady.” He shows off another, This Side of Paradise. “This one’s got its moments. I actually think it’s better than Gatsby, though Fitzgerald might be a bit flowery for you …”

“Yeah, he’s not for me. What’s that saying? ‘The simplest explanation is almost always the best—’ ”

“Occam’s razor.” Korgy puffs out his chest like an arrogant schoolboy, proud to know the technical term.

“Sure,” I nod. “Occam’s razor. That’s how I feel about writing. I like writing that’s simple. Plainly stated observations, no fluff. I don’t wanna hear, ‘It was the kind of gray morning with air so frigid that it makes your bones wail like a creaking staircase. I wanna hear: ‘It was a cold Tuesday. My bones hurt.’ Get to the point, you know?”

“Mmm. Then yeah, Fitzgerald’s not for you.”

We finish unpacking his books and his postage stamp collection and his toiletries. I pause when I get to his bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier and run my thumb along the pecs of the bottle. Look how far I’ve come.

We order Chinese food and devour it—green beans with garlic, honey chicken, beef lo mein, and egg rolls—then we fuck on the mattress with our garlic breath and I almost ask him to brush his teeth but think it would ruin the moment so I say nothing. Afterward, we unpack all of Korgy’s clothes and end the night with his movie posters, all curled into rolls and popping out of an ill-fitting box.

“God, I’m so glad I’m finally getting to hang up my Clockwork Orange,” he says, unfurling the poster and splaying it out on the wall. “Gwen never let me. Said it didn’t go with the decor.”

“Luckily there’s no decor in here for it to go with …”

Korgy laughs, then hangs the poster on the wall, frameless, with dots of wall putty. The top right corner of it won’t stay put and keeps flapping over itself. Korgy smacks it with his hand. It finally stays.

“I love that you let me be who I am,” he says, looking deep into my soul. I smile, praying he can’t see the fear behind my eyes. The top corner of the poster flaps over again.

77

The first time I don’t want to have sex with him takes me by surprise. It’s late and we’ve just popped a pan of premade chocolate chip cookies into the oven. Korgy grabs my hips and leans toward me, my back pressing against the countertop.

“We have fourteen minutes till they’re done,” he says, then starts kissing my neck.

“Is that enough time?” I ask, more concerned about baked goods burning than reaching climax. A true tell.

“Who cares?” he asks, pulling my face into his and kissing me hungrily. I try to kiss him back, to match his fervor, but I can’t get there. He reaches out to knead my right breast, then pulls it out of my bra and sucks on my nipple while I stare at his Cindy Sherman wall calendar and wonder how it already got to be July.

He runs his finger along the nape of my neck and licks my collarbone as his other hand migrates down my belly toward my skirt, then slips under the waistband of it.

I already know I’m dry and he’s about to find out. I worry he’ll be disappointed, but his hand gets there and if he is, he doesn’t let on. Just brings his index and middle fingers up to his mouth, spits on them, and brings them right back down to me. Problem solved. Only my body knows the difference between self-generated material and manufactured stuff. And there’s something about the need for his extra support that makes a piece of me die.

He lifts me onto the countertop and I feel the cool tiles on my ass cheeks, and his round belly pressing against my pubic bone. I shut my eyes to try and get more into it as he slides his tongue into my mouth, combing the grooves of my teeth with it. Be here, be here, be here, I order my body.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“I’m here.”

He wraps my legs around his waist then walks to the staircase with me on him, but it’s too narrow for us to go on conjoined, so he peels me off. As we walk up, he presses my hand against the hard block in his pants and groans as he guides me to stroke it.

On the bed, he peels off my clothes and slides down my legs to go down on me, raking his hands down my thighs. I stare at the green ceiling. There are nice shades of green but this isn’t one of them. It’s the worst shade of green. Like vomit. I can’t imagine anyone intentionally choosing it. Strolling down the paint swatch aisle at Home Depot and nodding toward this one. Yep, I’ll take vomit.

“Hey, be with me,” he says.

“Sorry,” I say, pulling away.

“Not feeling it?”

“Um …”

“It’s okay if you aren’t.”

“No, I’m not really …”

“That’s totally fine. No pressure.”

“Thanks,” I say, but there is. From me.

The first time not wanting to have sex is a relationship milestone no one wants to stumble over. I certainly don’t. Is this how it happens? You don’t “feel it” once, then twice, then a third time, and a fourth, and a fifth, until you realize you “haven’t felt it” in months and that physical contact with your partner has been reduced to Netflix snuggles and goodbye cheek pecks? You start farting in front of each other and stop combing your hair, stop using your fingers to make each other cum and instead use them to pop each other’s back zits?

Korgy doesn’t seem to mind. Says it’s totally normal and not to stress, then the oven timer beeps and he takes the cookies out and eats three, but I’m not hungry.

“Why don’t we go for a swim? Try out the pool?” he asks. “Could be fun.”

