F*ck Love Read online

  He hesitates, not sure if he’s supposed to leave or make small talk.

  I don’t really want to share my bacon with him—it’s the expensive, peppercorn kind—but I’m curious about who is he. Or who he is. Or whatever.

  “Hungry?” I ask.

  “Is that the kind with the pepper on it? From the deli?”

  I nod.

  He sits on one of my two barstools and folds his hands on the counter. “I don’t know how to cook. It’s a severe handicap.”

  I shrug. “There are videos on the internet, cooking shows, and lessons you can buy for fifty bucks an hour. You just need some drive and you can be rehabilitated.”

  He laughs. His smile isn’t centered on his face; it’s all up on his left cheek like it’s drunk. You wouldn’t really know that since he rarely smiles. He looks younger, mischievous.

  “Maybe I should do that,” he says. “Become a self-made sous chef.”

  “I predict you’ll love to cook in ten years,” I say, turning the bacon. “Then you’ll have to make me something great, since I started your love of cooking.”

  “All right,” he says, looking at me. “What would you like?”

  “Fish,” I say quickly. “That you caught yourself.”

  “And after that, I’ll chop down a tree for you.”

  I feel myself tingle, so I look down at my bacon. That happened so easily. The banter. The first time we’ve ever had a discussion alone, and we’re simpatico. I get the eggs and cheese out, too, because I need to stress eat.

  “So you just—”

  He makes the whipping motion I’m using to scramble the eggs.

  “Yes,” I say. “Want to try?”

  He does it to humor me; I know he does. Who wants to whip slimy eggs around in a bowl? He splashes them all over my counter, but it’s cute that he’s trying. I make him pour them into the pan, then, when I see he’s a willing helper, hand him the spatula. He watches as I finish the bacon and sprinkle cheese on the eggs. I wish I felt self-conscious about my hair, but truth be told, I look hella cute with psycho hair.

  Too much? I ask myself. Who cares? I portion our food onto plates and walk ahead of him to my tiny dinette. While he sits, I go back for coffee.

  “I don’t drink coffee,” he tells me.

  I take a long sip from my mug and stare at him over the rim.

  “That’s why you never smile. You’d be a better man if you drank coffee.” He laughs for the second time, and I feel a little high as I hand him his mug.

  “What’s a Muggle?” he asks, taking it from me.

  “I save that mug for special people, Kit. Don’t ask questions.”

  Kit drinks his coffee. I wait for him to flinch, or make the usual complaints that non-coffee drinkers make. But he downs it like a pro, and I decide he’s not as bad as I thought. Maybe a little stoic. Melancholy. But, man, when you get him to laugh, it feels like a real goddam treat.

  Thanks for teaching me to stir eggs, and also for feeding me,” he says when it’s time to go.

  “No problem, Kit. See you tonight.” I sound all business. I want to pat myself on the back for not swooning.

  “Tonight?” he asks.

  “Yeah, Neil and I are coming with to Barclays.”

  “Cool,” he says. “I didn’t know.”

  “Della makes plans for everyone,” I say. I want to see how he reacts to that. If he’s annoyed by Della’s tendencies to control everyone’s free time. But he just shrugs.

  “See you later then.”

  When I look in the mirror after he leaves, I find egg in my hair. Also, I don’t look nearly as cute as I imagined.

  Della shows up later while I am sorting through my box of mismatched socks. She walks right in, tossing her designer shit on my sofa.

  “Oh no,” she says. “Why do you have that out?”

  “What? No reason.” I try to hide the box, even though she’s already seen it.

