Bright

Grace Byron’s story from the LARB Quarterly no. 43 moves between tense living rooms, quiet bookstores, and dive bars where old songs ooze out of speakers “like sludge.”

By Grace ByronDecember 17, 2024

• LARB Lit

• Fiction

This story is a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 43: Fixation. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print.

¤

I PICKED UP A COPY of the new brightly colored book for women. The back was splashed with quotes by other famous women authors—and one man of color—about the purpose of words. I put it back down, decided against playing into their slick marketing hands. Not that I didn’t want to read it. Part of me thought about sliding it into my tote bag behind a bookshelf.

Turning a corner, I discovered an old nook full of used art books. Tattered from use, sliding over one another as if an avalanche had just come through. I started picking them up and stacking them. Monet, Warhol, the usuals. Then Goya hovered before me like a grotesque vision. He wasn’t my favorite painter but his work often came to me as I was walking around town.

Only once had I seen Goya in person. During my junior year I studied abroad in Madrid, pacing around museums and drinking until well after the sun came up. I used my time to travel all around Europe. Now at thirty I hardly drank. I listened. I spent my days grading papers for professors too lazy to do it on their own, walking other people’s dogs, and volunteering at the library.

I picked up the thick hardcover book and stared at the cover. Witches’ Sabbath. A group of haggard women dancing around Satan in the form of a goat. His eyes blank slits, a perverse halo of leaves around his head. The cashier didn’t look up, just rang me up and went back to his phone. I walked out of the bookstore and bristled at the bright day. Students brushed past me as I tried to light a cigarette under the oppressive summer sun. I wished I was sitting in the air conditioning, watching the humidity ruin someone else’s hair.

A text from Ryan bubbled up on my phone. I hadn’t heard from him in a few months. The words didn’t register at first, like the first early morning clouds across a barren sea.

¤

I started sleeping with Ruth and Ryan when I moved back to town. Careful to avoid the gay bar, I only ended up chatting with people online. Fishermen blended into veterans and polyamorous men with mustaches. Other women never interested me, but perhaps now having a vagina myself opened up a new avenue. Mostly I wanted the days to pass by pleasantly. I had nothing to demarcate Mondays from Tuesdays and spent the weekends reading. Even though I enjoyed punk music, I found myself listening to it while cleaning rather than going out into town.

In October I got a message from Ryan. He told me I was very beautiful. I thanked him and said he didn’t look so bad himself. Demure, protract, wait. As I was eating cold cereal and lukewarm coffee, he messaged me back. He wanted to be honest with me: he had a girlfriend. “Okay,” I typed back. Usually I didn’t go in for couples but he was cute and I was withering away, my smooth skin wasted by long walks in graveyards. Good morning, I said to my nonexistent pets and left for the day, heading across campus to the English Department. Blasting music in my headphones and imagining what kissing his whiskery beard would be like. Would he hold me down, would I straddle him against the bed as I took my top off? He was slim. Maybe he was submissive. I don’t like playing games.

Emel was in the office. I decided to show her the messages while I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee and looked in my staff mailbox to see if there were any new papers to grade. The medieval English seminar I was TA-ing had a paper due. Every few days a new essay trickled in. MLA, size 12, all with different margins. No one could write 5,000 words on Arthurian literature.

“He messaged again,” Emel said.

Maybe we could all have a glass of your favorite wine together?

“Should I message back for you?” She smirked.

“No. Please don’t.”

She didn’t push. We weren’t close enough for that. I just wanted someone else’s input. A few weeks ago she told me not to date someone who wrote about their felony in their dating profile. I adjusted my maxi skirt and sat down across the table from her.

“My boyfriend and I are going to visit my grandparents in Turkey in a few weeks. Can you cover my classes while I’m gone?”

“Sure,” I said, still staring at the message on my phone.

how about tomorrow night?

Glossing over the paper, I saw another trite comparison between Parzival and Mallory. No one wanted to write about Chrétien de Troyes’s adulterous Knight of the Cart.

can’t tomorrow … how about tonight?

too soon? hahah

¤

Sex was supposed to initiate a new start. Wipe my slate clean and void my past experiences. Not that I was trying to start something, I just wanted to feel the edge of an experience. To be cut by it.

