The next day I started to write a story. It was a Thursday, I didn’t have class until three, and I was sitting up in bed with a cup of black coffee on my bedside cabinet. I didn’t plan to write a story, I just noticed after some time that I wasn’t hitting the return key and that the lines were forming full sentences and attaching to each other like prose. When I stopped, I had written over three thousand words. It was past three o’clock and I hadn’t eaten. I lifted my hands from the keyboard and in the light from the window they looked emaciated. When I did get out of bed, a wave of dizziness came over me, breaking everything into a shower of visual noise. I made myself four slices of toast and ate them without butter. I saved the file as ‘b’. It was the first story I ever wrote.
*
Bobbi and Philip and I went for milkshakes after the cinema that night. During the film I had checked my phone six times to see if Nick had replied to a message I sent him. He hadn’t. Bobbi was wearing a denim jacket and a lipstick that was such a dark purple it was nearly black. I folded our milkshake receipt up into a complex geometrical pattern, while Philip tried to convince us to start performing together again. We were being evasive about it, though I didn’t know why exactly.
I have college work, Bobbi said. And Frances has a secret boyfriend.
I looked up at her with an expression of total horror. I could feel it in my teeth, a hard banging of shock in the nerve endings. She frowned.
What? Bobbi said. He already knows, he was talking about it the other day.
Talking about what? said Philip.
About Frances and Nick, Bobbi said.
Philip stared at her, and then at me. Bobbi lifted her hand to her mouth, slowly, the hand flat and horizontal, and gave one tiny shake of her head. It was enough to signal to me that she was really freaked out and not playing a game.
I thought you knew, said Bobbi. I thought you said it the other day.
You’re joking, Philip said. You’re not really having some kind of affair with him, are you?
I tried to work my mouth into a sort of casual expression. Melissa was going away to visit her sister for the weekend, and I had messaged Nick asking if he wanted to come and stay with me while she was gone. Bobbi won’t mind, I wrote. He had seen the message and not replied.
He’s fucking married, said Philip.
Don’t be a moralist, Bobbi said. That’s all we need.
I just continued folding my mouth up smaller and smaller and didn’t look at anyone.
Is he going to leave his wife? said Philip.
Bobbi scrubbed at her eye with a fist. Quietly and with a tiny mouth I said: no.
After a long and uninterrupted silence at our table, Philip looked at me and said: I didn’t think you would let someone take advantage of you like that. He had a choked, embarrassed expression on his face while he pronounced these words, and I felt sorry for all of us, like we were just little children pretending to be adults. He left then and Bobbi slid his half-finished milkshake across the table toward me.
I’m sorry, she said. I honestly thought he knew.
I decided to drink as much milkshake as I could without taking a breath. When my mouth started hurting I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop when my head started hurting either. I didn’t stop until Bobbi said: Frances, are you planning to drown there? Then I looked up like everything was normal and said: what?
*
Nick invited me to come out and stay in his house that weekend. He was cooking when I arrived on Friday evening and I was so relieved to see him that I wanted to make some kind of silly romantic gesture, like throwing myself into his arms. I didn’t. I sat at the table chewing my fingernails. He told me I was being quiet and I tore a piece off my thumbnail with my teeth and looked at the nail critically.
So maybe I should tell you, I said, I slept with this guy I met on Tinder the other day.
Oh, really?
Nick was cutting vegetables into small pieces in the neat methodical way he always did. He liked to cook, he told me it relaxed him.
You’re not angry or anything, are you? I said.
Why would I be angry? You can sleep with other people if you want to.
I know. I just feel foolish. I think it was a stupid thing to do.
Oh really? he said. What was he like?
Nick hadn’t looked up from the chopping board. He moved the diced onion pieces to one side of the board with the flat part of his knife and started to slice a red pepper.
He was awful, I said. He told me he loved Yeats, can you believe that? I practically had to stop him reciting ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ in the bar.
Wow, I feel terrible for you.
And the sex was bad.
No one who likes Yeats is capable of human intimacy.
We ate dinner without touching one another. The dog woke up and wanted to be let out, and I helped clear the plates into the dishwasher. Nick went outside for a cigarette and left the door open so we could talk. I felt like he wanted me to leave and he was too polite to say so. He asked how Bobbi was. Okay, I said. How’s Melissa? He shrugged. Finally he put the cigarette out and we went upstairs. I got onto his bed and started to undress.
And you’re sure this is what you want? Nick said.
He was always saying this kind of thing, so I just said yes or nodded and unbuckled the belt I was wearing. Behind me I heard him say abruptly: because I just feel, I don’t know. I turned around and he was standing there, rubbing his left shoulder with his hand.
You seem kind of distant, he said. If you’d rather be … If there’s somewhere else you’d rather be, I don’t want you to feel like you’re trapped here.
No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to seem distant.
No, I’m not … I feel like I’m having trouble talking to you. Maybe it’s my fault, I don’t know. I feel kind of …
He never usually trailed off his sentences this way. I started to feel agitated. I said again that I didn’t mean to be distant with him. I didn’t understand what he was trying to say and I was afraid of what it might have been.
If you’re doing this for any reason other than just wanting to, he said, then don’t do it. I really don’t, you know, I don’t have any interest in that.
I murmured something like sure, of course, but in fact it was unclear to me what he was talking about now. It sounded like he was worried that I’d developed feelings for him and he was trying to say that he wasn’t interested in anything other than sex. Anyway I agreed with him whatever he meant.