I’m not sure she hears this, and I’m glad. I don’t want to talk about the person I’m not seeing. I don’t want to think about him this weekend. Not once. She’s looking back at her box.
“Eat your salad,” I say. “I’m going to go get…what, you’re on box seven?”
“Mmm.” She touches her stomach again. “I’m not really that hungry, you know?”
“You are,” I tell her. From experience, she is hungry—she just doesn’t notice it. She’ll notice it at midnight if she doesn’t eat now.
I bring her the next box and her legal pad. I set her recorder next to her.
“Go ahead,” I tell her. “Work. It’s okay. I don’t mind. I have things to do.”
She picks out a file and starts reading. “You know,” she says, “you really should have higher expectations.”
I’m honestly not sure if she’s talking to me or the file.
She presses record. “File one, box seven. Deposition of Frank M. Church, building manager for East Heights…”
She’s not talking to me.
Some people might think that being ignored by my grandmother for weeks on end is cruel. Truth is, it’s not that she’s ignoring me; if I really needed her, she would be there for me. I know from experience. And it never lasts. In high school, I would spend a few weeks cleaning and making dinner, and then I’d come home from school one day and find her asleep in her spot. She’d sleep for a day and a half, and when she woke up, she’d take me out and make up for every last hour that she’d missed.
You can’t pick and choose the people you love. The woman who throws herself into her Fair Housing trials is the same woman who has worked in the City Attorney’s office in San Francisco for the last twenty-five years. Her office drove the lawsuit that invalidated California’s ban on same-sex marriage under the state constitution back in 2008.
There was a reason she took me in without a question when I showed up on her doorstep. She didn’t need an explanation. She’d already asked all her questions at work, had already made up her mind as to the answer.
And so when her work needs her, I’m willing to share. Because I know she’ll wake up and remember that I’m here eventually, and when she does, it’s always worth the wait.
20
MARIA
I don’t want to talk to Jay. It takes me five days—the weekend I spend getting ignored by Nana, feeling my heart leap every time my phone buzzes—to realize that I don’t want to not talk to him, either.
But since our late-night phone conversation after Gabe’s seminar, he hasn’t initiated a chat online. He hasn’t emailed. He hasn’t commented once on my blog, not even when I made a science error on purpose to draw him out. He’s left the ball firmly in my court.
I tell Tina. She listens to the whole story quietly.
“What should I do?” I ask her. I’m not sure what I want her to say. Maybe I want her to tell me to get over myself. Maybe I want her to tell me that I’m better off without him.
She just frowns. “I suck at giving advice. What do you want to do?”
I look upward. “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t have to ask you, would I?”
I check the website for his group once, then a second time. He adds a new paper to his publications list on the fourth day after I found out who he was.
Because I am a dork, I read it.
His group picture, with him in a lab coat, arms folded, looking severely at the camera—doesn’t change. I know this, because I check. Often. The only reason I spend more time on Facebook than his stupid website is because he’s Facebook friends with Gabe.
He doesn’t post anything on Facebook at all—at least nothing that is visible to me.
I make sure that all my posts are visible to friends of friends, and tell everyone how much fun I’m having. Since I also have two midterms in the days that follow, this is a complete lie, but I don’t care. I make sure to have a long, rambling discussion with my brother in the comments of one of Gabe’s photos. Mentally, I dare Jay to like my posts. I double-dog dare him with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
He doesn’t.
I call Anj and spill everything that happened. Well, I kind of spill. I exaggerate. I make Jay out to be not just a jerk, but the giantest jerk on the face of the planet.
“Ooh, awkward,” she says, when I get to the final reveal. “But in his defense, you are kind of a girly-girl.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks.”
“I’m totally kidding. But seriously, Maria. People make mistakes. Either you get over it or you don’t.”
I try again. “He hasn’t even tried to talk to me.”
Anj continues with her unfair and impartial reasonableness. “You said you needed time. How dare he respect your boundaries.” She doesn’t even make it a question.
I frown at my phone. “Can’t a girl vilify a man without getting rational pushback?”
“Is that what you were looking for?” She sighs. “You should have just said so. He sounds like the worst. The absolute worst. I hope he dies in a fire.”
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s much better.”
It doesn’t feel better. If Jay were nothing but an asshole, this would be easy. I can ride out catastrophes. I’ve managed far worse.
It’s the possibility of so much more that scares me. I know how well we can get along. I know we could make each other laugh. I know he…likes me, and that’s the strongest word I’m willing to let myself think, no matter what he told me the other night.
Most relationships are an unknown when they start. With Jay, I know exactly how good it could be. I also know precisely how bad it might get.
Exactly one week after I learn that A. and Jay are the same person, I break down and look up the location of his office.
His office is in a building kitty-corner from his lab. The wooden door with his name on it is ajar when I poke my head out of the stairwell. I creep up to it and wait, cautious as a cat, expecting to hear him talking to someone.
I hear nothing but the click of a keyboard.
