Figure Eight

  With that attitude I’m never sending you another chapter. You’re in denial, smut lover.

  I take it back. Smut is the best thing in the world.

  I smile at my screen and lift my arms above my head for a good long stretch. It’s only when I glance out the window that I notice the sun is slowly rising. Holy Shit. How long have we been talking? I glance at the clock: 6:49 a.m.

  I just looked at the clock, I type. We’ve been talking for almost five hours.

  That went by fast.

  Really fast but I should probably get some sleep.

  Good idea. I hear that it’s important for people.

  So I’ll talk to you later?

  Silence.

  Then, I get his reply: You can count on it.

  ALL RELATIONSHIPS START out so beautifully.

  It’s the idea of finding something new and unknown that makes your heart race. It’s like the intro to the start of movie: calm and so intriguing that you can’t turn away even if you wanted to.

  There’s no if that moment will fade away but when.

  Still. I can’t help but bask in this euphoria. It’s absurd, the excitement I’m feeling over talking to a complete stranger. But it’s also thrilling. Probably because it’s so unlike me to do this. Every time I think that it won’t last, that I need to take it slowly, I get swept away in the emotions surfacing inside of me.

  Days have gone by since Jackson and I started talking. E-mails and messenger quickly became a hassle so we switched things up and went to our cell phones. There was the smallest warning bell that went off when I gave him my number, but I quickly silenced it. What’s the harm in it? It’s not like I gave the guy my home address. We text any chance we can get. Even when I’m taking care of Mom, I can’t help but furtively glance at my phone. Just in case.

  Some people might say Mom isn’t running on all eight cylinders but she’s smart enough to notice that something’s up with me. Almost instantly she recognized that I seemed happier. At first, I shrugged off her remarks. Told her that there were some good job prospects. Not once did she push for the truth. But sooner than later I would fess up to her.

  I drum my fingers on the kitchen table.

  “Come on, come on,” I say out loud.

  When the ping sound comes through I jolt and anxiously type in my passcode. It’s from him.

  Our conversations have the ability to pull me out of the reality of my life and for a second I forget everything that’s happening. I forget that I still haven’t heard back from the Credit Union. (At this point I probably won’t.) Or had any call backs for substitute teaching.

  Tell me your favorite book.

  Tell me yours first, I text back.

  Why do you need to know mine first?

  Cause I need to know your taste in reading.

  I’ll read anything as long as it allows me to escape the real world, I tell him and that’s the truth. In my opinion, people may try but they’ll always fail at finding something more magical than reading.

  Fair enough. Favorite book? Levels of Life.

  My reply is instantaneous. Julian Barnes. Nice.

  Whew. I was going to say, if you didn’t like that book, we could no long be friends, he replies.

  Nah, I text back. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me as a book friend.

  Book friends? Really? I was hoping I’d been promoted to real life friend.

  In order to be on that level I have to see you in person.

  Maybe I want to see you in person…

  My smile fades. I have no idea what to say to that.

  I want to meet you, he texts again.

  For a second, I waver. We talk online constantly. But meeting in person feels risky. Dangerous. And I know I said this is all thrilling for me but there’s a big difference between thrilling and dangerous.

  Not yet. I reply. But maybe someday soon.

  How soon?

  Soon. I hesitate before I type back, Are you in a relationship?

  Typing those words makes my toes curl, like I’m an adolescent talking to their crush. But I don’t care. This is the most interested I’ve been in someone or something in a long time. With bated breath I wait for his reply. Time seems to stand still. How many minutes have passed? Two? Three? Why isn’t he answering?

  Just as my panic starts to escalate, I get a reply. No. Last relationship ended two years ago.

  Why? Why? Why? But if I ask that it’s only inevitable that he’ll aim the question back to me and that’s not a road I want to walk down… yet.

  You?

  No. I’m not in a relationship. I don’t offer any more details simply because my relationship history reads like a Who’s Who of crap.

  I’ve always been attracted to the unattainable. In layman’s terms, I go for the bad boys—the ones I have no business being with. In high school I dated a guy for two years that was no good. He was constantly missing school. Hung out with the potheads and reeked of smoke. But I didn’t care. I think I wanted to change him so desperately that I looked past all the bad and tried my hardest to see the good. When we broke up he continued on with his life and I was left heartbroken.

  Age made me slightly wiser. My last boyfriend, Pete, was stable both mentally and with his career. But when I moved back home there was no talk of us staying together. We naturally fell apart. I should’ve been upset but I wasn’t; there was too much on my plate. Even now I look back at my high school boyfriend with more nostalgia than I do Pete.

  When are you going to send me the rest of your smut book? he asks.

  If only you could see me rolling my eyes right now. And for someone who knocks smut books you sure want to know how my little smut book ends.

  Just because it’s smut doesn’t mean it’s not interesting.

  I smile, feeling victorious, but then my smile slowly fades as I read his next message.

  Again, we should meet.

  I’ll do you one better. We should talk on the phone. You never know, I could have a heavy chain smoker voice.

  Somehow, I doubt that.