I walked to the bus around eight o’clock, chain-smoking the whole way, glad to be out of my apartment. Leaving Emel behind had felt oddly painful. I realized she was sometimes the only human I talked to for days on end. The professors I worked for mostly emailed me. I went grocery shopping once a week, buying bok choy and eggplant and spinach that wilted or I ate raw by the mouthful. Cooking felt like a chore, something the living did. I hadn’t felt alive since college. My junior year, while I was studying abroad, my best friend Ali went missing. A campaign started to find her. People canvassed, protested, sang punk songs. But no one ever found out what happened. My parents begged me to move away after college but I stuck around anyway. Not because I think she’ll come back but because I couldn’t let go of the soil we shared. We’d planned on moving away together. When her parents gave me her notebooks, I found out a lot about her. She had a whole life planned for us. She was going to be a painter.

By the time I got off the bus, we were on the outskirts of town. Past the graveyard and Buddhist temple and little coffee shop that held chaste poetry readings. Dying irises lined the apartment complex. I was wearing a leather jacket to ward off the chill. It was a starless night. I could feel my body sinking into the ground like a stack of bricks. Gathering myself, I rang the doorbell and awkwardly stepped back from the door.

Ryan came to the door in shorts and a T-shirt. He was a pale, lanky guy with a buzz cut. His long limbs flew out in all directions like Silly String. He was trying to be suave, not goofy, but it endeared him to me. Best behavior. I hid a smirk and replaced it with a sly smile.

“Hey, hi, welcome. How are you? Come on in,” he said breathlessly, rushing to get everything out in one go. If I was quiet, I would have the upper hand. I learned that early on. Seductive womanhood didn’t always require compliance but it did require withholding. If he wanted my approval, he would soon want me.

I smiled and followed him up two flights of stairs. He opened his front door with an oddly chivalrous flourish and motioned for me to go first. Ruth was sitting on a fuzzy green couch in front of a glass coffee table. She was smiling, half-ready to get up, half-ready to stay seated. I spotted an unopened bottle of Merlot and three clean glasses. The kitchen was spotless. Light acoustic music was playing through the TV. A wilting pothos and some kind of a tree stood in the corner.

She was more plain-looking in person. A long, matronly green dress covered her curves. My breasts were bigger than hers. Embarrassing. I hadn’t kissed a woman in years. I forgot about the comparison game. Meeting her in person only made it worse; I thought I’d simply find her sexy and move on—instead I wished she was somewhere else. Easier to be the other woman. Though perhaps I still was. It could’ve been his idea alone. She could have been placating him.

Eventually she stood and came over. I got worried she was going to shake my hand. She seemed to think better of it and merely stood up. Carnal obsession was already slipping away. The mundane art of greetings was bludgeoning us. Still, I hoped that the sex would be pleasant.

“Sit, sit,” Ryan said.

The couch didn’t seem big enough for the three of us so I sat down in a rickety wooden chair.

“That was my grandpa’s,” he said.

“It’s nice.”

“It’s horrible,” Ruth cut in. “We should get rid of it and get something more comfortable. We never sit in it.” She shot him a look and then cracked a smile.

I felt the “what do you do” question coming.

“How long have you two been open?” I asked instead.

Ryan looked down at the floor. “Uh, we haven’t done something like this before. Have you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“A lot?” Ruth asked, cocking her head.

“A few times,” I shrugged. “Maybe we should have a glass of wine.”

Ryan laughed and went to the kitchen to get a corkscrew. I watched his ass as he left and I turned back to Ruth.

“How long have you two been in town?”

“We got here a month ago. I’m in the MFA program. Poetry.”

“Oh, nice,” I said, deciding to be honest. “I grade papers for the English Department. I’m working on this King Arthur seminar right now.”

“Graduate students?”

“No. Sadly. It’s a freshman class. No one can really write yet so I end up either marking all over their papers or just giving up hope and randomly picking a letter. Don’t tell the dean.”

She laughed as Ryan poured the wine. The deep burgundy shimmered through the crystal glasses.

“Those are nice glasses,” I said.

“My grandparents’,” he said.

“Are all of your things from them?”

“Almost,” Ruth said.

“They passed away last year,” Ryan said.

I made my apologies and shifted gears again. Every few topics, a small land mine appeared and I maneuvered us back into the open sea. Sometimes Ruth seemed like the one to impress and sometimes Ryan acted like the leader. They were both following my lead. I just wanted us to stop talking about death and taxes.

