I barely slept. In fact, I hardly even tried to sleep, knowing I would just lie there tossing and turning all night. After rushing out of Amelia’s house, I managed to flag down a cab on St. Charles and got home fairly quickly. Luckily, Aunt Kate was out when I got home, and I didn’t reveal myself when I heard her come in a couple of hours later. The last thing I needed was to talk to her right now, let alone show her my defeat.
While I knew logically that I’d made the right decision to leave last night, that didn’t help me feel any better. Further, I realized I could probably have handled the whole situation better. Storming out of there last night had been immature. Nevertheless, I hadn’t seen many other options at the time. If she was unwilling to talk about things, I had nothing left to say. I didn’t want to play games with her, and I didn’t want to fight about it, but we had to discuss the elephant in the room before I would consider moving forward or, I was starting to realize, before I could consider staying in a relationship with her.
At three in the morning, after painting angrily for several hours, I’d actually picked up the phone to call Meghan. In the past, any time something major happened with a boyfriend of hers or mine, we would call the other with the implied knowledge that, night or day, the other was available. I’d stopped myself that night for a few reasons, namely that Zach was likely at her place, or she at his, and because I didn’t even know where to begin to explain the problem. I didn’t understand it myself. If I couldn’t get anything out of Amelia, I would never understand it. Further, saying something about it would, I knew, make it real. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face all the implications of what that reality might mean.
Next, I debated calling Lana, but something about doing that it seemed like a betrayal, in this case both of Amelia and of Meghan. Meghan was supposed to be my go-to friend for all things, and Lana was supposed to be my academic friend. If I called Lana, I’d be replacing Meghan, perhaps permanently, as my counselor. It was a silly way to think, and I knew that, but that didn’t make it any easier to make the call. Further, I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about Amelia’s problem with Lana. It seemed far too private and something like a personal failure on my part. While Lana and I were pretty close as friends, and getting closer lately, I couldn’t picture talking to her about my sex life, at least not yet.
Around dawn I crept downstairs to make myself some coffee. The gray light coming in through the living room windows was hardly bright enough to help me navigate around the furniture, but I moved as slowly as possible, terrified of waking Aunt Kate. If she heard me, she would know something was wrong since I was home, and she’d want to talk about it. If I wasn’t ready to discuss it with Meghan, I certainly wasn’t ready to talk to Aunt Kate about it. She had made it clear that while she wouldn’t necessarily protest my relationship with Amelia, she didn’t, and possibly wouldn’t, approve of it either. My current emotional state would simply add more wood to that fire.
I put some milk on the stove to heat and poured some of the coffee concentrate in a mug. Though I’d barely eaten anything last night, my stomach was so knotted up with anxiety I didn’t even think of making myself any food. An idea occurred to me as I waited by the stove, and I rooted around in the cabinets until I found a small red tin behind the sugar canister. Inside, I found a desiccated pack of cigarettes. I’d quit smoking in my early twenties and had never been a heavy smoker even then, but when I quit, I hid some packs around the house for emergencies. This one had to be nearly five years old, and I knew the cigarette would taste god-awful, but I slipped one out anyway before searching for some matches.
I took my café au lait outside to the backyard, sat down on the little stairs by the door, and lit my first cigarette in years. I coughed and sputtered with the first few drags, the stale smoke tasting like burning hell, but I managed to push through and keep smoking. The morning was chillier than anything I’d felt since being back in Louisiana, and in my light pajamas, I shuddered. Winter was coming to New Orleans.
When I came back inside, Aunt Kate was sitting at the kitchen table with her own coffee. She sat in the chair facing the door, obviously waiting for me. I stood in the doorway for a moment and then sighed, realizing there was no way out of this. I sat down in the chair nearest to her and she took my hand.
“It must be bad if you’re smoking again,” she said quietly.
“I only had one,” I said, rather stupidly.
She rolled her eyes. “Even one is too many, dear.” She was quiet for a long while, just looking into my face, apparently trying to read my expression. “I heard you last night when I got home, and I heard you working and shuffling around all night and this morning. I understand that you didn’t want to wake me up and didn’t want to talk to me, and I guess I know that you don’t want to talk now.”
Tears sprang to my eyes.
She sighed. “You’ve been a wreck since you met that woman, Chloé. I think even you would admit that.”
Blinking my tears away, I nodded, my voice caught in my throat.
“I just don’t see that she’s worth all this upset.”
I started to protest, but she cut me off. “You’re losing weight, you’re barely sleeping, you’re up at all hours, you’re working like a fiend. Tell me: what are you getting out of this besides exhaustion and heartache?” Her eyes were pained and confused.