I raise my hand to knock, but my courage fails me. I lean against the wall.
I imagine opening the door more than a crack and poking my head in. He would look at me. I’m not sure if he would smile or frown and shake his head. I don’t know what he would say. I’m not sure what I would say back. I want to be at my cleverest, but the truth is, I’m not sure how to use words out loud with him. We’ve only ever used spoken words to claw at each other.
I’m afraid that any face-to-face conversation will be nothing but barbs.
I’m afraid that if I take too long to come by…
I don’t finish that sentence.
I may be doing this the coward’s way, but at least I’m doing it. I take out my phone and send him a message. Do you have a moment?
I can hear the ding of his phone from his office. I wonder if he has a special tone for me. I don’t have time to wonder anything else, because a moment later, my phone chirps in response. I was afraid you weren’t ever going to write to me.
I bite my lip. I needed time. Not forever.
You don’t exactly like me, he responds.
You don’t exactly like me, either.
There’s a longer pause. I can imagine him tapping away in response. I like you, comes his reply. I like you exactly and precisely.
My stomach roils. I’ve known that he likes me since… Since he sent me emoji in the hallway. Since he backed away when I told him I needed time. Since he told me he was basically in love with me, a sentence I still refuse to process.
My phone chirps again.
Also, if you’re going to message me from the hallway outside my office, he writes, either silence your phone or come in. It’s distracting.
I look up. He’s standing in his office door looking at me. He’s wearing jeans and a plain black shirt. He’s watching me with an intensity that I can sense from here. My skin prickles. Slowly, I straighten from where I’m slumped aga
inst the wall, brushing my skirt back into place.
His gaze falters to my hand as I smooth fabric down my thigh.
I don’t say anything. I just walk toward him, step by unsteady step.
His gaze drops to my shoes—ivory kitten heels with powder blue glass beads making a little swirling pattern—and comes back to my face.
I stop a foot from him.
We still haven’t said a word to each other—not out loud—and I don’t want to break that trend. Messaging is easier.
He steps aside, giving me room to enter his office.
I sit in the single plastic seat across from his chair as gracefully as I can under the circumstances.
He leaves his door open and slides into the high-backed executive chair on the other side.
His office is not what I expected from an overworked academic. My brother’s desks—both his desks, at home and in his office—are piled high with stapled papers, notes on graph paper in pencil, seven-month-old utility bills, old sandwich wrappers…
Jay’s desk has a grand total of three pieces of paper on it. Three.
His shelves are full. There are textbooks, books on computing, a series of monographs on lasers. There’s an art piece on the wall. A sculpture on his desk.
No plants.
I’m avoiding looking at him. I make myself turn and look back at Jay.
He’s watching me, waiting to see what I say. Maybe wondering if I will even use words.
Oral communication is overrated. Better? I send.
He glances down at his phone and his mouth quirks in a smile. Better.
He is…not hideously ugly. The opposite. His jaw is determined; his eyes are piercing. And when he smiles, all that purposeful certainty softens into something that feels like a welcome.
He smiles now, and I silently forgive him for not liking my comments on Facebook.
What happens now? I type.
He looks upward, then shrugs. Something between us never talking again and us making out in my office right now. I have a strong preference between those two.
I can’t help it; I laugh. It’s the medium. The fact that when our screens are between us, this is who we are to each other. We’ve been flirting for far too long, and it’s become too second-nature to us to stop.
Is the last one even an option? Aren’t there rules against professor-student relationships?
He exhales, and writes for a longer time. My phone buzzes again. For obvious reasons, I looked up the code of conduct to figure out where we stood. You’re a senior. You’re not in my department. I do not have, and do not reasonably expect to have, academic responsibility for you. Unless you’re planning on going to grad school here in chemistry and/or physics and you never told me?
I shake my head.
Then it’s not an issue. Also. I love your laugh.
I look over at him. I want to forget everything. I also want to enshrine it in my memory. I shake my head and write. You are such a liar.
He raises an eyebrow. I’ve done a lot of shit wrong. But that was the truth. I love your laugh.
Not about that. My gaze drops to the curve of his bicep, visible beneath his T-shirt, and then slides up. I take a deep breath. You said you were hideously ugly.
His lips twitch into a smile. Beauty standards are complete shit. Also, I wanted to lower expectations.
Fine. But get out of this one, I write. Actual Physicist? You’re in chemistry, not physics.
He snorts and shakes his head as he types. Remind me to send you an explanation of the weird division between chemistry and physics in the UK versus the States. It’s not a one-to-one mapping. He considers a moment, before typing again. Besides, I told you I had a terrible personality. It’s not my fault you didn’t believe me.
I consider this. You do have a terrible personality.
I know. I merited the fuck-off shoes.
I look down.
So does he.
I’m incredibly conscious of my shoes right now. I hadn’t been thinking of him—much—when I put them on. The glass beads sparkle in the fluorescent light of his office.