Sufjan Stevens came on. Gentle acoustic guitar strumming and low humming. That was when Ryan made a move, when he said, “Shall we go to the bedroom?” I mumbled “Sure,” caught off guard, and followed the couple into their dark bedroom.

Ruth made short work of her clothes, piling them neatly on the floor until she was just in lacy, mint green panties. I despised them. They weren’t flattering. Her lipstick was too orange. She hadn’t put any effort in. Or she was just Midwestern, never having to learn the deeper lures of womanhood. Ryan slowly fingered her left nipple as he let his pants drop. I prayed he wouldn’t make me take off whatever embarrassing boxers he had on. They wanted me to walk over to them and join of my own volition. Their initiation was invitation enough. I walked over and the smell of wildflowers overcame me. It was her perfume. She must’ve spilled the bottle all over herself. I swallowed a cough and looked her in the eyes. She had to feel included, like she had deference. My mouth engulfed her breast as I closed my eyes and choked back the sickening sweetness. My eyes watered but I kept going until I heard her moan. Maybe she liked women more than I’d assumed.

The left side of my body went numb. I thought I was having a stroke until I saw Ryan behind me pulling down my black stockings and kissing my leg like a trophy. He was too tender. But I couldn’t escalate too quickly. I drew back from Ruth and pulled off my cheap tight dress, putting my lingerie on full display. My breasts were out, held up by black wiring and lace. I hadn’t worn a garter in a few years but I fingered Ryan for the type. I was right. I could feel his jaw drop as I pushed his head down to Ruth’s crotch. I licked my fingers and pressed them to her body, letting them circle her as he watched. Then I kissed her. Deep, my tongue searching for hers until she relented. All I wanted was him inside me. All this work was exhausting. They were the only ones getting oxytocin, dopamine, pheromones. They wanted to be toys in my hands.

It all came back. I thought it would take a second to get into the swing of things but their bodies were like remotes, predictable inputs and outputs, no real turnoffs, no surprises. She shrieked, he groaned. I just wanted to feel something. Eventually after I’d gotten her wet and he was hard from watching, he pushed me onto the bed. He kissed me and Ruth got nervous as he pulled down my silk underwear and I smiled, trying to look inviting instead of bored. It was all I had wanted and already I wished I was driving home, getting a milkshake in the all-night drive-through. I heard another sad song come on in the living room. This one had strings. Someone was singing about not wanting to talk. Better to drown, the voice moaned. Ryan picked up a bottle of lube after spitting on his hand; I was glad he rethought that one. I didn’t notice if he slipped a condom on or if he was just trying to get harder before he jolted in. He went slow. I motioned for Ruth to come over, I tried to kiss her on the lips to give her something to do. She withdrew and fiddled with something I couldn’t see.

She put her hand inside me. Since Ryan was already inside, her hand filled me out; I could feel her fingers rippling around his cock in my hole. I let out a cry and she smiled above me.

“Harder,” I yelped. And they obeyed.

¤

After Ali disappeared, I started having panic attacks. In movies, being a single woman is romantic; in life, it is mundane. Being alone without mate or friend was terrifying. I oscillated between making my coffee slowly and meditating and lying in bed all day. Since I lived alone, no one asked me any questions. I didn’t have someone coming to check up on me. Emel and I only ever talked at work. If we didn’t cross paths for a week or so, it wasn’t out of the ordinary. I watched people live normal lives. Productively going from one social event to another, going out to bars, moving from one city to another, but that’s all I did: I watched.

When I studied abroad my junior year, I tried to expand my horizons. But there was no one to enjoy Venice with. The Caravaggios and Goyas and thin nibbles of cheese cut from a fresh wheel of parmesan. I was haunted. I wanted to go back and help with the search—maybe I was the only one who knew where to find a vital clue. We were like sisters. Ali and I used to platonically share a bed. Sleeping in a cold European bed reminded me of her. Waking up and sniffing her hair. In college I’d taken a few lovers, but never nested.

I needed space from the grief, the kind only found staring out at the Mediterranean while drinking overpriced cappuccino. There was no one to go back to anyway.

Of course, in Italy I was worried about the homophobia. Even though I mostly dated men, I wondered if I passed enough to wander the streets alone at night. But I was in bed by ten watching British detective shows dubbed in Italian while sipping tea and eating cheap biscotti. Sometimes someone from home texted me, asking me how I was or coveting pictures of the sights. I sent something of the sublime back, marveling at a Michelangelo or gondola or crumbling infrastructure. In ruin there was possibility. Or at least a sense of wonder. Time stopped after Ali left. Ever since, I was wandering around purgatory, letting the thin strands of life evaporate. There was nothing to hold on to.

