F*ck Love

  One night, as Della and I are listening to Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” there is a knock on my door. I go to answer it, only to find Kit on my welcome mat, a bag of groceries in his hand.

  “Since you’ve stolen my girlfriend, I’ve come to make you both dinner,” he announces. I feel unreasonably disappointed that he didn’t come just for me. I’m sort of your wife! We had a child together for God’s sake.

  “Great song.” He steps around me and kisses Della.

  “Yeaaah.”

  I put Carrie on mute, but Kit keeps singing it from the kitchen. Even when he thinks no one is looking, he does the closed eye, finger pointy thing. It has deep potential to be adorable, but he’s not my type. And God, stop stealing shit from Mariah.

  He doesn’t ask me where anything is, or for help—not that I would have given it to him anyway. He bangs around in the kitchen while Della and I watch reruns of Teen Mom, until he announces it’s time for dinner.

  “What did you make?” I ask, sitting at my table and feeling strangely like a guest.

  “Ropa Vieja.”

  I scrunch my nose. “Old clothes?” My Spanish is limited to four years of high school, so I could be wrong.

  “Yes. Delicious.”

  Della doesn’t question Kit’s dirty laundry, so I don’t either. Turns out it’s extra fucking good. I want to take a picture for my MEM folder and call it: I’ll Eat His Old Pants, but that would risk questions and judgment. They both might get the wrong idea. Kit does cleanup and dishes, and shoos me out of the kitchen when I try to help.

  “He’s perfect,” Della announces. “Let’s stay up all night and play games.” Forty minutes and four beers later, she passes out on my sofa. Kit and I are playing Mancala, but he really sucks.

  “It’s your strategy,” I tell him. “You have none.”

  “Wanna go for a walk?” Kit asks. We both look at Della who won’t be waking up any time soon.

  “Dells,” I say, shaking her shoulder. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  She moans into the sofa cushion and slaps me away.

  I shrug. “She hates the heat anyway,” I tell him. “It frizzes her blowout.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Kit says, smiling. “She’s my girlfriend.”

  I feel my face flush and hurry to the door ahead of him. Of course. Of course.

  I don’t have a blowout; I just have a messy bun. Kit pats the top of it when we step out into the thick air.

  “It’s like a hair hive,” he says. “Small creatures could live in there.”

  “I had a snail as a pet once,” I say. “Its name was SnailTail.”

  “Your weirdness never ceases to amaze me,” Kit says.

  “I was taking art classes,” I blurt.

  Kit looks at me funny, his head cocked to the side. “Was?”

  “I stopped going because it was affecting my relationship. Neil made me feel like I was cheating on him when he found out.”

  “Ah, well, good ol’ Neil was probably feeling a little guilty about his own extracurricular activities and looking for something to blame.”

  “I wasn’t very good,” I tell him.

  He shrugs. “But you are very good at passion. And if you have enough passion, you can almost learn to do anything well.”

  I stare at him.

  “How come Justin Bieber never gets any better at being a thug?”

  We both laugh.

  “Maybe I’ll try something new. Hey! How’s your book coming along? Do you have more to send me?”

  I haven’t thought about Kit’s book since the night I had the fight with Neil about missing his work dinner. I can’t believe I forgot about it.

  “I feel good when I’m writing. It seems to be all coming together.”

  He glows a little when he talks about it. I wish I had something to make me glow like that. We walk past the lake, which isn’t really a lake. There is a jaunty fountain in the middle, spraying water into the still air. The air is so warm I want it to blow my way.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say.

  “You just did.”

  I pull a face.

  “Are you in love?”

  Kit stops walking, and I panic. I’ve gone too far, asked something too personal. I pull on my earlobe and stare at him until he starts to laugh.

  “Calm down, leave your ear alone.”

  I drop my hand to my side. So awkward.

  “I was engaged before Della,” he says.

  My head jerks up. I’m surprised. I feel like that’s something she would have told me.

  “She doesn’t know,” he says.

  “Oh.”

  “We just decided early on not to talk about our past relationships. Anyway, since we aren’t dating, I can tell you.”