  She grabs me by the shoulders and looks in my eyes. “You don’t get that box out unless you have high anxiety,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

  Della is correct. My box of socks has been around since I was a kid. My mom would complain that one of my socks was missing, and she’d throw the loner in the trash. Five year old me would get it out of the trash when she wasn’t looking and stuff it in my pillowcase. The other sock would turn up. I knew it even then. I was just keeping its partner safe until it did. When my mother changed my bed sheets, she freaked out about all the socks in my pillowcase. I heard her telling my dad I was a hoarder. I remember feeling shame. There was something wrong with me; my mother had said it with such conviction. Hoarder! Sock hoarder! Later, when my dad came to my room to speak to me, he told me that when he was little, he used to keep all the caps to the toothpaste tubes. He couldn’t bear to throw them away. He gave me a shoebox and told me to keep my socks in there instead. I hid it under my bed, my shoebox of shame, and when I felt anxious or lost I would pull it out and touch all of my socks. All loners. All waiting to be reunited with their twin. I eventually outgrew the shoebox … and by that I mean there were too many socks.

  Kit doesn’t come to Barclays. At the last minute he calls Della and tells her something’s come up. I don’t know who’s more disappointed: Della—who starts to cry—or me, as I sulk in a corner pretending to listen to Neil as he talks about rocket science, or some shit like that. We order drinks, and I pull out a pen to doodle on my placemat. Once again, Neil and Della have a conversation without me. I wonder when I became the weird one. The little social pariah who sits in the shadows, trying to discover her hidden artistic talent. I even ordered a different drink than my usual cranberry vodka. It seems so childish to order, now that I’ve furnished a house with Pottery Barn. I order another glass of wine. White this time. The night ends early, and Neil drives us both home. Della asks me if she can sleep over. I say yes, but I don’t like it when she spends the night. For all of her beautiful, smooth skin, and bright blue eyes, Della farts in her sleep. It gets really uncomfortable. Most nights I go sleep on the couch and then sneak back to the bed before she wakes up. Neil walks us to the door and kisses me goodnight.

  “I was hoping we’d have some time together tonight. To … you know…” He waggles his eyebrows at me.

  “To what?” I ask dryly. Neil doesn’t get my humor. It’s nothing against him, really. But sometimes I like to make him nervous.

  “To do things.” He glances over my shoulder to where Della is taking off her shoes and picking up the remote.

  “Like?”

  “Have sex,” he whispers.

  “What? Why are you mumbling?”

  “To have sex,” he says louder.

  “Ew!” Della says from the living room. “I’m right here.”

  I watch him turn bright red, and I giggle. Neil is cute.

  “Plenty of time for that next week, lover,” I say. “After finals are over.”

  He gives me a really good kiss goodnight. I almost get glassy-eyed as I remember all the reasons I love him.

  1. Good kisser

  2. Kind

  3. Goofy

  4.

  Della makes me cook her a snack. Cook. Like I actually have to melt butter and chop garlic for what she wants. She sits on the couch, with Teen Mom on mute, and talks about Kit the whole time. She thought a proposal was coming, but now he’s possibly cheating.

  “I have been distant,” she tells me. I wonder when that was.

  “Emotionally distant?” I ask. “Or physically? Because every time I look over, you’re on his lap.”

  “Emotionally,” she says, without skipping a beat. “Last week I sent two of his calls to voicemail. I was on the toilet. And yesterday, when he asked me what I thought about his bass playing, I gave him a really generic response.”

  “Ouch,” I say. “Wedding’s off.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Helena! He’s the love of my life. My soul mate!”

  I scrunch up my nose. Hadn’t I read so
mewhere that there was a difference? I think about telling her about my dream. Maybe that’s what I need. A good laugh about me with Kit. But she’d probably say that Kit and I have nothing in common. And then I’d get mad. She didn’t see us at breakfast. She didn’t know that I changed his mind about coffee. Or that I was working hard to be a coloring book artist, because in my dream he told me I was. All these things.

  I carry her snack to her and sit as far away from her on the couch as I can.

  “Come snuggle with me,” she says.

  “No.”

  She turns back to the TV, glassy-eyed, checking her phone every thirty seconds.

  “Has he not answered any of your texts?” I ask her.

  “No. I think he’s asleep.”

  I wait a few minutes before picking up my phone and typing in his name.

  Hey Kit!

  It takes a few, but eventually the talk box pops up. I wait, my limbs tingling.

  K: Hey kid!

  I glance at Della out of the corner of my eye. She’s enraptured by Tyler and Catelynn.