¤

The co-op was where all the weirdos and oddballs got work. A lot of my old friends used to work there. Nick was the only one who still did. A lifer, probably. He drove shipments back and forth across town and coordinated shipping. His hands often smelled like dirt even though he wore thick work gloves when handling the vegetables. He and his girlfriend went birding on the weekends, and every so often when I saw them out, they would invite me. I remember the times we used to black out together. His girlfriend Liz was nice; she worked at the Montessori school near the state park.

I made small talk with them next to the coffee bar, reeking like cigarettes, dressed in a long black skirt and an oversized gray sweatshirt with ironic cursive text. A poem of some kind a classmate wrote. My wardrobe was still swathed in college nostalgia.

“When are you gonna fucking come birding with us?” Nick said as he flung around bags of cucumbers.

“I don’t know,” I stalled. “It’s been a weird week.”

He was starting to get the hint. My hermitage, his exasperation. Our little comedy routine. Those interactions kept me afloat, even if they didn’t push me toward the shore.

“I’ll text you. You can bring someone.”

I nodded and left them, staring at indistinct tubes of granola. The sign said fresh but I didn’t believe that. Crusty brown crystals clogged dried berries and nuts. I almost went back to ask Nick for help but decided to just grab cereal instead. One without too much sugar, something nice for my tummy in the mornings.

The one year Ali and I lived together, she begged me for sugar. She was trying to go on a semi-raw, sugar-free diet, the kind college girls thought would make all their immune issues go away and maybe as a side product get skinny. Neither of us was skinny. I complained but she always stopped me, telling me she was the one who had to look for sizes most malls didn’t carry and wear ugly sack-like dresses. Bitterly, I wondered if she was skinnier, more like one of the sorority girls, if she would’ve been found. Ali wasn’t like that though she always joked about the body positivity movement years before it blew up. Some days she performed biting commentary on wellness culture and some days she teetered on self-denial. I wish I would’ve told her to cut it out. She always told me to stop reading the tea leaves on the wall. It made no sense. I think she just knew I worried even before bad things happened. One therapist suggested I loved her.

I laughed again, turning a corner right into the refrigerated aisle.

There was Ruth, staring at the ice cream section. Her eyes didn’t move toward me. Maybe she didn’t want me to say hi. I started to back away, knowing we would certainly run up against one another again in the small grocery store—the small town. The smallest little oasis. State bird: the cardinal. State flower: peony. State tree: tulip.

“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

She retreated from the freezer and spoke in a low, controlled voice. “I’m good, trying to figure out what ice cream Ryan meant. He sent me a list of options in a preferred order but they don’t have half the brands or flavors he mentioned.”

“How many flavors are there?”  

“At the co-op? A lot. Organic versus local versus … I don’t know. I’m debating just getting him vanilla out of spite.”

“You should,” I said. “He deserves some spite.” 

Ruth bristled.

“I should get going. We’re going to a family barbecue tonight.”

“Oh, nice,” I said. “Have fun.”

“You too,” she said. But I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to have fun at.

¤

We met in the bathroom at the dive bar on the west side of town a few days later. I’d texted him something cryptic, hoping he would at least shower before driving over to meet me. While I waited, I downed a tequila soda and watched old men play pool. I kept to myself, hoping no would notice me. Jake’s was the bar I met trade at. Ryan wasn’t exactly a trick, but he wasn’t someone I was dating either. Better to keep him in the dark. Fuzzy dad rock oozed out of the speakers like sludge. Something from the seventies. When Ryan texted me he was pulling up, I downed my drink and walked into the bathroom. My one pair of heeled boots clicked against the warped wooden floor. Something smelled like tomato soup and liquor. The taste of lime stung deep in my throat.

I was quiet when he opened the door. He mumbled something about not expecting to see me again. Already I worried he wouldn’t be able to dive into the deep end like Ruth did. Maybe I should’ve texted her instead. But I wanted something from him. Something less than validation but more than attention.

“Does she know you’re here?”

“Yes,” he whispered. My hands were behind me, propped up on the sink. I sunk down a little, not wanting to tower above him. He was five eleven. Tall enough. I let my head hang against his chest staring down at the scummy gray tiling.

“I want you to annihilate me,” I whispered.

