“You are a good listener,” he said slowly. “But you can’t come. That’s not how it works. It’s private. Anonymous. This is serious, Felix.”
He was disappointed in me, and it made me feel sick and ashamed. But the idea of him leaving—this time, next time, possibly forever—had me wild.
“I know it’s serious! I’m not stupid. It’s all you care about!”
He blinked at me, wide-eyed and still, and I felt weak and small yelling at him from the couch, so I scrambled to my feet.
“Not all I care about,” he said, arms still crossed tight over his bulging chest.
His detached calm felt like he didn’t even care about this moment and my chest burned with hurt. I pushed the hurt out with anger and dug my nails into my palm, praying I wouldn’t cry.
“Well, that’s how it feels. It feels like my own boyfriend would rather spend time watching TV with a random dude than being with me!”
“I’m not doing this because I want to spend time with him.”
“Then why the hell are you doing it? Because it seems like you spend your whole life doing shit you don’t like. Grocery shopping every other day when you hate crowds. Going to the gym where you hate people asking you about your routine, when you have weights at home. Working in the bar, when you barely even like speaking to strangers. Living at the mercy of your phone because it might alert you to another person you have to go save.”
He was as still as a statue, one hand pressed to his stomach, eyes on the floor. But every insecurity, every resentment, was pouring out of me, even if he didn’t react—especially because he didn’t react.
“Do you like anything? Do you even like me? Or am I one more obligation you took on just to—to punish yourself? To shift the cosmic balance in your favor?”
He didn’t respond, and something tiny and hopeful still inside me died.
“You know, you—you—you pack every day full, with all your habits and routines and obligations. But it doesn’t leave you any time to have a fucking life!”
He flinched.
“I want a life, Dane!” I shouted, tears coming hot and fast. “I don’t want you to be with me ’cuz you think you have to. I don’t wanna be a th-thing on your to-do list. I want a life with you, but you’re too stuck in all this shit to have anything left over. No space, no time, no room for me! No room for us.”
I wiped at my tears with the heels of my hands. Through them, Dane was a stone-still blur, a sphinx.
“I don’t know what else I can do,” I sobbed. “I’ve been throwing myself at you, w-waiting for you to l-l—to care about me like I c-care about you. But you keep leaving and you won’t talk to me.”
I was snotty and disgusting and my heart was breaking and Dane still didn’t move a muscle. I snorted out a miserable, tear-clogged laugh at how pathetic I must look to him.
“It’s like you live a-a diorama life. Come on over, ladies and gentlemen, and see the perfectly organized non-life of Dane Hughes! Look, you can see in from every direction.”
He winced again.
“Say something!” I yelled.
His jaw was set and his eyes were fixed on the wall over my shoulder. His voice was rough and cold when he spoke.
“Not having this conversation with you right now. I need to go.”
“Dane!” My voice broke. “Dane!”
He turned his back on me, squared his shoulders, and walked out the door.
It slammed behind him and I threw myself on the couch, sobbing into the pillow that smelled like him. I took a minuscule amount of pleasure in how uncharacteristically dramatic it was to sob on a boyfriend’s couch after he walked out on you. Then I curled up in a ball and went back to feeling terrible.
When my tears dried up, I felt floaty and light-headed. I drank a glass of water and told myself to go home, but as pathetic as it was, I still felt better for being in Dane’s space, as if by staying here I was staking a claim, saying: This isn’t over yet—we still have more to say to each other.
Yeah, like Dane ever said much to me anyway.
The most horrible feeling was creeping in. It was frightening and twisted, and its logic was something like this: Have I attributed deep significance to Dane’s reticence when all the while he simply…didn’t care? Have I ascribed deep feeling to his silences when he actually doesn’t feel much at all?
Had I taken the building blocks of how much I liked Dane and how he seemed to like me better than most strangers, and constructed this entire relationship in my head?
I felt like I was going to throw up.
I opened the kitchen drawers and cabinets, finding only plain white dishes and plain clear glasses and plain silverware and kitchen utensils I couldn’t identify. I opened his bedroom closet and dresser and found only five pairs of the same jeans, plain T-shirts, a few flannel shirts, a few sweatshirts, plain socks and underwear.