We change into our swimsuits and head down to the indoor pool. Korgy swipes his key card three times, the keypad going red each time, then he blows on his key as if that will help and tries again, repeatedly with no varying result. I spot the aluminum pool hours sign.

“Closed at nine,” I say.

“Nine?!” he says, taking the closing time personally. “Most pools close at ten!”

I agree with him that yes, most pools do close at ten, mostly to relieve his outrage. It seems to work. Sometimes people just need to be agreed with.

Back at his place, Korgy gets a craving for a pizza, so he orders one while I sit at the edge of the bed in my swimsuit feeling empty and unfinished. I think about asking him to touch me again. To at least try to get my body revved up. But my body doesn’t want to be. It wants to be here, limp and quiet. And something about that terrifies me.

“Food shouldn’t take long,” Korgy says as he hangs up the phone and looks at me with a level of excitement that unnerves me when it’s about pizza.

“Twenty minutes. Half cheese, half meat lovers.”

I guess he’s moved on from salads.

78

Most nights, I come home from work hungry and tired. Korgy’s gotten into cooking, so half the time he’ll have something already prepared, beef tacos or salmon limone or pasta bolognese, his aunt’s recipe. He’ll take off his apron, kiss me on the cheek, and scoop whatever he’s made onto my plate while we unpack the grievances of our days—me complaining about an unruly customer, him complaining about some passive-aggressive text from Gwen or how hard it is to find a good divorce lawyer.

“I’m bracing myself for a hellish custody battle,” he’ll say, shaking his head. “So stressed I can hardly eat.”

And then he’ll take a bite of bolognese.

On days he doesn’t cook, we order in, a process with a gestation period of an hour. We can’t help it. That’s just how long it takes to order food. We’ll scroll through Uber Eats, trying to find “something new,” using keywords to search for something that sounds good, “Vietnamese” or “Mediterranean,” a moot point really because we already know that what sounds good never looks good and that we’re gonna land on one of our three tried-but-true spots—Lahn Pad Thai, Bear Tooth Grill, or Jersey Mike’s. We eat while he talks at me about some new development in his novel or an article he read in The New Yorker or how he thinks he’s stumbled on a very succinct way of describing free will, actually.

After we eat, we cuddle up and Korgy pops on a movie he wants me to see, some arthouse movie or foreign film that he reminds me we’d never be able to watch if not for his Criterion Collection subscription, as if the subscription is something exclusive you have to be invited into and not just something that costs eleven bucks a month. While we watch, he relays his thoughts like they’re the director’s cut commentary and I struggle to keep my eyes open. It is inhumane to be expected to read subtitles past 10 P.M. A week ago, I made a joke about sometimes wanting to shut off my brain and watch Survivor, but the joke didn’t go over well, so we watched Buffalo ’66 instead.

We eat cold cereal at the kitchen counter as a midnight snack then make our way to the bathroom where we squish together at the single sink, pretending we don’t notice the food particles and balls of plaque that fly off of each other’s strings of floss and hit the sides of the sink bowl, or, on unluckier occasions, smack onto the mirror, waiting to be wiped off with a crumpled bit of toilet paper and a little shame. Afterward, we fall asleep in each other’s arms. Or, rather, Korgy falls asleep, and I lie wide awake until three or four in the morning, my thoughts cyclical and whirring like the rickety fan that spins on the ceiling above me.

The mundanity is crushing. The routinization of domestic life, excruciating. A never-ending pile of bland logistics and interchangeable exchanges, each day bleeding into the next, nothing differentiating them.

To stave off the boredom and whatever lies underneath it, I’ve gone back to my shopping binges. I load up a big cart or two every night, at least a dozen sale items per cart, and wait for the multiple shipments to arrive while I nurse that all-too-familiar feeling of anxious uncertainty mixed with delusional optimism. That feeling that this thing might be the thing that makes all the difference. A feeling of hope. A feeling I miss.

But then the things arrive, and they’re all disappointing, and the stitching is bad, and the fabric is see-through, and they go back in the bag for me to return, my head hung low with regret.

I also find other ways to bring some element of newness to my days, “healthier alternatives” to shopping and Cheetos. Not that I think the good will cancel out the bad necessarily. Just for some variety. I apply for a manager position at work and get it. I buy a gym membership at The Alaska Club and go once or twice a week. I take up journaling. I even consider asking Frannie to meet up, but I don’t. Don’t want to reignite something that’s done. She’d been reaching out pretty regularly at the start of summer, and I’d blow her off, and then she’d reach out a little less regularly, and I’d blow her off, and then she just stopped reaching out at all. It’s funny, I thought our friendship would end dramatically, the insults we’d been saving up for years shot back and forth, tears and snot streaking our faces. But instead, the ending has been uneventful, petering out with almost no noise at all. Maybe that’s how you know it’s really an ending.

79

Mr. Korgy presses his morning wood against me.

“Your ass feels so nice,” he says, and I twist to avoid his morning breath. “My guy wants you.”