“What does that even mean?”

“Make something up. Then do it.”

He was smart enough not to ask any more questions. Instead he dragged a finger across my back, under the loose-fitting black dress, skin to skin until he found the nape of my neck and yanked me back, my head above the sink, his face scowling above me. His eyes shot me a tentative look, glazed with fear. I wondered if I looked so empty to him, just a woman begging a man to do something vile to her. He swigged a beer I hadn’t seen and poured the tiniest bit on my face. I stifled a laugh and kept my mouth open as he unzipped his pants.

That’s when Ryan hit me. Open palm across the right cheek. I saw red. I wanted him to tear me open. So he did. Every bad thing spilled out. Something sharp and vicious, hard and wet, the limits of pain rolling back the stone in front of the tomb. God give me a break. God give me a little vampiric fetish as a treat.

¤

Even though he told me he was only sleeping with me and Ruth, I went to the free clinic to get STD testing a week later. I hadn’t messaged him again even though the thought of his touch made me shiver. A student’s essay on Tennyson lay in front of me but I couldn’t get filthy images of Ryan to stop flitting through my mind. Brainrot, I thought, and tried to focus on different depictions of Guinevere. In some stories she was a woman without agency, an unlucky woman befallen by bad circumstance. In others she was a willing participant in her downfall, committing adultery with Lancelot and forsaking Arthur despite his patriarchal power. In some stories he was already a powerful man and in some he was still rising through the ranks, so we saw how his happy ending unspooled, how his death wasn’t inevitable.

The nurse called my name and I went back without hesitating.

On my way out I lit a cigarette and started walking home. The bus wasn’t coming for forty minutes and I had a lot to think about anyway. I needed to keep moving, to keep myself from texting him again, asking him to meet me in another bar.

While I was waiting by the burger place to cross the road, I felt a twinge of lust. Remember when she was splayed open to you? When she panted as your tongue circled her?

I was surprised Ruth was the one who came back into my mind. After Ryan fucked me, I went down on her until she came while he watched slack-jawed. She came quickly, it hadn’t been a big ordeal. Brightness and a crash in miniature.

¤

We kept seeing each other periodically that summer. Sometimes all three of us but most of the time I had Ryan meet me somewhere. A bar, in a parking lot, in the woods, only twice did he come to my apartment. His presence there felt like a violation somehow.

I kept asking him to go farther. To consume me. Ruin me.

He needed a little pressing, but when I took off my clothes, he was all mine. I could make him do anything. Slap me, spank me, spit on my face, pinch my nipples, call me foul things. The further he went, the more I opened for him. I taught him about needles and restraints and begged for hickeys and welts.

I wouldn’t let him fuck me in the ass even when he asked. I thought of her when he entered me, wondering what she thought about when he was inside her. When he pulled my hair, I imagined him ripping Ruth’s bangs off like the petals of a flower. I didn’t want to think about her—not unless it caused me pain. I got off on my internal cage fight. I wanted Ryan to want to destroy me. His heart just wasn’t in it.

The very first time he came to my apartment, I made him draw blood, scratching my back with his short nubby nails. It took too long. I brought out a knife.

“Gently at first,” I said as I walked out of my kitchen.

“I don’t know,” he said. I opened my knees and let the straps of my slip dress fall to the ground.

“Turn me around. Kiss my neck.”

“You’re so beautiful.” I could feel him sucking his teeth in.

“I’ll be more beautiful when you make me bleed.”

I couldn’t get a period but I could still make him eat me out while I was gushing red. The thought excited me, pulsing through me like electricity; I bucked as the knife traced my neck. He couldn’t get it up. I didn’t receive a wound. I turned around and slapped him suddenly.

“Hey,” he jerked. “No.”

Immediately my face flushed with shame. He grabbed my wrists and turned me around against the kitchen counter, pushing my stomach hard into the stone. His fingers found me and went deep inside until I moaned.

“That’s right.”

¤

As the King Arthur class wound down, I started grading more papers for Emel while she was in Turkey. She referred me to a few other TAs. That’s how I got gigs across departments. Ethics, Spinoza, art history. Some things I knew nothing about. Whenever I wasn’t fucking Ryan, I was grading papers. I started to have a savings account. I liked the art history class I graded that summer. After reading Arthurian romances it was nice to see lust depicted in ornate visual detail.