  You’re taking a huge risk, I taunt.

  I took a huge risk when I messaged you and so far that’s turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.

  Be calm. Be calm. Be calm, I tell myself. But I cling to our conversations like a life raft. And that’s just the texts. What will it be like to actually talk to him? I already know in my gut what the decision is. I’m going to talk to him and see where it leads.

  Call me any time. I write back.

  I wait for regret and maybe something akin to fear but I feel nothing but triumph and elation.

  I SHOULD’VE NEVER said the word ‘anytime’ in our conversation yesterday.

  That leaves an open window for him. But I didn’t want to say, ‘Call me at this exact hour.’ That makes me seem high-maintenance and demanding, and I’m not. Yet I’ve been fidgeting all day. My attention jumps from Mom to looking at the job ads and back to my phone, just in case I’ve magically missed a call.

  My phone stays completely silent the whole day, which does nothing for my mood.

  It doesn’t help that today is a bad day for Mom. She won’t eat much no matter how many times I try to coax her into it. I make her a ham sandwich, even put lettuce and tomato on it. One of her favorites. When I place it on the end table next to her chair in the living room she barely glances at it, just stares at the TV screen with a stoic expression.

  Today she did absolutely nothing but make a deeper dent in that chair. The weather didn’t help my mood much either. Since this morning it’s been snowing. We’ve had a good five inches and that only means more shoveling for me to do in the morning.

  “Mom,” I say through gritted teeth. “You have to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re never hungry. That’s why you’re skin and bones.”

  “I’m not skin and bones. And I eat toast.”

  “You can’t live on toast for the re
st of your life,” I argue.

  Mom shrugs, like I told her we were out of paper towels.

  I turn around and walk back to the kitchen and fight the urge to throw the plate at the wall. I walk over to the kitchen sink and rest my elbows on the counter. I close my eyes and take big deep breaths and try to calm down. Snapping at Mom isn’t going to help anything. I think we’ve been around each other too much. We just need a small break from one another because I’m close to screaming.

  I need to keep busy so I clean up the kitchen. I get a load of dirty dishes in the dishwasher and that’s a plus. But there’s a massive stack of bills on the kitchen counter, and that’s been there since well before I arrived. I don’t even want to go near that. I go to the refrigerator and grab a trash bag from underneath the sink and clean out the expired food.

  By the time I’m done the trash bag is completely full and we’re down to nearly nothing. Disgusting. I don’t stop working and yet it doesn’t matter how much I clean this fucking place it’s still a pigsty. I ring out the washcloth and toss it into the sink before I give up and walk back into the living room.

  A good hour has passed since my cleaning frenzy. Mom’s still in her chair and I’ve calmed down slightly. We sit in silence and watch as Olivia Benson asks some bruised-up brunette who harmed her. I’ve seen this one. It’s her stepbrother.

  I sit back and relax, tucking my hands into the pocket of my hoodie. I doze off at some point. I’m woken up to the sound of a phone ringing. I practically jump off the couch. I look at the clock on the wall. Almost six.

  My phone sits right near me on the coffee table yet I dive for it like it’s my lifeline. “Hello?” I say, slightly breathless.

  “Selah?” A deep voice says on the other end of the line.

  Instinctively, my fingers curl around my phone. My eyes slant to the left where Mom stares at me quizzically.

  “This is she,” I reply, as I make my way out of the living room toward the stairs.

  “Hi.” The deep voice clears his throat. “This is Jackson.”

  “How are you?”

  “Good, good.” He clears his throat again. And the fact that he might be the slightest bit nervous calms me down a bit. “And you?”

  “Just finished up dinner and now I’m going to try and successfully fail at finding a job,” I tease.

  “With positive thinking like that I’m sure you’ll get a job in days,” he says without missing a beat.

  I had many ideas about how our first conversation would go. I even had a Plan B if it was really bad. I’d use Mom as my scapegoat—say that she needed me or I had to take her to some doctor’s appointment. There is no need for Plan B.

  No need at all.

  I should’ve probably allowed for a Plan C, where the conversation goes so well, so amazingly well, that I’m doing nothing the entire day but talk to the person on the other line. I tell him everything that comes to mind. Why I decided to become a teacher.

  “I can’t help it. I’ve always had a spot for kids,” I tell him. “I think it’s because my mom was a kindergarten teacher. It just seemed natural to follow in her footsteps.”

  “What about writing?”

  “What about it?” I ask.

  “When did that passion come along?”

  “Probably my early twenties. How about you?”

  “Early teens. I started to write these horrid sci-fi novels in middle school. Thought they were amazing.”

  I smile. “Do you still have them?”

  “Unfortunately I do. Sometimes I want to delete them, but I never can.”

  “I think it’s cute you can’t get rid of your first manuscripts.”

  “They’re not manuscripts. They’re fucking awful. Thank God I never posted them online; once they’re online you can never get them back.”

  I then proceed to tell him about my love/hate relationship with social media.

  “Why do you hate it again?”