He recently started referring to his penis with this pet name that sends a chill down the nape of my neck every time.

“Baby,” he says, pressing himself into my ass crack. His hand cups my right buttock then slaps it as I try to remind myself that I am attached to this buttock, that it belongs to me, despite my feeling completely divorced from it. His hand slides under my shirt and he draws it up my belly and traces circles around my nipples. I negotiate with my body, asking it leading questions like a parent to their toddler. This feels nice, doesn’t it? Doesn’t this feel nice?

And my body responds like a toddler. Completely unable to see outside of itself. No. This doesn’t feel nice. I don’t like this. Get him off of me.

Still, I reach behind me and stroke his dick.

“Mmm, that’s my girl,” Korgy moans.

It’s not about indulging him. It’s about proving something to myself. That I’m not some haggard eighteen-year-old who already lost her libido. That I still desire him. That we’re not slowly shriveling into one of “those couples,” like roommates, who burp and bicker and can only agree on which flavor of Doritos is best (Cool Ranch). Who plug sex into the calendar and still can’t muster the drive to have it half the time, making up excuses neither of us believe but both of us pretend to—“I’ve got a headache” or “I think that shrimp was bad” or “I have to be up early.” Both willing participants in the performance of a healthy relationship, too scared to accept that it’s actually just a dead one.

Korgy thinks my worries are unfounded. Or at least that’s what he told me a few nights ago when I brought them up.

“Hey,” I said, pausing my brushing as if I was just realizing it at that moment and hadn’t been fixating on it half the day, “we haven’t had sex in a week.”

“Huh,” he said, rubbing in his foaming face wash. “I hadn’t thought about it but I guess you’re right. Do you care?” he asked.

I threw back a cap of mouthwash and gargled, buying time to level my nervous system, then spit in the sink and tried to sound easygoing.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. I reached for a towel and wiped my mouth with it.

“Hey, hey,” he said, touching my shoulder. “It’s totally normal. This is what an adult relationship is. Tons of sex in the beginning, adrenaline, that intoxicating rush, fueled by the uncertainty of whether or not it will work out, and then the commitment solidifies and the dust settles. Less exciting, sure, less of a rush. And, yes, unfortunately, less sex. But more sustainable. Healthier. Better.”

I pretended to be comforted, but I could hardly sleep that night, trapped by my double bind: hating that we’re not having sex, but not wanting to have it.

“Put him in your mouth,” Korgy says, so I lower myself to him and pull down his boxers. A cheese-like smell wafts up and I force myself not to gag as I bring my lips to his cock and start trying to recreate the blow jobs I gave him early on.

That’s what sex is for me now. Recreating—or attempting to recreate—how things were in the beginning, when sex represented the affections, the desires, the wishes, hopes, and dreams. The longing. The promise of what could be. The chemistry. The potential. When sex represented all the things we couldn’t say.

Now, sex represents the apologies, the differences, the disconnection. The mourning. The acceptance. The melancholy for what used to be. Still the things we can’t say. Just different things.

“That feels incredible,” he moans, and I try to read his tone, to decode every micro-inflection. Is he attempting to recreate his pleasure just the same as I am? Trying to sell it to me? Or is he just easier to please, actually present and enjoying it?

“Come here, let me touch you,” he says, half asleep. Before his hand gets to me, I quietly hawk up spit from the back of my throat, the phlegmiest I can get to recreate the texture of my discharge, and use my fingertips to spread it onto myself, then I crawl toward him on my knees and let him touch me.

“Aww, baby,” he says, “is all this for me? Is this how much you want me?”

Same as he fucking always does. A broken record. A pull-string toy that spews the same catchphrase over and over until you want to chuck it out the window.

“Yeah, this is how much I want you, baby,” I whine-say. I’m no better. I reuse my same catchphrases and inflections too, slowly morphing into a caricature of my sexual self.

Mr. Korgy pulls my legs toward him and licks me. It tickles, which irritates me. I pull away and climb on to him instead, swerving my hips with the same rhythmic swirling motion as always. Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.

“Wow, baby,” Korgy says.

What’s wow? I want to scream. Nothing’s wow about this. You’re not wow and I’m not wow and both of us together are not wow. This is boring, sad, vanilla, tired sex. Because we’re boring, sad, vanilla, tired people. All it took to get here doesn’t matter. The forbidden love. The age gap. The broken marriage. The casualties. None of it matters. We’re not special. We’re just two people who were brought together because of how fucking lost we both were.

I shut my eyes and remind myself. It’s only sex. It’s only sex. It’s only sex.

Then again, the sex has never just been about sex. It’s been about what the sex has communicated to me. And as I ride him to completion and he explodes on my tits and goes to get a rag to clean me up, I don’t like what it’s communicating to me now.

80

Are you on your way yet? I’m excited to see you!

I sit here on the floor with my legs splayed out, painting my toenails between big spoonfuls of Cocoa Puffs. The color’s hideous—a shocking turquoise shade with sparkle in it. I regret the purchase and whoever I thought I was when I made it, but it’s the only polish I own that hasn’t gone goopy. At least it’s quick-dry.