These, I write, are shoes I wear for courage. Which is why I’m messaging you from five feet away, instead of safely in my house.
I’m sorry, he writes back. I’m sorry. To say this was a fuck-up is an understatement.
I look at him. I did start some of it. Some of the time. I seem to recall sending you drinks that one time.
He suppresses a smile. Some. But not most. My ego is fine. We don’t need to pretend this started with anything but my treating you with utter disrespect.
I look forward, and then type the scariest thing I have ever typed. I keep asking myself if we can just start over and pretend none of this happened.
He exhales. No. We can’t. I knew at LBL that if I said anything, it was over.
I desperately want the alternate reality he posits. You’re such a dumbass. Why didn’t you keep quiet? I give you retroactive permission to not tell me.
He shrugs. You would have found out anyway. He pauses, frowns at his answer on the screen, and types again. It would have hurt you if I kept quiet, and I couldn’t hurt you any more than I had.
I look up. He’s watching me with an intensity that I don’t want to understand.
It’s too much. I can’t—I just can’t—take more of this. More and I’ll have to think beyond the confines of my phone, to put him in a place in my life. I’m not ready to figure out where he fits.
I stand up.
He does, too. He looks at me across his desk, and I think about him saying we could make out. This is no longer a hypothetical possibility. It’s real. I don’t know what to do with this kind of real.
I need a little more time, I write.
He looks over at me, then types one last time. I have something I’ve been holding for you. Can I give it to you?
I consider this. I like presents.
It’s not a present.
He opens a drawer on his desk and removes an envelope. The paper is almost translucent, stamped with tiny brown fibers. There’s one word on the front, handwritten in a dark black: Maria.
I remember his handwriting from those damned napkins. I swallow. He holds it out to me
I reach out carefully. So carefully. I make sure I don’t touch his fingers when I take it. I look over into his eyes.
We haven’t said a word to each other the entire time.
I don’t leave, though. We stay in place for several minutes, looking at each other. I don’t know what he sees. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking. All I know is that this is Jay, and he hurt me.
I want to not hurt. I want, not with the power of lust, but with a deep-down desire, a quiet intensity. I want us to be friends. I want him to hold me. I want to lean my head against his chest and have the scent of him wash away my memories.
I know if I ask him to do it, he’ll try.
I don’t say the words.
“Thanks,” I finally say instead. My voice feels rusty. My chest almost hurts. “I’ll see you.” Our eyes can’t seem to break away from each other. “Good-bye, Jay.”
He gives me a half smile. “See you around, Maria.”
* * *
I’m aware of the letter tucked in my bag all the way home. Text should be text; I’ve exchanged hours and hours of messages with Jay. But somehow pixels on a lit screen, notifications that flash one second, are responded to the next, and scroll off into nothingness, pushed away by the next exchange of messages, are different than a physical letter. There’s no timestamp telling me when he wrote it. For all I know, he’s had it sitting in his drawer for days.
I can’t respond immediately. He can’t tell when—or if—I read it. It won’t be backed up to any cloud service.
I wait until I’m home and can retreat to my room. I don’t even pretend that I’m going to put it off any longer.
I tear the envelope open.
Dear Maria, he has written. I am so sorry.
I feel a pang in my chest. So am I.
I fucked up. I can’t count the ways that I fucked up, but I will try.
1. I jumped to conclusions. I’m not going to excuse or explain myself; that’s not the point of this letter.
I exhale slowly. He doesn’t have to excuse or explain himself. The truth is, he already has. I put together the pieces slowly over the last week. He told me—the Maria me—that I reminded him of someone. He told me—the Em me—that he’d had a girlfriend who said something terrible to his brother. It’s not hard to see what happened.
Even the fact that he was attracted to me probably messed with him. He doesn’t trust his own judgment.
And yeah, he was still an ass. But having someone be an ass in a vacuum is a really different thing than understanding why someone was an ass.
2. You got under my skin early, and I treated you like crap because of it.
No excuses. I realized I’d come to an erroneous conclusion about you, and I hate being wrong. It was entirely obvious that I was wrong, and so I took it out on you. That was also fucked up.
In a way, I’m glad I waited to go talk to him. The day after he told me, I wouldn’t have been able to hear this.
Yes, he did provoke me. But he also tried to apologize. And while I can’t pretend that we were equally at fault, I can recognize that for the last couple of months, I’ve been the one pushing most of the hostility. He was the one making jokes about confirmation bias.
3. I don’t know how to go forward. I don’t know if there is a forward. But you are important to me.
I don’t know what to do with that. It’s the simple truth. You are important to me.
You’re important enough that even if there is no when, if there is no what, and there is no longer a me in your life, I’m going to do better.
Yours,
Jay
I’m not sure what to do with this letter. Maybe I was hoping that he’d have some magic insight, something that changed everything. Maybe I was hoping that he’d give me an excuse. Some way that I could forget what happened.
I put my head in my hands.
Maybe I want an excuse.