I smacked him so hard, he had a purple rim around his eye the next day. “I haven’t had sex with her, you fuck.”
All that year, that long, hard, awful year, I had to stay away from Georgia, and I ached for Ammy. It was strangely, terribly simple, what I wanted: just to sit with her and listen to her comments on a movie. To hear her voice or touch her hand or shoulder.
At night, after class and art and Frisbee or soccer or whatever we had going, I would strip down to my boxers, lie under my covers, and pretend she was beside me. That her hands were on me. That her sweet, soft voice was in my ear. I thought of calling her ten thousand times, but…couldn’t.
I know it hurt her. She told me it did.
And what happened the next summer by the lake… That was unforgivable.
I can see it in the way she moves, even as we cross the lobby: anger. Once upon a time, this girl loved me. I never deserved it, but she gave it to me anyway. She gave me her heart and her body, and I broke her.
I feel like shit as we walk in silence toward the small park about three blocks away from Imagine’s geodesic building.
I want to tell her something, but I’m not sure what. I can’t tell her the truth, that’s for fucking sure. It would wreck me, but it would be hell on her as well. I rub my temple, trying to think. I haven’t thought about that shit in quite a while. It hadn’t crossed my mind for probably a year before Weiss called.
Amelia slows her pace, and I notice she’s looking at a pet store. “Do you want to go inside? Like…see them in their cages?”
I can tell she does, so I nod and get the door for her. They don’t have doves, but six parakeets and one parrot that screeches, “Have a nice day!”
Amelia’s kneeling down before I get a chance to see the reason why, but it’s apparent soon enough: puppies.
They’re white with brown spots, floppy-eared like those quintessential pups in children’s board books and cartoons.
“Oh my goodness… How sweet are you?” she coos, rubbing one long, brown ear.
I look around the room, searching for the reptiles, because there’s no fucking way I’m getting hard from seeing her rub a damn dog’s ear.
“Yes… What a good boy—or girl. And look at your sister, maybe brother. You have a brown ring around your eye, you little sweetie. Yes you do…”
I grit my teeth as Ammy fusses over the puppies. It’s weird to hear her going on and on the way she is, using that adoring tone of voice. Her manner seems so different since I saw her again. I realize as I listen to her, she’s just different with me.
It makes me mad.
Mad at myself.
Finally she stands, and with the briefest, most apathetic glance at me, she steps toward the door. I follow her outside, walking a half step behind her for the rest of the block, before I realize that I’ll need to pull ahead, since she has no clue where we’re headed. I find I like her eyes on me, even like walking beside her. It gives me a strange feeling… A certain restfulness I don’t have words for.
Then we’re rounding a busy street corner, and just beyond a cement parking deck, I see the park pond and big, green trees around it. People are there with dogs and strollers; I see a couple on a bench, the man’s arm wrapped around the woman’s shoulders.
Beside me, I can feel her grow more stormy. The feeling intensifies as we step off the sidewalk and start crossing the grassy field beside the pond. Ducks paddle in the water, birds crisscross from tree to tree. I look up, watching them glide—as if I need to watch birds fly. I could animate a bird if I had seen it fly just once.
I wait for her to steer our course, kind of hoping she’ll sit on one of the benches so I can sit beside her. Instead she stops at the water’s edge and looks out at the dark green pond. It’s not big, maybe the size of a football field. There’s not much to look at, but you wouldn’t know it from her face. She looks transfixed, her round eyes clear, her mouth soft and curious. She can’t keep her features that way long, though. Pretty soon her mouth is tighter. She pulls sunglasses out of her purse, staring at them for a moment before sliding them on her face.
Pretty. Fuck, she’s so damn pretty in that black getup, her coppery hair falling long and pencil straight around her shoulders.
“Is this what you were hoping for?” she asks after a minute.
Her words are slightly serrated, even though I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean for them to be. I watch her shoulders rise, then fall as she exhales. She seems frustrated; tired.
“It’s not,” I tell her honestly.
She turns to me. “Why not?”
“Amelia…” I grit down on my molars, weighing risks and benefits, and then I know it doesn’t matter. I can’t leave this shit hanging any longer. “Am…I know what I did was unforgivable,” I say softly, “but—”
“No!” She holds both hands up. They’re clearly shaking. “No, Dash! I don’t know where you’re going with that, but I don’t want to.”
“Don’t want to what?”
“I don’t want to know! Keep it to yourself, okay?”
“I—”
“I don’t care!” Even through the dark gray of her glasses lenses, I can see her eyes are wide. Her mouth is pulled into a panicked “o.”
“Don’t talk about that stuff. We have to work together, Dash! This isn’t the reminiscing hour! It’s all gone, it’s over, it’s in the past. Let’s keep it there.”
She whirls around and just like that, I’ve lost my gamble.
Amelia
I leave him in the park and I don’t stop until I get to my apartment.
Good job, Amelia. Reeeeeal professional.
I can’t help it. That’s the worst part. He started talking and I simply lost it. I don’t know why. I spend the afternoon and evening thinking about why. Also, watching for a text or phone call telling me I’m fired.
Neither comes, not call nor answer.
Why was I afraid to hear him? The answer comes with clarity as I roll over in the middle of the night. So obvious: I’m afraid it won’t be good enough. In my mind, over the years, I built up this fantasy. I didn’t really let myself believe it, but neither did I disbelieve: he had a good reason to go.
How could he take me to a peaceful city park and rip that Band-Aid off? I lie in bed, watching the blue light of morning move across my ceiling. I’m afraid he’ll say he couldn’t help it. He was scared, and so he left.
I’m afraid if he says that, I can’t forgive him. If I can’t forgive him, I can’t work with him. And if I go, I know for sure I’ll never see Dash Frasier again.
I’m not ready for that, so I smooth the tattered Band-Aid down, get dressed, and go to work like nothing happened.
Dash makes it too easy. He seems quiet and sad, but that’s only because I know him so well. To the others in the studio, I’m sure he seems pleasantly polite.