I didn’t answer for a long time. I tried to see my behavior over the last few weeks from her perspective and couldn’t find anything that justified how upset I’d been. While I felt very strongly about Amelia, it was already a difficult relationship, and we’d barely begun. The turmoil I’d felt before we got together had become worse, if anything, now that we were supposedly a couple. Her refusal to talk last night was starting to take on a greater weight in my mind. If we couldn’t even talk about our sex life, how would we ever talk about other important things? Would she always just avoid discussions? Get upset? Try to distract me? These questions had been racing through my mind all night, and though I’d managed to push some of them away while I was painting, I’d simply suppressed them. They gnawed at my insides.
“I don’t know what to do,” I finally said.
Aunt Kate just looked at me again, her expression sympathetic but stern. She patted my hands and stood up. “You don’t have to make any decisions right now, honey, but I want you to think about all of this turmoil seriously. I can see that you’re trying to do that now, but I know you. You tend to find distractions to avoid facing serious things like this. Don’t let yourself do that. Think long and hard and make a decision before you drive yourself crazy.”
She made her way over to the refrigerator and pulled out the eggs. “Now you’re going to eat breakfast before you do anything else. Agreed?”
I laughed, wiped away some of my tears, and then saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Sunny side up or over easy?”
*
We’d just finished breakfast when the telephone rang. Both of us instinctively looked over at the clock, surprised by such an early call. The hour told me who it would be, so, steeling myself, I stood up. Aunt Kate’s grim expression said a thousand wordless things, but she got up and left the room to give me some privacy.
“Hello, Amelia,” I said when I answered.
There was a long pause. “I couldn’t wait any longer,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for calling the house phone. I still don’t know your cell number. I had to look this one up from your application.”
I remained quiet, having decided I was through trying to get her to talk.
I heard her sigh with resignation. “Listen—I’m sorry about last night. I feel like I’m constantly apologizing to you for things, and that’s not right either. You don’t deserve this.”
Her voice was clouded with tears, but I still didn’t say anything.
“You should know. I know you should know. I was, I mean, I’m just afraid to talk to you about it. I thought maybe you would let it drop. Maybe I was hoping you would let it drop…I don’t want you to think less of me.”
“Any explanation would be better than none at this point,” I said. I was trying to keep the rising anger out of my voice, but it was hard to stay calm.
She must have heard my anger, as her voice softened even further. “Let’s get together. Right now, if you can. Or later this morning. We’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything.”
I considered the proposal for a long time. While I was, I recognized, still quite angry with her, it didn’t seem fair to dismiss her attempt to explain things now that she was willing to try.
“Let’s meet for coffee,” I said.
“Where?” The relief in her voice was palpable.
“Do you know CC’s on Royal?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll walk over there. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“I could pick you up.”
“I want to walk,” I said firmly.
“Okay.” She sounded resigned and defeated.
I took my time getting ready and didn’t rush as I walked toward and through the Marigny into the Quarter. Moving quickly, I could reach the coffee shop in half an hour, but I decided to take it slowly and use the time to reflect on my feelings and plan a strategy for talking about them. Further, I took my time in part because I was afraid this would be the end of our relationship. While we’d hardly been dating for a week at this point, I was already mourning the end. Seeing her might mean breaking up with her, and I wanted to be ready for that possibility.
She was waiting at a table when I got there, and she rose a little when she spotted me. I waved her back down and went to get coffee, taking the opportunity to calm my racing heart. All of the things I’d planned to say seemed childish and stupid, but I knew the gist of what I’d come up with was still worth saying. I finally got my coffee and sat down across from her, as far away as the table would allow.
She was a wreck. Not only was her hair a snarl of tangles and her clothes wrinkled and misbuttoned, but she also had large, dark circles under her red-rimmed eyes. It was clear that she, like I, hadn’t slept a wink and had also been crying. Still emotional, I kept my mouth closed, waiting to calm down before I said anything. She waited patiently for a long while, and then, to my astonishment, I saw tears welling in her eyes. Not able to help myself, I moved forward and grabbed her hands.
Evidently relieved, she kissed both of my hands and squeezed them tightly, almost painfully.
“I’m so sorry, Chloé. I’m such an asshole.”
I didn’t respond.
“I’m going to explain everything, but…it’s hard for me. You get that, right?”
“I’m starting to realize that, yes. Considering that you let me walk out last night instead of telling me about whatever this is, I get that this is hard for you.” I tried to keep the anger and hurt sarcasm out of my voice, but she flinched at my words.
“I guess I deserve that,” she said, then sighed. She let go of my hands, wiping hers on her thighs nervously. She took a deep breath, released it, and then sat for a moment, looking at me.
