Deep End

LATER. After Jan hugs me, gives me his email, and makes me promise to stay in touch.

After Lukas drops him off at his hotel.

After it is agreed upon, without any conversation, that he’ll drive me home.

After I tell him my address and ask, “Should I type it into the GPS?”

After he shakes his head and remains silent for several minutes.

After he kills the engine in front of my apartment building, unbuckles his seat belt, unbuckles mine, and then sits back half against the door so that he can look at me.

After he patiently waits for me to speak for a long stretch of silence that seems to claw at my throat and expand within my body.

I ask, “How long?”

He knows what I mean.

How long were you going to deny yourself, this time?

How long till you planned to reach out to me again?

“Fifteen days.” There is no shame in his voice. And maybe there shouldn’t be. He was on track to make it, after all.

I nod. “Just a few more, then.”

His arms cross on his chest. I wish I could read his expression, but his face is blank. When he finally talks, a million moments later, it’s to me, but I’m not sure it’s for me.

“That first day, the Sunday, I almost called you a dozen times. It was . . . difficult. Last week Pen mentioned that you two were having lunch together, and I went to the dining hall just to—I don’t fucking know. Look?” He shrugs, detached. It’s like he’s reporting the results of an experiment. On me. On himself. “On day seven Jan arrived. He’s good at taking up every free second of a person’s day with no regard for their schedule.”

“How nice of him.”

“I thought the same.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Did you consider that I’m not a bed, or a condiment. I’m not hot water.” I try to sound as disengaged as he seems to be, but I doubt I’m succeeding. “Did you consider that I might be the type to hold a grudge? Or self-respecting enough to pick up the phone on the fifteenth day and say, ‘Fuck off’?”

He nods, like I’m being nothing but reasonable. The quiet, impersonal civility of this conversation is . . . devastating, actually. “I think part of me hoped you would.”

“Why?”

It takes him a while to answer. When he does, he’s not looking at me. “Because sometimes I can’t breathe when you’re around.”

“Well, I . . .” I shake my head. Huff bitterly. “I’m sorry.”

He laughs, silent. “It’s not a bad feeling, actually. Just overwhelming.” He shakes his head, as if to get rid of bad thoughts. “I had no frame of reference for how much I . . .”

I can fill in the blanks. I liked it more than I thought I would, and it scared me.

He bites the inside of his lip. “I’m . . . not sure I enjoy it. Not being in control.”

Welcome to the club, Lukas. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I doubt it has anything to do with me. I’m just the first not-vanilla girl you’ve ever been with.”

A long, icy stare. He doesn’t reply.

“The thing is, Lukas, I understand how you feel. I really do. And I don’t blame you, but . . .”

I’m silent for so long, trying to put my thoughts together, feeling the clammy weight of this press down on me. Lukas never rushes me, and at last I have my words.

“Even if it’s just sex, it’s not a good idea for me to be with someone who resents wanting me.”

It’s just for a blip, a gaping, voracious, rioting moment, that I can see a hint of how he really feels about this. But it lasts so little, I’m not even sure. Whether he cares. Whether he’s happy to be free of me. Whether he heard what I’m saying.

I swallow around the off-kilter heartbeat in my throat, and then I reach out to squeeze his hand one last time. The marks of my teeth, I notice, are still there. Like those, too, weren’t allowed to fade.

“Bye, Lukas,” I say.

He doesn’t try to stop me, and I never look back.