“Let me just send this one email,” Derek says, his eyes already on the phone, thumbs flying across the screen. He’s not expecting me to say, Please, don’t, we’re in the middle of a conversation. I don’t think he’s expecting me to say anything, because, to him, I might not be fully corporeal, certainly not someone who’d place a barrier between him and an email. Or him and a call. Or him and a text.
I lean back and bring my glass toward my chest. Take small sips. Roll the glass between my palms while I hold it close. Watch the liquid swirl.
I look up at Derek from time to time, but he might as well not be here. He types. And types.
I should say something. It feels like it’s been forever. But I only take another sip.
Eventually, I set the drink back on the table. I run a finger along the rim, pressing down as I do, wondering how much harder I would have to press before I hear a sound. A squeak.
“Just give me a minute,” Derek says, not lifting his eyes. “It’s a whole clusterfuck at work.”
There is always a clusterfuck at work.
At 12 PM on a Tuesday, during our first lunch date. Perfectly understandable, I thought, even felt a little in awe of him then. Such commitment. Such importance.
At 5 PM on a Wednesday, leading to a canceled dinner. Sometimes things really do happen just before the work day is over.
At 10 AM on a Saturday, while on vacation. He really can’t take any time off. Things would fall apart without him.
Such commitment. Such importance.
Clusterfuck.
“Sorry, baby, just a couple of messages that I have to fire off. I’m really sorry.”
I look around and wonder what the hell I’m doing here. What even is this place? The tiny dollop of seafood risotto, topped off with fresh basil, sure looked nice for the two minutes it took me to eat it. It also looked much better than it tasted, and it didn’t look or taste nearly good enough for how much it cost.
Derek has barely touched his food, and now his phone rings. He picks it up and shoots me an apologetic smile as he presses his index finger to his lips, letting me know I should be quiet, as if I’d actually said anything in the last … how long? Ten minutes? Hours? It feels like months. And then he takes the call—of course he fucking takes the call—and gets up to go outside, because my being perfectly silent just isn’t silent enough. There’s a low hum around us from other patrons, but this is a nice place, an overpriced-fancy-risotto place, so even the hum is fancy, the kind that helps cushion all conversation so no one hears anyone else, and the togetherness of eating out feels insulating and cozy, the kind of aloneness among the crowd that only a pile of money can buy.
We have a nice table, one that faces the street. I can see Derek outside, pacing, four long strides in each direction before he turns around. His free arm waves wildly, stilling only to point straight ahead, as if he’s trying to show someone the path forward, to impart on the person who called at 8 PM on a Friday that things are about to go Derek’s way, because that is the only way that things can ever go.
He stops, runs his hand through his hair, and starts yelling, his body tense in a half squat, one arm straight above his head, as if he’s summoning some divine help, or trying to beam all the frustration at this Friday night clusterfuck into the stratosphere through his outstretched palm.
He yells and yells and yells.
I dab my lips with a napkin. Even the napkins are stupid fancy here. For a split second, I feel bad that I’ve left some lipstick on it.
The funny thing is, Derek looks and acts exactly how he did when I first met him. He hasn’t done anything wrong, really. He’s always been exactly this, this thing we’re all supposed to want.
He finishes the call. I think, Finally, but then he starts to type. He types and types and types. And then he makes another call.
I look at the traces of my long-gone risotto and realize I’m still hungry. I am so desperately, endlessly hungry, like there is a cavern at the center of me, and something ravenous lives inside, clawing rabidly at the walls. I look at Derek’s untouched steak, which is probably cold by now, and I wonder if I should just eat it to spite him, but I don’t want Derek’s steak, I don’t want anything from Derek anymore, perhaps I never did, so I pull out my phone and send him an email, not a text message but an email to his work account because that’s what he seems most likely to check, and I write a very nice polite message starting with Dear Derek, and I say that I left so he would have one less clusterfuck to handle tonight, and that it was nice to know him, and I close with Sincerely, because I am being sincere, the most sincere that I’ve probably been for as long as I’ve known him. Then I block his number and I am off, making my way through the kitchen and out the back door.
I await a pang of guilt, guilt over doing this the way I have, because maybe he deserves more from me, more sincerity, more explanation. I wait for the pang on the ride to a fast-food drive-through, and when I bite into a greasy sandwich, ketchup and mustard dripping down my chin, but it never comes.
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