Eight minutes later, another text comes through.

Sorry to bug ya, I’m sure you got caught up with something. Just let me know when you’re on your way. I’ll wait to put the salmon on until then!

I lean over to study the gray bubble, flat and lifeless. The gray bubble that seems designed to suck the emotion from a person, to reduce them to letters and tiny cartoon drawings. To contain them. And yet, it can’t. Emotion prevails. Bleeds through. Bursts the bubble.

I pick up my phone to send a message that will quell his anxiety, something reassuring and a little dishonest, but before I can, a new text comes through with that annoying bloop, the sound of a pleading question mark.

Just making sure you’re okay … ? Thought you were gonna be here half an hour ago …

I drop my phone into my lap, repelled by it. Repelled by him. By his neediness. By his teetering self-esteem, so conditioned on my adoration of him. An adoration that is rapidly waning, partially due to his dependence on it. It’s a dizzying loop of a catch-22, and I’m a hypocrite. Just months ago, I was the pathetic one. Desperate and maddeningly needy, my well-being solely dependent on how responsive he was to me that day. And now here I am, not granting him the reassuring response he needs. Letting him worry, letting him panic, while I sit here painting my toenails.

sorry! I text finally, the exclamation mark simultaneously meager and pointed. heading out in a sec. I don’t give him an explanation.

No worries at all! Glad you’re okay! I’ll put on the salmon!

He tacks on a little salmon nigiri emoji which doesn’t make sense since we’re not having sushi. I get what he was going for but the reach irks me, and instead of heading for the door, I decide now is the right time to clean out my bathroom drawers. I dig through them, violently purging the regretted purchases and the ones past their shelf life. I throw away wrong shades of foundation, rancid perfume, soured lip balms, blushes with the labels worn off, crusty mascaras, eyebrow pencils worn down to nubs, crumbled bronzers, gunky highlighters. It feels good, getting rid of all the promises I used to believe. The products I’ve tried that didn’t work. Or that worked for a time but don’t anymore. There’s something freeing in admitting that. The failure. Or the growth. Or maybe they’re the same thing.

I run a baby wipe through my newly purged bathroom drawers and move on to my closet. Tights from Amazon and rusted jewelry from Marshalls and jeans from Shein with bunchy crotches. Blouses I never could figure out which bra to wear with and cheap polyester trousers with poorly sewn seams and tank tops with straps that dig into my shoulders. I fill trash bag after trash bag for Goodwill so somebody else can use these things. Get something from them. But I can’t anymore. I’ve let so many expired things fill up my life. So many things I know don’t work but keep around because of sunk costs or sentimentality or something else. Laziness or fear. There’s something scary about letting go. Even if the emptiness makes room for something better. Because I don’t know what the something better is. Or if it’s coming. Maybe it won’t. And maybe I’ll regret getting rid of those bunchy-crotched Shein jeans. I did like the snap button closure.

Salmon’s done! You close?

A knot in my stomach. hey—sorry again. went on a cleaning rampage and got super tired. think i have to call it a night. save me a piece of salmon for tomorrow?

Those three ominous, calculating dots pop up and linger, the universal sign for “I’m drafting the most socially acceptable response I can muster even though I’m pissed.”

I’m sorry I won’t see you, but you’ve got it re the salmon! I’ll keep the dill sauce on the side so the fish doesn’t get soggy.

Then he sends another emoji of salmon nigiri.

81

“Not too big and poofy, I don’t wanna look like I crawled outta the seventies,” Mom says, half laughing. “But also not too limp. Just a nice, easy beach wave.”

“Got it,” I say, wrapping her hair around the iron.

Mom asked me to do her hair for a coffee meetup with her sponsor. Said she can’t reach the back pieces herself and that I’m probably better with an iron anyway.

“From all those videos you watch on TikTok,” she said.

“I’m not on TikTok,” I said.

“Well still, it’s in your blood. You’re of the age.”

“Are you excited to see Margie?” I ask.

“Geesh, good memory. Yeah, yeah. She’s a hoot. Should be fun. Well, honestly fun isn’t the right word for it. Kinda the exact opposite word for it actually. It’s hard work. Hard fucking work. She started havin’ me do all this diggin’ into my childhood. We’ve been talking about how I had no discipline as a kid. My dad was on the bottle and runnin’ around on my ma, my ma was on pills and runnin’ around on my dad. Neither of ’em had any time for me, so I was raised on sugary cereals and bad sitcoms and boys I shouldn’t have been with. And it wasn’t my parents’ fault. I mean it was and it wasn’t. Or, it was then but it’s not now. It’s not their fault anymore. I’m an adult now, yet here I am still living in these patterns that were set in place by them when I was five. Margie says it’s time to reset these patterns. Establish new ones. Really focus on rebuilding my life. Finding myself instead of avoiding myself with men. She says the best way to do that is through no contact.”

