“Listen, I need to eat dinner and get some sleep,” I say.
There’s another long pause. Then he says, “Marks, you’re abandoning me in my hour of need?” His tone is lighter. He obviously senses that he’s freaked me out.
“What did you think you were getting?” I blurt without thinking. “Hours of phone sex?”
He lets out a shocked laugh. “A boy can dream.”
My cheeks are red, and my eyes are shut so tightly that they hurt. “Sorry.”
“Well, save my number in case you change your mind. It’s good to talk to you, Molls.”
“Uh-huh. Sweet dreams.”
Sweet dreams?
Am I the most awkward person in all of Los Angeles?
I hang up before he can say goodbye.
I wish it wasn’t too late to call Dezzie or Alyssa to dissect this conversation. Although, if I tell them what happened, they’ll think I’m obsessing and read into it.
Which … Should they read into it?
What am I doing, telling a man I somewhat recently had sex with to call me late at night when he’s sad, if not suggesting there’s something between us?
I did suggest it, tacitly at least, then backpedaled in terror when he acknowledged what was happening. Which is maybe why that stuff about my habit of bolting stung.
I console myself with pasta. A lot of pasta. The entire box of pasta.
I won’t even get into the amount of wine I wash it down with.
Suffice it to say, enough to text him in the middle of the night.
Molly: I know it was my idea but I don’t think we should talk anymore
I pause, and then type one more line.
Molly: sorry
There, that should settle it.
Usually when I make a decision, especially one involving a man, I am unequivocal. I break off relationships like a bodybuilder snapping a pretzel in half, and then I pop that pretzel into my mouth and savor the salt like I would the taste of his tears.
But this time, it doesn’t work.
I lie awake, clutching my phone until my hand starts to ache, staring at my own text bubble.
I feel like I wrote the wrong thing.
Am I allowed to write something else after requesting cessation of contact? And if so, what do I say? Sorry, Seth, you called it. Intimacy freaks me out! Please make yourself available for light banter only lest I panic and …
And what?
What do I think I will do?
Well, exactly what he said I would.
Run away.
I can’t help it. It’s in my DNA.
I get up and put my phone in the other room where I can’t stare at it or, worse, use it to text Seth something else. I pick up the eight-hundred-page Norwegian novel I’m slogging through and, thanks to the gods of mind-numbing Scandinavian autofiction, fall asleep within minutes.
I wake up to warm California sunlight streaming through the windows and feel good until I remember what I did. I force myself to get up and make coffee before I grab my phone off the charger.
There’s a message from Seth. It’s time-stamped brutally early in the morning, so he must have sent it as soon as he woke up.
Seth: Hey Molls. Don’t be sorry—I get it. You were just trying to be nice and keep me company and I was totally out of line. I hope you don’t think I was criticizing you or that I harbor ill-will over high school. I promise I’m not carrying a grudge.
Seth: The thing is, I think I might be carrying a torch. I really enjoyed our time together at the reunion and getting back in touch with you. I’ve thought about you a lot since we saw each other, and how much fun I had with you, and how beautiful you are, and how hot it was when we had sex.
Seth: I know it’s juvenile playground stuff to antagonize a girl you like, and maybe that’s what I was doing last night, and I’m sorry. If you want to try talking again, I promise to do nothing but flirt with you and tell you how pretty you are. But I hear you, and I won’t bother you unless you tell me it’s okay … at least not until I collect my winnings at our 20th reunion. Take care. —Seth
Trust Seth to be the type of person who writes entire perfectly punctuated paragraphs by text message, and signs them with his name like my mom. The nerdiness of his prose styling, however, does not stop me from doing a deep textual analysis of his every word.
It’s the “carrying a torch” that gets me. It’s got a nice ring to it—courtly with an ache of regret, like it’s torn out of a Lyle Lovett song. There’s a large, wicked part of me that wants to tell him to keep sending me softhearted paragraph-length texts about how lovely I am.
But his sweetness is the clincher. I’m just not nice enough for him.