“Okay,” she said. “The short explanation is this: I don’t like to be touched.” She paused, shoulders slumped.
“So I gathered.” I was annoyed. “What’s the long explanation?”
“I don’t exactly know why. In the past, I didn’t mind it. I was never completely crazy about it, but I could go through with it. Over time, I liked it less and less, until finally, about two years ago, I just couldn’t do it anymore. More than dislike, really, I started to hate it. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable to be touched in almost any way.”
I was confused. “But you don’t mind having sex? I mean, touching other women?”
“I love touching other women. I love touching you. I just…don’t want you to touch me.”
“Did something happen to you? Is that why you feel this way?”
She hesitated. “No. There’s no one thing. It just—it makes my skin crawl, almost like I’m being tickled. It’s not painful, it’s not pleasurable…it’s just not pleasant to me at all.” She paused, as if she were going to say something more, but she didn’t.
“So you don’t like any part of you touched? Or is it just some places?”
She writhed in her chair, obviously very uncomfortable with the question. “That’s not exactly it. I don’t mind being touched some places—my back, some parts of my legs, for example, but I also don’t really like it, either. I can put up with touching better there, I guess.”
“So basically you’ll put up with being touched in some places, but not others.”
She writhed uncomfortably again. “Basically.”
“So all I can expect from you is for you to put up with me wanting to touch you.”
She sighed and then rubbed her face. “You’re making this about you, Chloé, when I’ve already told you it’s about me. I’m the one who’s fucked up here.”
“And I keep saying that it is about me. You’re basically asking me to ignore the fact that you’re not interested in letting me be your lover. That’s about me no matter how you spin it.”
She remained quiet, looking over at the courtyard at the other tables. “Would it help to tell you that I hate that I’m this way? That I wish I could be normal?”
After a moment, I agreed. “It does help, but it doesn’t really solve anything, either.” I paused, looking into her eyes. They were welling with tears again, and some of my resolve began to wane.
“When was the last time you tried?” I asked her, more gently.
“I’ve been trying since we got together. I’ve felt like trying for you.”
“What if we did things slowly?” I suggested. “Maybe I could, say, touch somewhere you don’t mind as much and then somewhere you do?”
She sighed again and shrugged uncomfortably. “I’d be willing to try. I just don’t want to get your hopes up, either. I might not be able to change, Chloé, and I need you to be okay with that.”
Now that the problem was out in the open, I could consider it logically. Leaning back in my chair, I felt a crazy need for another cigarette and cursed myself for my morning’s weakness. The cigarettes were, I knew, just a symptom of my anxiety, and if I didn’t face what was happening, I wouldn’t be able to make the right decision. Amelia sat there, her face mirroring the same anxiety I was feeling, and I finally realized that she was as nervous about all this as I was.
“Has this been a problem for you in the past?” I took her hand. “I mean, has this interfered with your relationships before?”
She shrugged. “Yes and no. Before this, my girlfriends have tried to touch me, to get intimate with me, but they haven’t tried for long. None of them have asked me about it, if that’s what you mean.”
I raised my eyebrows, appalled. “So you’ve never told anyone about this before?”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “Never.”
The sincerity of her answer made me realize that she was taking a major risk coming forward with this truth about herself, and the last remains of my anger drained away. Sitting there across from me, she looked vulnerable, miserable, and resigned to the worst. While the explanation she’d given for why she was this way didn’t really measure up to the problem, I wasn’t sure she even understood the problem herself. Now that she’d been honest with me—as honest as she was able to be at this point—I would be betraying her if I turned my back on her. She was, after all, willing to try, and considering everything, that was very likely a monumental sacrifice for her. I took both of her hands, and my act made her start crying again.
I kissed them both, then stood up and moved my chair closer to hers.
“I can try if you can,” I said, embracing her.
She squeezed me back, and we stayed that way for a long time before moving apart again. I saw an older tourist couple openly staring at us and stared back at them until they looked away again, obviously embarrassed to be caught.
“We’ll take things slowly, okay?” I said.
“Okay.” She wiped her eyes. Even tear-soaked and exhausted, she was beautiful, and I kissed her, long and deep. “Thank you,” she whispered.
I stood up, glancing over at the older couple, who were watching us again, open-mouthed, and helped Amelia stand up. “Let’s go back to my place. I have to start getting ready if I’m going to look even halfway human.”
“Get ready?” Amelia asked, seeming confused.
“We have to go to your parents’ party soon, don’t we?”
The relief and joy on her face almost helped me forget about all the anguish I’d experienced during the last twenty-four hours. Almost.