  “Because it’s impossible for me to gauge how the other person is reacting to the conversation. I can reply one way and the person can think I’m furious at them. I always send two hundred happy emoticons just so people know I’m not pissed off.”

  He laughs and the sound does something to me. It’s a twist in my gut. There’s a beat of silence. But it’s goes on for too long because it gives me time to absorb everything. All of sudden, Jackson’s name becomes a CD stuck on repeat and all coherent thoughts fade away like tufts of smoke.

  Jackson, Jackson, Jackson…

  How had he not come into my life sooner?

  “We should meet,” I blurt.

  Shit. Where did that come from? Less than twenty-four hours ago I was the one pumping the breaks on the whole meeting in person idea. But talking to him on the phone has me suddenly thinking differently. If we click so well on the phone, how will we be in person?

  “Weren’t you the one that was all hesitant for us to meet?” he teases.

  “Yeah. But I think we’re off to a good start.” I pause. “Don’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.” I smile down at the ground. “Name the time and the place and I’ll be there.”

  THERE ARE MANY theories about love.

  Some say it can cut you like a knife. Others believe that it’s the best feeling you can ever have. But it’s not a feeling. It’s a choice, whether you know it or not. Whether you like it or not.

  All your life people have loved you, Selah. I can imagine that Susie gave you dozens of kisses and hugs when you were a newborn. She probably never let you go as a toddler. And even when you were a kindergartner she probably had a hard time letting you go, even though she knew as a teacher that it was normal to experience the bittersweet feelings rushing through her.

  But let us fast forward to what I remember: you on the playground. You’re eight years old, standing next to Tyler Addison. You had such a big crush on him. The kids around were singing “K-I-S-S-I-N-G”.

  And then there was the time you and Sam played a mean game of MASH and you hoped to God that you got that damn mansion, two kids and of course, Dillon. Because you were in sixth grade and you had so moved on from Tyler.

  From that first e-mail Jackson sent you, love attacked. And now you were given two choices: continue the conversation or ignore him and go about your life.

  We both know what your decision was.

  You take your phone with you everywhere. Even when it doesn’t ring you glance at the screen on the off chance that you somehow missed a text or call. Sometimes, and you’d be mortified if anybody found this out, you fall asleep clutching your phone. You’ve even had a few late night talks that ended up with you falling asleep with your phone to your ear like some love-struck high schooler.

  Right now you’re a walking cliché. And you know it too. I can tell when you think about Jackson because your cheeks turn pink. You feel ridiculous yet you can’t help yourself.

  What did I tell you, hmm? I knew you’d like my gift. I’d like to say that you can’t remember the last time you felt this way but I’d be lying. If you dug deep enough, you’d remember.

  But I’m wasting time.

  It’s been a mere few days since you first started talking to Jackson. The spectacle of the two of you is so sweet, anyone within a mile radius of you and Jackson are liable to get a fucking cavity. No one could ever guess that you’ve only just started talking. That’s how intense things got between the two of you.

  I don’t mind it; I find it quite fascinating. Gone are the days of you being a Negative Nelly. Jackson is your passport to a whole other world, one where you’re allowed to look at your problems in a new light. You’re a glass half-full kind of person now.

  You haven’t found a job, yet you’re handling it well. Your savings account is slowly drying up. Yesterday, when you weren’t looking, I glanced at your bank account. I give it one month—tops—before you admit defeat and cancel Internet service.

  After that it’s just a matter of ti
me before creditors start knocking on you door. You moved some money around and wrote down a reminder to cancel the cable. And I could see you thinking to yourself: Shit. Will the Internet be next?

  But let’s be honest, you’re in bad times. But not that bad.

  It sounds strange but I feel a bit conceited because this is going exactly how I planned. You’re starting to look at each new day as a fresh start. I even saw you write a few times this past week. It was nothing major but it was getting to a point where a few words within a week felt like progress. You even sent Jackson a few chapters to read.

  Simply put, you were starting to get the spark back in your eyes.

  But you’re being greedy with my gift. A little too zealous, if I’m being honest. You enjoy my gifts left, right, front and center and you take every single one. Yet you continue not to see me.

  But don’t worry, whether you like it or not, we’re going to meet.

  Because I love you so much I feel the need to warn you to slow down, because you’ve never seen the dark side of love. You’ve never seen how twisted and malignant it can become. How it can eat you alive from the inside out. How it can drive you completely and utterly insane.

  THERE’S NO MANUAL on how to handle a depressed person. Better yet your own mom.

  Everything I say and do has to be handled delicately, like I’m wearing kid gloves. Not to mention the fact that it is plain bizarre to go through this. All my life Mom has been the caretaker—the matriarch to our small family.

  It almost feels like someone has handed me a role and said, “Here you go. Play this character for a bit.” It’s been long enough and I’m more than ready to give them back the character. I’m done with it. I know the feel of the character—the good and bad sides. In the end, I like being me.

  Every day I tread carefully, making sure to have absolutely no expectations. Expectations always result in disappointment and I can’t afford that right now.

  Today is not one of those days.

  “Please come with me!” I beg for the umpteenth time. “You don’t even have to change your clothes.”