It was only a 101 class, so most of what they learned were things I already knew. I wasn’t an expert but I’d taken a class or two while I studied abroad. Learned about the greats, went around Europe, saw the Tate and the Louvre and walked around Rome. Reading students’ essays about chiaroscuro reminded me of Ali.

One of the last things I wrote her was an email about the art in Florence. I felt so lucky, I said, to get to experience such beauty.

Of course she never responded.

¤

The last time, or one of the last times, the days blur together now, was on my shot day. I’d been crying all day, raw for no reason. I asked Ryan to come over. He said he was with Ruth. Instead of saying that never stopped him before, I said bring her. We could all be together again.

They walked in quietly like sheep to the slaughter. It felt like a bad dream. I had a bottle of tequila on the table. They both saw it at the same time.

“Really?” Ryan laughed, nearly coughing in disbelief.

“Let’s take a shot,” Ruth said before smiling and walking toward the bottle and taking a swig. My apartment was much smaller than theirs. The sparse living room looked straight into the dirty kitchen piled with dishes and half-eaten boxes of Wheat Thins. I had my two IKEA lamps on. A Goya reproduction hung above the couch, framing the two lovers like they too were religious icons.

I didn’t want to take them to my bedroom so I took a pull of tequila and walked over to Ruth. I kissed her fiercely until she pulled me back by my hair.

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down.”

I straddled her as Ryan watched, clearly already hard and nearly pissing himself. She took another pull of tequila and spat it in my face.

“Down,” she said. I didn’t move so she struck me. My face went red and I felt myself wanting more. Ruth was my queen now. Fuck Ryan. He was background noise. Maybe he always was.

I guess he’d told her what I liked. Not that any of them asked. I had to spread myself open for them.

When her lips found mine, she nearly fell off the couch. Then she whipped up and pressed me into her crotch even before taking off her clothes. She waited until I gasped before bringing me back out in the open. I could feel she wanted to go farther but didn’t know what to do. I pulled her pants off before slowly edging my tongue inside of her. The rough play had slicked her open but only a little—this wasn’t entirely her idea. She was just as lost as Ryan even if she came in with the big guns. I felt Ryan’s hand go to my ass and then I heard a slap. I started to pull back but felt hands pressing me deeper. This was payback, I realized. This was a scene. The cuck, the fool, the errand servant boy. I heard someone drink more tequila. It sounded far away enough to be Ryan. Then I felt something sting on my backside and felt fingers feeling their way in my ass.

“No,” I said into her pussy. But she didn’t seem to hear me. I tried to tap on her thigh but she didn’t know the signs. She wasn’t really a dom, I wasn’t really a sub. This was something else.

Without lube, pain flooded my system. The liquor stung. I tried to wiggle out of her grasp but she pushed harder. Ryan was talking but I couldn’t make out the words. Slowly, Ruth pulled out and I felt Ryan’s pelvis behind me before feeling his dick enter my pussy. Quick. Efficient. He thrust as I tried to eat Ruth out. Eventually she pulled away and I saw her empty gaze look down on me.

“Did you like that?”

I was dizzy. My eyes watered.

“No,” I said.

“Sorry,” Ruth mumbled and turned to the door as Ryan was mid-thrust. She didn’t look back at our miserable lot.

Ruth?” he said as he rammed into me again.

“Hit me,” I said quietly. “Hit me …” I could feel a wail climbing up through my throat as he pulled out of me, leaving me empty and half naked on the ground, caught by the cheap wooden table. He tried to step over the table but instead fell backward over it, falling across the top. He cursed as he stumbled up and found his pants.

“No,” he barked. Then he whispered it again, his lips moving toward my forehead before thinking better of it. He withdrew. Exeunt.

¤

I stopped fingering the expensive art books and tried not to think about the text from Ryan. It’d been so long since the last time he entered my mind in any concrete way. I continued flipping through the large, tattered book in the dimly lit store.

Goya didn’t paint many birds. Most of the ones he depicted were dead. Still lives neatly arranged to illustrate decay. In Goya’s etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, owls and bats swarm over a distraught man. I stared at that one in person for a long time. I loved bats.

Ali and I used to obsess over cute little animals when we were younger. We played Nintendogs and Pokémon. We found little stickers of cute things to put on our binders. She liked deer. She told me she wanted to go to Nara and feed the friendly ones. I liked birds. I wanted to go to Madagascar. Neither of us ever made it out to see the things we wanted. I studied Spanish and took the easiest program abroad and Ali never took Japanese. She said maybe one day—after college or something when she had more time. She was premed, all skin and bones and guts and brain. When I went to Spain, I didn’t go birding at all. There didn’t seem to be a point. As a kid the only kinds I was interested in were the fantastic ones. I stared at Google Images results for scary-looking bats while Ali showed me pictures of tourists feeding the deer in Japan.