  Drink anymore coffee?

  K: I want to be a better man.

  Lol. Why haven’t you texted Della? She’s freaking out.

  His text box shows up for a few seconds, then disappears all together. After that, I don’t hear from him.

  Shunned by association. Maybe Della was right. He is cheating on her. Asshole. There is no way I am marrying someone like that, let alone having his baby. I have to stop this nonsense. It was just a freaking dream.

  “Tell me about him,” I say to Della. “What’s he like and why do you think he’s so great anyway?”

  She turns to look at me, her eyes large and filled with tears. “He’s so good. Ten times better than anyone I know. He cares so much about other people. And not what they think—he doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks—he just cares about them.”

  “What else? Is he smart? What is he into?”

  “He’s … really smart. But, he doesn’t throw it around, you know? He’s quiet. Listens, even when you think he isn’t. And he notices details, crazy details. Like he always knows when I’ve had my eyebrows waxed, or change my nail polish color. And he likes … I don’t know. We do the same things.”

  Since Della’s life consists of sleeping late, shopping for bikinis, and going to the occasional late night concert, I’m not sure it says much about Kit.

  “He’s just busy,” I tell her. “It’s not about you.”

  She nods, and just like that, her glassy eyes turn back to the TV, and she’s zoned out. That’s the thing about Della: if someone’s not in love with her, she stops being able to function.

  Kit disappears for a week. And, during that week, Della will not leave my apartment. She follows me from room to room, asks for snacks, and cries into my throw pillows. I suggest she go to his job and ask him what’s up. But she says only trashy girls chase men, and instead stalks his Facebook.

  I try to leave my apartment as much as possible, but she asks if she can come with me when I leave. I’m smothered in places a person shouldn’t be subjected to smothering: the grocery store, the dry cleaners, the gas station where she gets out of the car to stand next to me while I pump gas. I sneak out once, when she’s using the bathroom, and ten minutes later she blows up my phone until I answer.

  “Where are you?” she sobs.

  When I tell her I ran to the bookstore, she says she’ll meet me there, and shows up in huge sunglasses and a tight black dress.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” I ask. I am crouched in the trashy novel section, looking for cheap thrills and deep skills.

  “Kit is here,” she says. “I saw on his Instagram.”

  Shoot. I didn’t. He hardly ever posts pictures.

  “Were you going for the clubbing-in-the-middle-of-the-day look?” I ask her.

  “Shhhh,” she says, flapping her hand at me. “Here he comes.”

  I have The Barron’s Lust in my hand when Kit comes walking up. I stand up, so I’m not at crotch level, and glance at Della. Her face is indifferent, but I can see her hands trembling. I’m caught in the middle of a couple’s quarrel, and I don’t know what to do with myself.

  “Easy Dells,” I whisper. “He’s just a boy who has a lot of explaining to do.”

  Her shoulders straighten up, and I see her pointy little chin jut forward.

  Kit notices my book first. “Whoa!” he says. “Bet it’s at least ten inches.”

  I put it back on the shelf.

  “Where have you been?” Della growls. I flinch, but try to look supportive.

  Kit makes a face. “Nowhere new. Why are you wearing sunglasses inside?”

  Della rips them off her face to reveal two swollen eyes.

  “You haven’t returned any of my calls. I’ve been a mess.”

  I take a few steps back, trying to ease out of the smut aisle before they start fighting.

  Kit rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “Oh. Sorry about that. When I’m writing, I get distracted.”

  “Writing?” Her face is screwed up in confusion.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been working on something new.”

  “What do you write?” I blurt.

  He notices me at the end of the aisle and gives me a funny smile.

  “Nothing serious,” he says. “I just tinker.” He looks at Della. “But, this time I’m into it. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours.” And then, with a side-glance to me, he says “I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee.”

  Join the club, I want to tell him. On the sleep and the coffee.

  “I … I didn’t know,” Della says. “It felt like you didn’t want to speak to me.”

  Kit sighs. Deep.