“What’s ‘no contact’?”

“Basically it’s sixty days where I can’t speak to, text, meet up with, sleep with, or engage in any way with any man I’ve been sexually or romantically involved with in the past. Even if nothing’s ever happened with a guy and I just feel like something could, I can’t interact with him either. Nothin’. No contact.”

Mom’s hair sizzles from the iron. I let the lock fall and start wrapping the next one.

“And you’re gonna do it?”

“Already started! The whole idea is that it’s supposed to help me observe my instincts and urges and all my emotions underneath those urges so that I can replace all my unhelpful behaviors with better ones. Like, instead of texting a man, make a cup of tea or whatever. I mean, if you ask me, there’s no chamomile that can replace a good dick but gotta start somewhere I guess. Sorry. Just speaking the truth.”

Mom picks a piece of lint off her shirt and flicks it.

“How far in are you?” I ask.

“Ten days. And a half. First few days were the hardest. I was havin’ withdrawals. Gasping for air kinda thing. Borderline panic attacks. But it’s gettin’ easier. Day by day. And I know it’s gonna be worth it. Gonna be great for my future. Our future. You know what Margie said is gonna happen once I start takin’ better care of myself?”

“What?”

“She said it’ll lead to me takin’ better care of you. That’s why I couldn’t all these years. Cuz how was I supposed to know how to treat my daughter well if I’m treatin’ myself like shit, right?”

“Right …”

“And I’m not asking for forgiveness, doll. I don’t deserve that. I just want to apologize and to let you know that I’m gonna try my damndest to earn your trust. I’m gonna be a better mother to you, sweetheart. You deserve that. You always have. I’m gonna be there for you in a way I’ve never been before. Okay? Because I love you. You’re the best thing in my life.”

“Thanks. That’s really nice. But I get it. I know things were hard for you. You were younger than I am now when you had me …”

“Don’t go remindin’ me. That’s spooky, you’re a baby.”

“Exactly, you were too,” I shrug. “With nobody there to support you. You had a tough go.”

“Well sure, but havin’ a tough go doesn’t mean you gotta make somebody else’s life tough, too. I’m sick of my own bullshit,” she says as she looks out the window with longing, twenty years of regret crystallizing in this one moment. It’s a strange thing, seeing your mother grow up.

“You know what we oughta do? Let’s take that trip out to Seward soon,” she says, same as she always does, but there’s something in her tone that sounds different. Grounded. Clear. As if she knows it’s not a new idea, but an old one, one she finally wants to make good on.

“Let’s really do it this time,” she says. “This time I mean it.”

82

Even before he says it, I know something’s off when I walk in the door. The air’s being pulled taut. There’s a land mine somewhere, bound to be tripped on one way or another.

“You’re home late …” he says, scratching the spot behind his ear that always seems to itch when he’s irritated.

I dump my backpack on the floor and try to sound as casual as possible. “Yeah, I stayed a bit after my shift to help out. The place was a wreck from the summer sale …”

He shakes his head, apparently taking the news of the sales floor’s disarray to heart, then lets out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a snort.

“I’m getting paid overtime,” I shrug, kicking off my shoes. “It’s not a big deal.”

He brings his glass of scotch to his lips and downs the last sip pointedly, as if to assure me that, yes, in fact, it is a big deal. I’m guessing it’s his third glass, based on the glossiness of his eyes and the fact that he’s been on his third glass by this time every night this week.

“Well, I’m gonna wash up and watch some Survivor in bed.”

It’s hard to say what came first. His nightly alcohol indulgence or my nightly Survivor indulgence, or whether they began at exactly the same time, our respective forms of avoidance in sync, an annoying irony considering the thing we’re both avoiding is how out of sync we’ve become.

“It’s a waste of your time,” he says.

“I know.” I yank out my hair tie and rub out the sore spot on my scalp. “But it’s fun, and actually a pretty good testament to the human spirit. Plus, I need something to help me unwind after a long workday.”

“Not Survivor,” he says sharply. “I mean, that too, but I was talking about your job.”

The fight before the fight. The thing that isn’t really The Thing, but that is A Thing. A smaller thing. A more manageable thing. A thing that we can both agree to disagree on and talk in circles about for the time being until the braver one of us is able to say the realer, uglier thing. But, for now, this is our placeholder.

“I don’t think it’s a waste of time,” I say with a put-on air of smugness.

“Really? You think you’re learning pivotal life lessons monitoring some clearance rack of tacky lingerie?”

“Actually, yes, I do,” I say. “I’m learning about consumerism. And the loneliness of women. And the human condition.”

It’s not not true. My shifts at Victoria’s Secret have given me a peek into a woman’s psyche that is both valuable and depressing. Still, it’s a low-wage retail job. It has its limitations.

“Well good then,” he says, “glad to hear Victoria’s Secret is such a solid replacement for college.”

“I have no interest in college.”