  I’d rather he not. We’ve been married.

  “You can’t tell. This is in confidence.”

  “She’s my best friend. Do you really think I’m not going to tell her?”

  “Actually, yes. If you tell me you won’t, I’ll believe you.”

  He’s right. I thrive on owning people’s secrets. Makes me feel superior to know I have them, even if no one else knows.

  “Whatever,” I say. “I make no promises.”

  We come to a junction in the path, and Kit chooses left. I always go right. It feels weird that he didn’t ask me which way to go, or that he just chose so decisively. Neil would have fumbled over that one.

  “She was my high school sweetheart. We were beautifully cliché. Even down to the part where she cheated on me with one of my friends.”

  Aha! The cunt!

  “I mean, I know it was a mistake, and we’d only been with each other, so I get it. Still hurts though. I was looking for a reason to run away after that. So, I packed up and moved here.”

  I hesitate. “So, you love Della, but you’re still not over your ex?”

  “Something like that,” he says. “Just taking it slower this time. I was in a relationship for five years.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Don’t do that,” he says, looking at me.

  “Do what?”

  “Be all formal and weird. Just say what you’re thinking.”

  “Okay…”

  I’ve never been called out on my use of conversational words. But, I suppose they’re a bit of a copout if you really think about it.

  “Do you speak Parseltongue?” I ask.

  “What?” His face screws up.

  I shake my head. “Never mind. I think she’s super into you. And you’re only half in. And that sounds like someone, namely Della, is going to get hurt.”

  “I like her a lot. She’s funny, and she doesn’t take herself too seriously. She has a good heart.”

  I agree with all of those things. But I don’t want to marry Della, or live with her. In fact, I really want her to go home and stop eating my popcorn.

  “If you weren’t so hung up on…?”

  “Greer,” he says.

  “Ew, seriously?”

  He nods.

  “If you weren’t so hung up on Greer, would you feel differently about Della?”

  “Don’t know. I think that the right girl can wipe away the memories of the wrong girl.”

  Wow. Okay.

  “Sure.” But I don’t think that. If that were true, there wouldn’t be so many humans pining for their long, lost love. We didn’t always want what was right. We wanted what we couldn’t have.

  “You’re hopeful and positive,” I tell him. “But don’t break one girl’s heart because you’re trying to heal yourself of another one.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says. “But something tells me that won’t be my problem. I see a whole different shit storm in my future.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “You have a commemorative Greer tattoo, don’t you?”

  His eyes grow wide, and he scratches a spot on his cheek while making a face.

  “Ha!” I laugh. “Let me see it. After that guess, I deserve it.”

/>   He shakes his head. “No way. No one said I had one. You’re making stuff up.”

  He’s smiling, and I know I’ve caught him.

  “I’ll just ask Della,” I say. “She’s obviously seen it.”

  Kit shakes his head. “No, no she hasn’t.”

  I cock my head. “That’s impossible. You’ve … you guys have…”

  “It’s in white ink. You can only see it in black light.”

  “Oh.” I wait a few minutes as we trudge along the path, the warm air pushing up my nose, making me want to scream.

  “What’s it of?”

  “It says…” He stops. I wonder if he’s reconsidering telling me. “It says, ‘Don’t fear the animals.’”

  And then Della finds us. She’s half asleep and slurring. “I got scared,” she says, running her fingers through her hair. Her eyes are sleepy, still drunk.

  “I kind of want my own bed,” she says, looking at me. “Do you mind if I go home tonight, Helena?”

  She wants Kit in her bed, and in her, but I nod. They don’t even come back inside. I walk them straight to Kit’s car where he helps Della in, and then jogs around to the driver’s side.

  “Night, Helena.”

  “Hey, night. And thanks for dinner.”

  “Sorry I’m such a lousy cook.” He grins.

  “You’re an excellent liar, though. It makes up for it.”

  “You’re pretty … excellent.”

  I feel so lonely when they’re gone.

