What do you think?
I kind of jump when the message comes through. I feel jumpy and unsettled all over. I feel leftover wanting for Evan that’s not really leftover and with it something like embarrassment, and then maybe sweetness.
Also, I feel anticipation of seeing him again, even if I don’t know what I’ll say, after everything that happened today, but I realize if I trust anyone with the awkward ever after of almost kissing, it’s Evan.
He seems weirdly okay with almost-kissing moments. I don’t know if that’s maturity or gravitas or what.
Or maybe the almost-kissing thing happens to him a lot.
I do know I want to see him again, already, and this has never happened, so he could simply be using my hormones against me so that I will install voice-recognition software and put my lights on timers and relearn to drive.
They’re beautiful, I say.
The snow, the too-quiet feeling of the snow, is the perfect way to sit in front of these pictures and these messages with my heart confused.
I close my eyes—now, the embarrassment comes.
I broke down in front of my OT and he kissed my forehead and he saw my bra and he must know I tried to really kiss him, kiss him, at the bus stop.
I’ve been thinking a lot about snowflakes, C writes.
Who cares about snowflakes?
Is my very first thought. My next is the way the snowflakes melted against Evan’s cheek.
My message box is blinking, waiting for me to reply. I think about things going sideways.
I think about when an experiment fails and the only thing to do is to design another, and to use what you’ve learned.
What about them? I ask.
His cursor blinks a long time then he sends a long message.
About how they are too small to do anything but drift together, but when you look close they seem so singular.
Drifting is different from moving under your own power, deciding something. It’s currents—in the water or in the air.
Or, in the middle of something where no one can face truth or honesty and tells stories instead. Drifting together. Drifting apart.
It doesn’t mean anything except that you’re passive in the current, or that the current is stronger than you are.
I read through his message a few times.
First, I think, I don’t want to drift anymore, but I don’t write that.
Another message from C blinks through.
We should meet.
Oh.
Just to start a friendship? It feels like we should, I know it might be awkward, and I don’t want you to feel unsafe. We can’t be that awful, because of the way tenants are placed in the house, it’s possible we walk right by each other all the time, anyway.
My hands are shaking, but in the interest of avoiding drift, I write,
I’ve thought of that, too. What are you thinking?
I’m really tied up at work, there are some things I need to figure out here.
But it gets quiet, probably for you, too, when the University’s winter break more officially starts, which this year is the 21st. So maybe a couple days after that? Unless you’re traveling somewhere?
I’m not traveling. My mom decided to fly in Christmas Day and stay through the New Year.
Christmas Eve’s Eve?
Ha. Yeah. I know where you live, of course, but we could meet someplace neutral since it will be our first time meeting in person. The mashed-potato place, Potato Mountain that’s across the street from the corner store?
11 a.m.?
December 23, 11 a.m., you and me and mashed potatoes.
My hands feel a little shaky, and I can’t really see why I shouldn’t meet this person. He works on the same campus, he lived here six years and my landlord maintained he was a “good guy,” though I didn’t want details.
Our chemistry, while pixilated, is obvious.
He is well rounded—has an artistic hobby.
He has been keeping me company all this time when I hadn’t wanted to keep anyone else’s company. I called my mom. I dutifully called and emailed my friends from home, though it was a struggle because they were worried and their worry and questions made me uncomfortable and a little more depressed and just … weary. This last week I’d noticed that my colleagues had piled in one car together, laughing, to go to a pub they’d invited me to, as well, and I had very politely turned them down and come home to talk to C about his pictures.
The campus was so quiet.
I had kissed my OT today.
Deal.
When I tell him good-bye and shut my laptop, I’m glad I turned the lights on like Evan’s always telling me to do. Because I need to see everything right now, and not be in the dark. My life used to be simple.
The little house I shared with my mom and our coffee brunches with a view of the sound.
The hours at the bench figuring out how small things get messed up and then live anyway.