“You’re going to piss away your potential,” he says, his words slurred. Might be his fourth glass.

He looks at me with clinging, bloodshot eyes that I want to look away from, but don’t because that would be backing down, so instead I force a staring contest. Whoever looks away first loses. What they lose, I don’t know, but they lose something.

“Your future is important,” he says. “You need to make time for your future. Prioritize your future.”

“My future is putting too much pressure on me,” I say, adamant, and he looks away, admitting defeat.

“You know …” I say, “maybe I’m just not what you’re looking for.”

There’s a heavy, suffocating silence between us. Korgy is motionless, his face blank and unreadable. Then he shuts his eyes and for a second I think he’s letting the tranquility ripple through him as he realizes he agrees, but then he opens them again, and they’re blazing, and he slams his fist down on the end table next to him.

“Fuck!” he yells. “I knew this would happen. I knew this would happen. You’re a pursuer. A chaser. You want and you want and you want, and you’re fucking ravenous about it. It consumes you. But then once you get what you want, you don’t want it anymore. It’s the most immature thing about you.”

“Well I’m sorry I’m so immature. I guess that’s what happens when you date an eighteen-year-old.”

He smirks a scorned, ridiculing smirk and bites his lip, biting down his anger. “Right. Of course. Convenient, isn’t it? You’re an adult when you want me to leave my family, and you’re a kid when you want to leave me.”

There’s a flash of something new in our shared look, a certain disgust that hasn’t been there before. A glimpse into just how much resentment has stacked up, and it’s unnerving.

I grab my backpack and hurl it over my shoulder. “I’m going home.”

“Hey, wait, wait a second.”

“What?” I ask, and I’m proud of how aloof I sound.

“I’m … drunk,” he says. “I’m drunk and stressed. It’s been a bad week of writing. I have no idea where to take the novel. Gwen won’t let me see Gregory. I feel bad about myself and I’m taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”

I set my backpack down again and sit at the edge of the couch next to him. He pulls me in for a hug, draping his arms around me and stroking my back with his big, warm hands.

And then, not out of respect, but out of pity …

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m sorry too.”

And we look at each other with a sad, knowing forgiveness. Sad that there’s anything to forgive in the first place. And knowing that it won’t be the last time.

I glance up at the Clockwork Orange poster on his wall, its corner still flapped over itself.

“Needs Command strips or something,” Korgy sighs. “The putty’s not enough.”

83

The invite to Frannie’s going-away party came last night, like it’d been an afterthought, or a last-minute maneuver to hedge against possible low attendance, and the throwaway nature of it made me want to see her. One of life’s cruel jokes. The less someone needs you to show up for them, the more you want to.

People are heading out by the time I arrive around nine. I help myself to some Mormon punch—Sprite mixed with rainbow sherbet and a splash of pineapple juice—when Frannie sees me and comes over.

“Sorry the cake’s already gone,” she says. “It went quick.”

She looks down at her cup and runs her finger along the rim of it. She’s doing something different with her makeup. A thin smudge of brown eyeliner just over her lash line. It’s such a small change, but it’s jarring. A reminder that we’ve grown apart. The Frannie I knew would’ve never worn eyeliner.

“It’s been so weird,” she says. “Not see-een each other. For the whole summer really …”

She bites her lip, hesitating, buying time to decide if she really wants to commit to whatever she’s about to say. And then she says it.

“I’ve missed you.”

No “best friend.” No secret reassurance-seeking. No hidden question underneath asking, Have you missed me? Just a statement. Plain and vulnerable.

“I’ve missed you too.”

And we both mean it the same way. Neither saying it in an attempt to reignite the friendship, get it back to what it used to be. Instead saying it in acceptance that we can’t. That we’ve outgrown it. Both of us have. The statement isn’t a plea for reignition. It stands alone, in and of itself, the beginning and the end, nothing to do about it.

“I saw your post about BYU,” I say. “The campus looks really pretty …”

“Yeah, it’ll be hard to be away from Tristan for so long though …”

“Oh, right. His, um, thing—”

“His mission, yeah.”

“Mission. Right. Where’s he going?”

“Romania.”

“Far.”

“Yeah …”

She spots Tristan across the room and waves, and her eyes light up when he waves back. She leans forward and grabs my arm.

“So we haven’t told anyone besides family, but I want to tell you,” she says, hushed and giddy. “We’re gonna get engaged before he goes away. Might even get married if we can pull a reception together. But either way, we’re get-een engaged, just so that the commitment is in place.”

“Wow …”

“Yeah. We’re pretty excited. We just wanna jump right in so we can start have-een kids when he gets back.”

She goes on to tell me they’re thinking three kids, maybe four, and that they already have a shortlist of names picked out. Four girl names and four boy names, and then they’ll use the extra names as middle names. All her kids’ names picked out and I can hardly pick out an outfit.

“Does it scare you at all?” I ask. “Already knowing how your life is gonna go?”

