“I just don’t get Barthes,” Talia groans, lifting her laptop over her head and tucking her knees into her chest. She looks so small, even though she could easily curl her whole body around mine in that position.
We’re sitting on her bedroom floor, the carpet scratchy against my bare legs. We’ve been “working” on our papers for over an hour now, but all she’s typed is her name and the title while I’ve barely made it past my introductory paragraph. Turns out we aren’t the most productive pair, but I’m not complaining. I’d stay up all night writing both our papers if she asked me to, just to keep laughing at the random memes she shows me whenever I manage to write another sentence.
She doesn’t ask me to write her paper though, thankfully, so I decide to do her one better and make good on my promise to be helpful. “All right, shut your laptop and humor me for a second.”
She unfolds her body and watches me attentively, straight-faced, and I have to look away before I get stuck staring at her like this.
“Okay, so.” I think of how Mom tried to explain literary theorists to me last year when I started looking into college programs and she was still convinced I could be swayed into studying English. Literary theory is surprisingly interesting, but I’ll still take examining different forms of fungal root rot over it any day.
“Have you ever really, really wanted a piece of chocolate cake?” I start, and Talia’s blank stare shifts into a suppressed smile. She doesn’t stop me to tease though, so I keep going. “Like you’ve been thinking about cake all day, how it’ll melt in your mouth and feel against your tongue and sliding down your throat? You think about the thickness and the moisture and the flavor until you’re driving yourself mad with how much you want that cake?” I pause for her to nod, wanting to be sure I haven’t lost her. “Roland Barthes said that what you really want is that want itself, not the cake. When you eat the cake, you don’t really focus on all those things. You eat it, and you’re left unsatisfied because the cake wasn’t everything you wanted. Because it can’t ever live up to what you built it up to be. You just wanted the act of wanting something.”
She nods slowly, her lips pressed together. “What if I don’t like chocolate cake?” she says, trying to keep her face serious. But her laughter gets the better of her. I throw a pillow at her, and she only laughs harder.
“What kind of cake do you like, then?” I ask mockingly, hands on my hips as I sit up. I feel like a parody of my mom.
“Tres leches?” she tries, shrugging.
“Feel free to retract my Latine card, but I’ve never been able to stomach tres leches,” I admit. Now it’s her turn to throw a pillow at me.
“You’re lucky your love of papas rellenas and other Cuban food I’ve never heard of compensates for that cultural betrayal,” she laughs, lying back on the floor and resting her head on her crossed arms. “I think I get it, but what about his whole the lover is the one who waits thing? That was him, right? Where does that play into all of this?”
I feel my cheeks flush as she says the word lover so casually, especially as we sit in her bedroom, even if we’re several feet apart and on the floor.
“That’s not really the same thing,” I explain, lying on my back like her and focusing on the chipping ceiling paint. “I don’t think we have to cover that on this paper; just stay focused on the desiring-desire theme and you’ll be fine.”
“Can you give me a non–food related example?” she teases, forcing me to arch my back so I can stick my tongue out at her.
“Fine,” I say, trying to think of something specific that’ll apply to Talia personally. I nearly say that her love for math could work as an example, that Barthes would say she loves solving equations because she wants to complete them, but that completing them doesn’t quench that desire. But my brain short-circuits, and instead I say, “Have you ever wanted to kiss someone so badly it physically hurt?”
She sits up, her attention caught as she silently nods. I look back to the ceiling but feel the heavy weight of her eyes on me as I speak. “Barthes would say that you don’t actually want to kiss that person; you just like the feeling of wanting to kiss them.”
“Is that why people are so into emotionally unavailable people?” she asks drily. My stomach aches when my mind flashes to Lucas.
“I guess so,” I reply. “I don’t know if Barthes ever said that directly. But I think it applies.”
“So we’re all masochists?” she laughs, breaking the intensity of our words. I smile and turn my face toward her.
“Not necessarily. It’s not that we like the pain of not having something; it’s more that the act of wanting gives us more satisfaction than the actual thing ever will. Less masochistic and more like we’re all Goldilocks, getting off on constantly searching for the perfect whatever. But we’ll never find it.”
She whistles long and low. “Barthes seems like a bit of a downer.” She turns over onto her stomach again, opening her laptop and staring at the blank screen. Her face is lit up by the white computer light, turning her eyes more orange than brown. “He has a point though.”
“You agree with him?” I ask. I finally lift my head fully off the carpet and lean my back against her bed without breaking eye contact. She fiddles with her piercing, a chip of red nail polish fluttering off her finger and onto her keyboard. She doesn’t notice.
“I feel like I’m always disappointed in things. I don’t look at them as romantically as you do,” she says, and I flush, torn between feeling complimented and insulted. “I love my birthday and Noche Buena and Easter. But without fail, by the end of the day, I feel let down. I think I like the planning and anticipation more than the actual day.”
“Do you think prom will be like that?” I ask, the terrifying thought something I haven’t dared to ask myself until now.
“Probably,” she admits. “When I was younger, I imagined going with Dani and Tori, Dani and I wearing our matching rose brooches. I even pictured sneaking them in if we didn’t end up at the same high school.” She sighs wistfully, eyes drifting over to her wall. I imagine she’s focusing on the empty spaces where the torn photos once hung proudly. “After all these years, I’ve let go of most of those little fantasies. But prom was always something I imagined us doing together, sort of like a prewedding, pseudo-group-quince thing.” She snorts. “I’m not even wearing a dress,” she says softly, like she’s forgotten I’m in the room with her.
It makes me want to fix this, guarantee her the prom she deserves, even without her family’s unanimous support and first love by her side.
“Be my prom date,” I blurt out.