  “Sometimes I’m not good about keeping in touch. I disappear. I don’t mean to upset anyone, I swear. I just get involved with what I’m doing.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Now I feel stupid.”

  “Don’t.”

  And then they kiss in the smut aisle. And my initial thought is that I’m watching him cheat on me. Or maybe not me—dream Helena. But it feels weird and gross.

  I drive home, book-less. At least I’ll get my apartment back.

  After finals, I sign up for an art class. I don’t even tell Neil. It’s stupid, I know. You have one lousy dream, and you think you’re destined for coloring book greatness. But my instructor is a kooky old guy named Neptune who walks around the classroom barefoot and smells like Vicks Vapor Rub. I’m totally into him. He tells us that when he was a young man, Joan Mitchell commissioned him to paint her nude. If I can’t be Neptune’s favorite at the end of this eight-week session, life isn’t even worth living. I want him to want to paint me naked. Is that creepy? Oh my God, I’m so creepy. I’m not particularly good at any of the assignments, but one time Neptune tells me that he likes my interpretation of a sea horse.

  “It’s like a seahorse who was born in the sky,” he says. I smell vodka on his breath, but still. Weren’t all of the greatest artists junkies and alcoholics? I frame my airborne seahorse and hang it in my bedroom. It’s just the beginning. I’m going to be so super good at this one day.

  Della invites us to dinner at her apartment a few weeks later. I haven’t seen either her or Kit since the smutty bookstore kiss. And I don’t want to. I’ve managed not to think of him at all. Even in art class when I draw a tree house that looks more like a minivan. Even when I scramble eggs. It’s easy to forget a guy who has melty smurf eyes and a melancholy face. I’m not about that life.

  “I don’t want to go,” I tell Neil. “I have to look for a job. I’m a grown up.”

  “Being a grown up can wait for a night,” he says. “Della’s been complaining that she never sees you anymore.”

  Della hasn’t been complaining to me. I wonder why she’d talk to Neil about something like that.

  “Okay,” I say. “But she can’t cook, so maybe we should eat dinner before we go.”

  Neil agrees, and
we make plans to eat at Le Tub before we head over to her house. Le Tub is a Miami oceanside restaurant that uses old bathtubs and toilets as decoration. If you’re really lucky, you get a table by the water where you can see the manatees as they swim by. Someone once told me that it was one of Oprah’s favorite restaurants, but seriously, Oprah has a lot of favorite things—it all sounds like lies at this point.

  I make sure my hair is blow-dried this time, and put on my nice silk shorts and a peasant top. Neil whistles when he sees me, and I make a mental note to try to look nice more often.

  “Legs for days,” he says.

  “All the better to wrap around you,” I say, then immediately blush. I never say things like that. So embarrassing. Neil likes it. He makes me drink three glasses of wine, and when we hug in the parking lot after dinner, he slips his fingers under my shorts and kisses my ear.

  I’m like a real life seductress. Who knew wine could unwind me?

  Della announces that we smell like steak when we arrive. She leans in to sniff my hair, and I swat her away. We lie and say it’s the air freshener in Neil’s car, and I hand her a bottle of wine. It feels different in here. Like, not as Della. I eye the living room suspiciously. Everything is neat and orderly. No sign of a male live-in. But still…

  She ushers us into her pink living room where a tray of appetizers is set up on the coffee table.

  I blink. Fancy shit. I forget I just ate dinner and try it all. Salmon canapés, miniature meat pies, baked brie. I spill mango salsa on my shirt, and I don’t even care. The button of my shorts is digging into my stomach. Della pours me a glass of wine, and while I’m trying to wipe off the salsa, wine splashes onto my shirt.

  “Where did you buy this?” I ask through a mouthful of cheese.

  “I didn’t buy it,” she says. “Kit made it.”

  The cheese gets stuck in my throat, and I cough. It’s awful, like my whole life flashes in front of my eyes, and it’s so boring. Lying little shit. Neil hits me on the back. I’m bent over and watery-eyed when Kit walks into the room, a tray of something perched on his steepled fingers.