“No way,” Frannie says. “Not know-een is what freaks me out. Reminds me of this quote I saw on a page in my planner: ‘If you don’t know where you’re go-een, you’ll end up somewhere else.’ ”

“What if ‘somewhere else’ is better than where you were going?” I ask.

“Huh,” Frannie says, looking off, really considering it. “I can’t imagine that, given that I’ve put so much thought into know-een exactly where I want to go.”

She sips the last of her drink and sets it down on the table. “So what about you? Now that high school’s over, what’re you think-een?”

“I dunno really, if I’m being honest. Taking it one day at a time, I guess.”

I try to read her face, to see if this lackadaisical admission will break her, but she just smiles.

“That can be good, too,” she says. “Figure-een it out as you go, not think-een about the future all the time. Just live-een in the present. ‘Wherever you are, be there totally.’ That’s another quote from my planner. Which, come to think of it, is kind of an ironic quote to put in a planner.”

84

I get back from Frannie’s party to find Korgy lying despondent on the couch in a fetal position. An empty bottle of scotch is on the coffee table in front of him right next to his printed-out manuscript.

“Did you finish your novel?”

“No,” he says, staring vacantly at the shut-off TV. “I quit it.”

“What do you mean you quit it?” I ask.

“It’s bad. It doesn’t work, Waldo,” he says. “The excitement I felt toward you, toward us, made me believe I could do something that I can’t. But I was kidding myself. Deluding myself. I’m not a writer. I’ve never been one.”

I open my mouth to convince him otherwise, to give him the pep talk that I feel like I should, the motivational speech that will make him believe he’s all the things he wishes he was, but no words come out.

85

I get to Korgy’s after work and find a lei sitting on the doorstep with a sticky note attached to it. You found me! Hip hip hooray! Your next clue is where you LEI.

I didn’t need him to put the word lei in all caps for me to clock the pun, but he did, and it makes me sad. How hard he’s trying.

My next clue is on the bed, taped to a sack of chocolate-coated macadamia nuts. Enjoy me then find your next clue, right next to your Garnier Fructis shampoo.

“Probably would’ve been better if you used Pantene, since it’s a two-syllable word,” he says with a self-conscious chuckle. “Would’ve been a smoother rhythm.”

In the caddy that hangs over the shower head, next to my five-syllable shampoo, there’s a fresh new bottle. Coconut, “with notes of guava!” the package swears. The next sticky note is taped to the front of the bottle: Your final clue on this mission, is on the island in the kitchen.

“I figured a soft-rhyme was fine …” he says, blushing.

And I reassure him that it is as we make our way to the kitchen island, where I find two tickets to Hawaii, with a final sticky note: Let’s relax, you and me! We’re going to Hawaii!

He’s looking for a big reaction, so I let out some kind of squeal that sounds constipated and unnatural. He launches in that he knows it’s been a rocky couple of months, that summer’s about to be over and he has to get back to teaching soon. That he wants us to have some quality time together. That he wants to be present with me in a way that he’s struggled to be with all the stressors of life.

“This could be good for us,” he says, not seeming to realize that it’s a phrase only said once things have already gone bad. “Really good for us.”

I wish I could agree that a five-day stint in Hawaii is all that we need. That a couple piña coladas by a pool while someone strums “Over the Rainbow” on ukelele is enough to resuscitate that pivotal piece between us that has died. But I’m not sure.

“You’re right,” I say. “This could be good for us.”

86

“Oh that’s fun, they have spam musubi on the flight,” he says, pointing at his phone screen. “Popular Hawaiian treat.”

We’re sitting at Gate 9 in the A concourse at the Anchorage airport. We’re early for the flight, so Korgy goes to grab us snacks while I stay behind to charge our phones. He comes back with a few healthy options—dried fruits and nuts, protein bars, and teriyaki-flavored seaweed snacks. He convinces me to at least try the protein bar. It’s decent.

We play a backlog of Wordles, then Connections, then Spelling Bee, then stretch our legs and finally the flight starts to board. Military personnel first, then passengers with disabilities, then women with young children, then group A. We’re D and the lines are long, so it’s gonna take a sec.

“I’m gonna pee real quick,” I say.

“Alright, hurry.”

I take my suitcase with me so I can touch up my makeup and head to the nearest restroom. I shut myself in the handicap stall for some privacy and go to spread my makeup out on the sink so I can gloss and pat and powder and conceal and brighten and fix but the sink is dirty so I don’t do any of it. Instead I just look at myself in the mirror.

My phone pings. Boarding group B, we’ll be any minute now. :)

I spread a flimsy toilet seat cover onto the toilet and half of it falls into the bowl, the same way they always do, so I sit on the half that stayed and piss. It’s a long stream. A hardy stream. A juicy stream.

My phone pings again. Okay boarding group C. Come on, baby. We’re goin’ to Hawaii!

I wash my hands at the sink, taking my time, using two pumps of that universal pink soap that smells like bubblegum and baby powder. I lather the soap and sniff it. This soap is family.