  There are definite, solid lines in life that should never be crossed. Developing a crush on your best friend’s boyfriend is one of them. Showing up to his job frequently and drinking his fruity cocktails is another. I don’t like him as much as Kentucky Fried Chicken, but hell if that boy didn’t look at me and tell me I was pretty … excellent. Excellent, which is above normal. Like I’m better than regular girls. Not your basic bitch. Finger-licking excellent. I realize I’m vulnerable and most days I feel like a worthless human—someone a guy can cheat on, and call it a mistake. I don’t want to be someone’s ‘girl who got away.’ I want to be someone’s ‘girl who’d I’d never let get away.’ I sign up for another class, and this time I try something a little different: clay. I like the feel of the cool, wet clay between my fingers. Clay is about numbers and proportion that you can control with your palms. I’m better at clay than I am at drawing. My hands feel less clumsy. I make coffee cups, vases, plates, then serving platters. All of them lacking symmetry, but I am so proud of them I throw out the cheap set I bought from Wal-Mart and place my handmade dinnerware in my kitchen cabinets. I paint everything white and splatter them with black paint. I am fighting the Pottery Barn taste that, according to my dream, is set to emerge in ten years. The carefully placed Chinese pots and decorative, stained knots give me hives. All a dream. All a dream, I tell myself. I focus on creating my style out of mess and mixed color. A Pottery Barn girl is for Neil, not Kit. Kit’s girl is color and texture.

  When I realize that I’m avoiding Pottery Barn because of Kit, I go to their online store and buy a pair of ceramic French bulldogs. Nothing will control me, not Kit or Pottery Barn. To even things out, I replace my old throw pillows with ones I find at the flea market, but I won’t touch them. Or put them on my couch. I buy replacements at Pottery Barn. I stop drinking wine, too, since that was a manifestation of the dream, but some nights when I’m really sad I sniff an old cork I keep in my junk drawer. It’s not a cork from the wine Kit brought over; I don’t think so anyway. It was something I found near my trashcan. So when I start putting it on the spare pillow and sleeping with it, it has nothing to do with Kit. It’s just a random wine cork I’ve grown attached to. During the day, I put it in my purse where it travels with me to work, then art class. Clay is over; I register for an oil-on-canvas class, hoping for better results than my first class with Neptune.

  On weekends, Della insists I tag along with whatever she and Kit are doing. She swears it’s not pity, and I’m no longer on suicide watch, and that Kit genuinely enjoys my company, while she needs me around for moral support.

  “Moral support for what?” I ask her.

  “Best friend moral support. Like, I just like having you around, you make me feel good.”

  I love Della, God I love her. I’ve known her since we didn’t have real personalities, and we relied on Tiger Beat to tell us which boys to have crushes on—JTT for me, Devon Sawa for her. But people grow up, change, they are sorted into different houses—Slytherin for Della, Ravenclaw for me. They become what life dictates, and Della and I took two different routes. Della’s dad won the lottery. I shit you not. Five hundred thousand on a scratch-off ticket during our sophomore year. He doubled his money on investments, and all of a sudden, Della was a rich girl. Vacations to the Greek Isles, Christmas cruises to the Bahamas, a brand new Range Rover senior year. Our Tiger Beat years were replaced with glossy Vogue years, during which Della’s family took me on every vacation, and every outing on their boat. If they bought Della a pair of Kate Spade sunglasses, I would get a pair too. It was fun at first, but then I started to feel like a poor, charity tagalong. I still feel like that.

  The only time I didn’t feel their cloying pity was when Kit sent me chapters of his book. Only me. That wasn’t pity; he genuinely wanted to share those with me. I was getting really attached to George, Denver, and Stephanie Brown. If I could put them on my pillow next to the wine cork, I would. Instead I read what he’s sent me over and over. I understand the Twilight craze, the Fifty Shades of Grey craze. For the first time, I am not just reading a book; I am invested in the book. If George, Denver, and Stephanie Brown don’t get their shit together, I am never going to read another book again. Kit enjoys my commitment to their story, but we don’t talk about it in front of Della. Della was part of the Twilight mania, and after reading one chapter of Kit’s untitled manuscript she asked if there were werewolves or vampires in the story. Kit shut her down real fast after that. She pouted but agreed to wait until he was finished to read the rest.

