Afterwards, we stand apart, in the dark and in the rain. I keep saying my ride should be here any minute, as if I’m not watching the car move along the map of my screen. When the driver gets stuck at a red light, Caleb moves one arm around me for a moment’s hesitation.
“Tonight was really great.” He says tonight as if it’s something he has to clarify, and I agree like I really mean it. “I think you’re really cool.”
“Thank you, Caleb.” I take a long drag of my cigarette as punctuation, and then I exhale it as a sigh. “I think you’re really cool, too.”
When he pulls his arm back, it’s almost like it never happened.
The rain falls in the passive tense, and he’s four drinks into a Tuesday night. He only started looking in my eyes after the second. The car starts moving again from left to right across my phone, and I tap its dulled image to make the scene bright. Gingerly, Caleb lifts his hand and brushes my wet bangs from off my forehead. For a second, I think he might kiss the bare space he’s opened up there, but then it passes like the traffic does out the corner of my eyes.
“Would you maybe want to hang out again? Sometime soon?” He directs this question to the pale spot on my forehead.
“Yeah,” I hear myself say back. “I’d like that.” The red lights fall over the intersection again, washing us warm. It looks like he’s blushing, but I know it’s just the light.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I really would.”
When the rain picks up, he drops his head and smiles to himself. I pull my coat zipper up to my lips and mumble something about the cold or the car or the rain. Then, I lift up the half-smoked Marlboro red and offer it back to him. When Caleb shakes his head, I drop it and stomp it out.
“Are you free later this week?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check,” I add vaguely, like I’m the type of girl who has a lot to look forward to. Then, my phone vibrates in my hand.
The car is about to pull up, and I lean in to give him a hug goodbye.
I mean to be abrupt, in and out, but he holds me in his arms. Our cheeks press together. His face is course with a lazy beard but his skin is warm, and I keep my head turned out toward the street. I know it’s not subtle, and it makes me feel guilty like I have to make up for it. Like I really would kiss you, if I wasn’t just so busy looking out, waiting for the moment to arrive. Really, I would.
“Thanks, Caleb,” I repeat again about nothing in particular, and I peel back like a rind. He tells me goodbye and to text him to let him know when I got home safe as I make a big show of making sure it’s the right license plate.
Inside the car, the driver is speaking softly into headphones.
“Hi, thank you,” I say, and the man repeats my name back to me just to confirm it.
“Yes,” I answer. “Yes, thank you.”
Outside, Caleb is still standing there in the rain, waiting to watch me go. He has his fists bunched up inside the pockets of his coat as the red light on him turns cold and we pull away from the curb.
The windshield wiper swings back and forth as a pendulum, and the driver resumes whispering into his headphones. I can’t make out words, only the intimate sighing of a phone call goodnight. When you know someone well enough, it doesn’t matter what you say anyway. The words would never be right because they never could be right, so you talk around the feeling, circling it slow like buzzards in idle laughter. At that point, you’re laughing at all the things you say and all the things you cannot. At that point, you’re still talking.
I’m not trying to listen in, but there’s only the soft sounds of whispering, the white noise of rain, and the car’s mechanical purring. I put in my headphones to listen to something else, but I cut off songs before they can be sung.
When Caleb messages me, it’s something sweet about how nice it was meeting me tonight. I read it right away and then unread it, if only manually. There are others I don’t read. Messages from before the date, messages where I don’t even mention the date. Everyone is checking in to make sure I’m okay after everything that’s happened, though they don’t say as much. They can’t bring themselves to mention him, and neither can I. They’re polite like that and say everything but. Still, I can’t bring myself to respond. Not that there is much to respond to, it’s nothing. Nothing of substance, anyway. There’s no there there.
When my phone flashes again, it’s from a reaction to my close friend story from a girl I’m no longer close with. I’ve been oversharing again, posting myself bleary eyed with long captions. At 5:03 pm, I had posted a picture of me with swollen eyelids and a closed mouth smile before the date. I’m holding my thumbs up to the camera like I’m in on the joke. Sarah liked both this and the next post, from 5:15 pm when I’m holding the cold spoon I left in the freezer up to my eyes. The soft skin of my eye socket shines the camera flash back, red and wet.
As we cross over the bridge, we pass from Cambridge back over into Boston. When Caleb messages again, I swipe it up and then switch over to the Uber app to watch us move along the map. There are never cars like this at this time of night and I watch as the clock tills up how much longer it will take to get back to my apartment. What was 13 more minutes is now 15 and then 18. I’m watching cars weave into the fray of traffic before us when I catch the driver’s eyes watching me. When his don’t move away, I drop my own.
“Is that okay?”
“What?” When I look back up, he’s still looking. At first I thought he might be on the phone still, but his gaze is expectant and patient. He’s waiting for me to respond, but I’m not sure what’s going on.
“I said we have to take a detour.”
“Oh,” I answer. “Oh, okay.”
“The road,” he said and then pointed at it. “It’s closed.”
“That’s okay.” Like there’s any other option.
We’re stalling now, stuck in traffic outside the only mural for miles. On the side of a giant brick apartment building, windows are painted on. Each window is a vignette, a look into a different life that could be lived inside there. An old woman leans out one window, a baby cries inside another. Acrylic couples embrace and chip away at the same time, exposing the brick below. I never would have known people really lived there until I met someone who did. Inside her apartment, she had no windows. She never gets to see the sun rise or watch the moon wilt at night. None of the painted figures look like her.
When my phone lights up again, I hesitate to check it. And when I see my mom’s name, I wish I hadn’t checked at all.
How are you feeling?
Before I get the chance to not respond, she starts to call me. An old picture of us together fills my screen, and I do nothing. Then, she texts me again. You’re better off without him. As she starts to try to call once more, I fumble with my phone and turn it off completely.
“How’s your night going?” This time, I surprise him.
“What?” We’re stopped at another light and I’m haunting his rearview mirror. My partial reflection floats next to his as a lonely ghost in the backseat, a film photo that won’t develop.
“Is your night going good?”
He almost smiles, more out of amusement than kindness. Then, he shakes his head and returns his gaze back to the road. “It’s going.”
“It’s going.” He’s not telling a joke, but I laugh anyway. “Mine, too.” It’s going, going, and then it’s gone. I don’t say anything else for the rest of the drive, and he seems relieved for it. Instead, I spend the some 18 minutes left trying to practice presence, returning to my breath whenever I lose it like an engine that won’t turn over.
It’s a long ride home, and I’m trying not to cry.
It’s a long ride home, and I do.
When he finally pulls up to the curb in front of my apartment, I mumble a thank you and stumble out. After I pass through the front door to my building, I turn my phone back on as I climb the stairs. I have 10 missed calls from my mom, who has sent increasingly concerned text messages as well. Are you okay? What’s going on? Please call me back, I love you. Are you okay? When I do call back, she picks up on the first ring.
“Hello, Katie?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Are you okay? Where are you? I’ve been calling you. Did you get my messages?” She interrupts herself over and over. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, sorry. I’m just getting home. I was out with a friend,” I lie.
“Out with a friend?” I can tell by the way she repeats my words back to me that she had been imagining the worst. I can picture her now as she is, sitting at the kitchen table in our family home and waiting for my call. She had been picturing me as I might be, with my limp body washing up along the shoreline and beaten soft like sea glass.
“Yes, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Then, I lie again. “I just didn’t want to be alone.”