Another ping. Hurry up so we don’t lose the cabin space for our bags!!

I wave my hand under the paper towel dispenser but it doesn’t work. Those things never work the first time. I wave again. And again. Finally, a paper towel, only my hands are half dry by now for all the waving it took to get one.

Ping. They’re on group D and they might start checking bags soon … where you at?

I go to reply, to tell him I’ll be there in a sec, but my body won’t let me. It’s frozen. I try to override it, to shove my body’s instincts down. Tell them to be more quiet. Be more right-sized. Be more appropriate and more reasonable and less of a nuisance. Only I can’t. And beyond that, I don’t want to. Because my body knows more than I do. My body’s instincts are loud. And they’re right. And they’re appropriate and reasonable and they are not a nuisance. They are wise. They are giving me all the information I need.

I put my hand on my heart. My tender, sensitive, strong, roaring heart, and I thank it. I leave the restroom, rolling my suitcase behind me, and I walk in the opposite direction of the gate, toward the exit to the airport. I walk past restaurants and candy shops, perfume stores and clothing boutiques, and I don’t look at anything. I walk past it all.

87

My cab pulls up to the curb and Mom’s car is out front. I rush inside, dragging my suitcase behind me, and head down the hallway toward her bedroom, ready to surprise her, to make good on that elusive promise of a road trip to Seward. I’ve already got my bag packed, why not. Let’s pitch a tent, catch a fish, stay up until three in the morning swapping memories while sharing a sleeve of Nutter Butters, swearing with each cookie that “this is our last one” while secretly knowing we’re gonna polish off the whole sleeve.

Her bedroom door is cracked so I push it open all the way. Mom’s lying in her bed. And so is Tony, going down on her with his blackened tobacco tongue.

“Ohmygod,” Mom says, pushing Tony off her and pulling up the covers.

“Jesus Christ, ever heard of knocking?” Tony asks.

“God, sorry,” I say. “Sorry …”

“Honey, hi,” Mom says, brushing her hair off her sweaty cheeks. “I, um … I …”

“Hi, Tony,” I say plainly.

“Hi, Wanda,” he says plainly.

“Look, sweetheart, I, um … Tony and I worked through our … differences and—”

I want the rage to boil in me. To make me throw her jewelry tray at the wall and interrogate her. Ask how long she’s been lying to me. To herself. Ask when she stopped going to SLAA. Or if she’s still going, Jekyll and Hyde-ing it. I want to scream. Or cry. But instead I just stare at her as an immaculate wave washes over me. A wave of recognition. Of peace. Of freedom. The peace and freedom that can only come from lowering your expectations of someone. From letting go of that person you wanted them to be, needed them to be, and in the letting go of that version, letting go, too, of all the resentments that came from them not being that version.

I don’t say a word as I head out, shutting the door softly behind me.

88

My hand’s out the window like a singer in a nineties music video. I yank my hair tie out and let my curls blow in the wind. I’m halfway to Seward, a dozen calls deep from Korgy and six from Mom, when I finally shut off my phone.

Maybe it’s all the same. Korgy and pants and YouTube and makeup and sweaters and junk food and sex. Maybe they’re all just distractions from me. But right now, me feels okay. No chaos, no turmoil, no endless list of wants. Right now, I don’t want for anything.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to …

Kara Welsh, Jennifer Hershey, and everyone at Ballantine for believing in me as a fiction writer. For allowing me pure creative freedom and unwavering support for the story I wanted to tell.

Katie Bowden and everyone at 4th Estate, for understanding my voice so vividly and for supporting this book so wholeheartedly.

Jesse Shuman, for your time and effort on this book.

Stephen Fertelmes, for your sharp strategic mind and talent. You’re a genius.

Mahdi Salehi, for your kindness and protection.

Ida Ziniti and Austin Denesuk, for being truly the best. I can’t believe people as cool, genuine, and kind as you exist in the terrifying hell that is Hollywood. Thank you for having my back.

Bill Clegg, for your taste.

Andy Roth and the entire CAA speakers team, for all your hard work to empower my voice.

Sean Manning, Michael Carly, Zane Rubin, and Victoria Moser, for reading so thoughtfully and giving such thorough and crucial notes.

Jennifer Fischer, for your wisdom.

Erin Mason, for seeing all of me.

A.K., most of all. Thank you for reading countless drafts, for your brilliant insights and notes on this book, for your rigorous honesty and absolute dedication to helping my work reach its fullest potential. For your friendship and companionship. For your love.

About the Author

JENNETTE MCCURDY is the Sunday Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died, winner of the 2023 American Library Association Alex Award and the 2022 Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir & Autobiography. The book has been published in more than thirty countries and has sold more than three million copies. McCurdy is creating, writing, executive producing and showrunning an Apple TV + series loosely inspired by I’m Glad My Mom Died, starring Jennifer Aniston. Half His Age is her debut novel.

By Jennette McCurdy

I’m Glad My Mom Died

Half His Age

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