The Ex Talk

By the middle of next week, Dominic isn’t looking great. I mean, yes, he is still a very attractive human male, but he shows up past nine thirty a couple of days, he’s mostly unshaven, and when he smiles—which is rare—it barely touches his eyes. His Koosh ball is immobile on his desk, lonely and sad.

Truthfully, I’m not doing great, either. I’m crashing hard, a combination of overworking myself, prepping for PodCon, and checking my phone for nonexistent texts from him and Ameena.

I’ve gotten back into the habit of staying late at work, not wanting to risk ending up alone in the elevator again. So when he approaches me at my desk at six thirty on Wednesday and grazes my shoulder with his fingertips after I thought everyone else had gone home for the day, I nearly scream.

“Shit, I thought you’d left,” I say, holding a hand to my heart. “You have some seriously light footsteps.”

“Sorry.” He leans against his desk. And he really does sound sorry.

“I know our desks are close,” I say. “But sometimes I like to pretend there’s an invisible line between them, and you just crossed into my bubble. I like my bubble.”

“I’m sorry again,” he says with a sigh. “Wow, okay, this is not going the way I hoped it would. Look, I just really want to talk to you.”

“Okay. Talk,” I tell my computer screen.

“Not here.” The ache in his words wrenches my gaze over to him.

He looks nothing like the business casual stock photo I used to think of him as. His typically pristine shirt is sporting at least three whole wrinkles. If I look at him too long, then I start replaying what we did on the island, in his bed, in mine, on my couch . . . I only have so much willpower. And when he looks at me like that, I feel my resolve weakening.

“If we’re going to go onstage at PodCon in a few weeks, I’d like to at least be on speaking terms,” he says. “Please hear me out this one time, and if you don’t want to talk after that, then I promise I won’t bring it up again.”

That’s tough to say no to—so I don’t.

It’s approaching seventy-five degrees, a Seattle heat wave, so we pack up and head to Green Lake. Everyone else in Seattle seems to have had the same idea, given how many dog walkers, rollerbladers, and stroller-joggers we pass on our way to a bench facing the lake.

“Everyone’s so polite today,” Dominic says, sliding onto the bench next to me. “It gets above seventy degrees, and suddenly everyone’s smiling. I’ve always liked that.”

He’s right—the nice weather changes people. Gloomy introversion is so built into our DNA as Seattleites that any bit of vitamin D turns us into strangely social creatures.

“You’re stalling,” I say lightly.

“Is it stalling if I tell you I really loved doing that episode with your mom? She seems pretty great.”

“She is. Thank you. And yes.”

His leg is jiggling up and down, the way it tends to do when he’s nervous. “I’ve been such a mess lately,” he says after about a minute of silence while we watch a flock of ducks swim farther out into the murky blue water. “I’ve gone over that night at my parents’ house so many times, trying to figure out what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” I’m not entirely sure what he wants here—if he wants to convince me we should do the casual thing again or if we should just forget all of it ever happened, wipe the slate clean. He can’t miss the sex that much, can he? I’m not about to give my bedroom skills quite that much credit.

“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” he says. “When I told you that sex was a big deal to me . . . it wasn’t just sex. It’s the whole concept of a relationship.”

“I—I figured that.” It makes sense, but it doesn’t exactly explain why we’re having this conversation.

“And not just romantically. You know I don’t have a ton of friends here. I mean, thank god for Eddie, who’s even more awesome as an adult than he was when we were kids. I’m just—the idea of getting that close to someone again . . . it’s terrifying.”

“Wasn’t that the whole point of being casual?” I cross one leg over the other, as though if I look appropriately casual, I’ll be able to talk about it like it isn’t a big deal. “Look, if you brought me out here to tell me that you miss getting off regularly with someone, do me a favor and tell me now, so we don’t have to drag this out.”

His expression morphs to horror. “Wait. What? That’s what you thought this was?”

“Well . . . yeah. Kind of.”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss that,” he says, lips curving into a grin that sends a shock of satisfaction through me, “but no. That’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

“Then I don’t get it!” I throw my hands up, my frustration mounting. “You said you wanted something casual. So I don’t see the problem with going from casual back to nothing. Why can’t we just be nothing, Dominic?”

Even as I say it, it sounds wrong. My voice cracks and my heart stutters, and the word nothing bangs around in my head. I’m lying now, too. I haven’t wanted nothing in a long time.

Dominic presses his lips together before letting a sigh slip past. “What I’m trying to tell you is that when we started this . . . it didn’t feel casual to me.”