¤

After walking around the bookstore, I met up with Nick and Liz. They finally convinced me to go birding with them. I wanted to get Ryan’s message out of my mind. I knew it would’ve been easy to go back to him. He told me he and Ruth had broken up. Not—he made clear—over me. He wanted to see me again if that was something I was interested in.

“Are we going to see anything crazy?” I asked.

“Like what?” Nick said.

“What’s the weirdest bird you’ve ever seen?”

“In person?” he clarified.

“I used to like bats,” I said.

“Well, it’s too early to see bats but we may see some songbirds, grackles, or cardinals.”

“I saw a titmouse the other day,” Liz broke in. “Sometimes a junco.”

“I love the juncos,” Nick said, reaching for her hand.

After an hour or so, we reached the lake. Liz took out some fruit and granola and offered me some. I took a few dry bites and chugged some water. We’d long run out of things to talk about. I was trying to imagine myself getting up early to do it again in a week. Maybe.

Ryan’s text was still on my screen when I reopened my phone. There was a world where I reached out and told Nick and Liz about everything. They would’ve been shocked. Told me to start over, told me to stop letting my trauma hold me back. They would tell me buzzwords pulled from bestsellers and Oprah-wannabes and try to hug me. They would tell me to let Ali go, to let her sink to the bottom of the lake. Date again. Meet someone I could spill my guts to. But that would be wrong. They were wrong. It wasn’t about that. Things weren’t one-to-one like that. I wasn’t a damsel in distress, Guinevere waiting to be redeemed after her failed affair. I looked in the mirror and saw Goya’s Madman.

“Hey,” Nick said to snap me out of my rut. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”

“Do you want to get in?” Liz said.

“Are you going in?”

“Yeah. I didn’t bring a suit or anything but …” she shrugged and took off her sweaty gray T-shirt.

Her breasts fell out. I had to stop myself from saying whoa. She took off her black running shorts and started over the pebbles and sand, motioning me to come. 

“Are you getting in?” I asked Nick.

He shook his head. “Go on though.”

“Are you worried about me seeing you?”

He went red and threw a small pebble at my feet. I collected the tiny rock, gripping it hard in my fingers as I took off my tank top and jeans. I placed them next to him and met his gaze. We laughed at the sudden lack of tension.

“Hurry up!” Liz yelled from the water.

By the time my legs hit the edge, I felt a little lighter. Liz splashed me and pulled me in deeper. We frolicked like deer, awkwardly finding our footing on the weed-covered floor.

“I don’t see any fish,” I said.

“We’re scaring them away.”

“It’s freezing.”

“What did you expect? Summer’s over.”

We were a little more than knee-deep when I felt a hunger pang.

“Do you still have anything to eat?”

“Yeah,” Liz said. “We do. Let’s go back.”

I looked at my phone when we got back to the shore and smiled at Nick. I put my shirt back on as quickly as I could. I preferred shame.

Liz took a bite of a large peanut cluster and offered me my own. “I hate the stuff at the store so I make my own while Nick’s at work. Not that I’m a tradwife. I hate that shit. I’m so glad I don’t live in New York. It’s crazy watching people try to imagine what living in the Midwest is like.”

“I guess it’s how some people here do live,” I said. “Or want to, anyway.”

“Weird,” she said. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“We should bring coffee next time,” I said.

Nick raised an eyebrow. “I mean—”

“We’ll bring coffee,” Liz said definitively, cutting us all off at the pass.

“Do you guys go camping ever?”

“Sometimes,” Ryan said. “A few times in the summer, maybe once or twice in the fall. I like it.”

“We bring coffee when we camp,” Liz said dryly.

“Liz is really good at ghost stories.”

“Do you like ghost stories?” she asked, turning toward me.

“Sometimes,” I said before pursing my lips.

¤

Featured image: Edwin Austin Abbey. Study of Flamingos, for Columbus in the New World, ca. 1905–06. Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Collection, Yale University Art Gallery, (1937.2323). CC0, artgallery.yale.edu. Accessed November 19, 2024. Image has been cropped.