  I am at an estate sale with Kit, Della, and our friend, June, who we’ve hung out with on and off since high school. June and I are on the front lawn, looking though boxes of old books, while Kit and Della are in the house looking at the furniture.

  “Do you think Kitella will be moving in together soon?” June asks.

  I look up surprised. “Kitella?”

  “Kit and Della,” she says. “Kitella.” June is an odd bird. I know I’m an odd bird on the inside, but June is an odd bird on the inside and the outside. I eye her floral hat, and the paperclip necklace she’s wearing.

  “Kitella,” I snort. “I don’t know. Della’s apartment is so … Della. I can’t see a guy moving in there.”

  “They’d change things for sure. Make room. They’ve been together a while now.”

  “Only like eight months,” I say defensively. “Not that long.”

  “Come on, Helena. Della doesn’t usually make it through the three-month mark. Her wedding board is growing on Pinterest. Those two are serious.”

  It is true. She has a menu and flower girl gifts now. Della always found something wrong with the boys she dated. Charles was too needy, Tim was too jealous, Anthony had an annoying twin sister. Kit is perfect; she says it all the time. And they are furniture shopping as we speak.

  “Do you like them together?” I ask June.

  “Yeah, they’re cute. I think he balances her. He’s not as shallow as some of the other guys she’s dated.”

  June wanders off to look at a lamp, and I feel like sinking into the sea of grass. Why did all of that feel like bad news? It isn’t because I don’t want my best friend to be happy, because I do. I just want her to be happy with someone else. I go find them in the house. They’re looking at bookcases.

  “I saw ones just like this in Restoration Hardware,” Della says. “For four times the price. This is a steal.”

  Kit doesn’t look convinced. “We don’t have enough books com
bined to fit on these things.”

  “We can buy more!” Della says. Then she turns to me and her pink lips are spread so wide I can see every single one of her teeth.

  “We’re moving in together!” she squeals and claps, and I stand there dumbfounded, wondering if June has psychic ability.

  “Into your apartment?” I ask, because it’s the only thing I can think to say.

  “No, silly. That’s too small. We are going to buy a house.”

  I look at Kit, but he’s avoiding my eyes.

  “That’s so great,” I say. “Congratulations, guys.” And then I say I have to go to the bathroom, but I go outside instead. I need air, space to hide my falling face. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever experienced, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel it anyway. That’s the most pathetic part of being a human, the emotions you don’t ask for or want, they just rush you anyway. I roll my wine cork between my palms. In a house nearby, someone is frying bacon. I can hear a man’s rackety, wet cough, and I can feel sorrow spreading from brain to heart. I know that life is not simple because I am not simple. In fact, I am learning that I am more than simple and less than normal. To fall in love with a boy is one thing, but to fall in love with your best friend’s boy because of a dream is … well, I’m fucked.

  You don’t start searching for truth until something goes terribly wrong and you realize that you need it. There’s no going back after that. The emotional concrete is poured. A foundation laid. This is what it feels like to go mad, I think. It feels like I’ve skipped ten years and just did the growing up without having to do the actual time. Willful blindness belongs to the young. In my case, I learned of my depravity early enough to rid myself of it. I cannot hate Sadie; Sadie would have happened with a different name. Maybe when I was already married. Sadie is just the name of Neil’s inability to be faithful. Perhaps she saved me from a lot more. I cannot hate the dream; the dream woke me up. But, that’s all it was—a dream. I keep art, because I never knew I loved it until I became a coloring book artist. I carry a knapsack with me now, filled with charcoals, pencils, a sketchpad, a wine cork. I give up listening to the beach music that was with me through college, and I make playlists that sound yearning and pathetic. I am what I am. I marvel at how yearning can make you disintegrate. And to keep from disappearing all together, you must rebuild yourself. I get a tattoo on my wrist, but I don’t tell anyone, and I hide it underneath my watch. May is all it says. Because that’s when my perspective shifted.