I COULDN’T STAND IT. THE NIGHT AFTER BREAKFAST WITH RYAN, I dialed Vivian’s phone number in Olympia. I expected to get her answering machine—with my luck, she’d be blocks away in Portland—but she picked up.
“What can I say? The heart wants what the heart wants,” she said ruefully.
“Did you really just say that?”
“I’m sorry it turned out this way, Andy. I am. But it’s really not about you at all.”
“Well, it’s obvious you weren’t thinking of me,” I said. “But what about Flynn? Didn’t you know better?”
“What Flynn and I have is completely different,” she said gently.
“Which you only know because I told you everything!”
I hung up and stomped around the house, burning in my bones. I tried to get Bullet to tug a rope with me but she let go after a few good-natured pulls and looked up at me, tail wagging. I took a few deep gulps from a bottle of astringent white wine that had been open in the fridge for a month. I called Meena. Not home. I called Lawrence. Not home. I called Ryan. He picked up.
“Rematch,” I said. “Let’s play Scrabble.”
“Oh, you’re ready to take me on again?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I feel like winning.”
“You sound serious.”
“Dead.”
The streetlights flicked off as I pulled over in front of a grand, disheveled turn-of-the-century apartment house that filled its lot right up to the sidewalk. I was sunk in darkness, only a few lit windows brightening the street. I had not meant to feel furtive but now I did. At the bottom of the porch steps I stopped and looked behind me. I pulled my hood over my head.
The front door was unlocked. The banister was balding, the wood smoothed by touch. Each stair creaked like a question. I answered by putting one foot on the next and then the next. It’s just a game.
I was used to a maximalist punk-house aesthetic: a palimpsest of every current and previous tenant’s taste, with furniture that had lived there longer than any resident. But Ryan’s apartment had white walls and little furniture, only hundreds of records and CDs, neatly crated and stacked. In the corner, a guitar leaned against the wall. There was no other word to describe the guitar but fucked—the neck was broken and splintered, strings flailing. Ryan offered me a seat on the nubby sofa, a slim, lightly scratched-up Danish modern with great bones. He’d traded it with a friend for a television.
“How the hell did you convince him to do that?” I said, running my palm over a smooth teak arm.
Ryan shrugged. “People love to think they’re getting a deal,” he said. “To that guy, the television was worth more.”
“And you didn’t inform him otherwise.”
The Scrabble tiles rattled in their bag like wooden coins. “How do you think that shop you work in fills up with all that great stuff?”
“You devil,” I said. “I’m going to watch out for you.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about with me.”
“We’ll see.”
Ryan took his seat across the coffee table and we got serious.
“This time, if you win,” he said, “I’ll give you a free haircut.”
I considered this. I could use one. “What if you win?”
“But I won’t, right?”
“Not if I can help it.”
This time our game was neck and neck. The Scrabble board grew dense with entangled blocks of short words, every letter doing double duty, compacted to the point of unplayability. I sacrificed by stringing out a long cheap word to open things up, and Ryan regretfully yet decisively seized the opportunity to use all his letters. I clawed hard but never caught him again.
“I couldn’t have won without your RILING,” he said when we’d added up the final points.
“A benevolent move never did anyone any good in Scrabble.”
“Your sacrifice is honored.”
“No free haircut for me,” I mourned, slumping back on the sofa.
“But you get a consolation prize.”
“I do?”
“Let me see what I can do.”
Ryan disappeared into the bathroom. Behind the door the faucet pulsed on and off. I resisted looking through his records—too obvious—and instead picked up a battered road atlas from the floor. I paged through it—most of the states had highlighter lines tracing routes from city to city—and paused at Nebraska. The town I came from was a tiny black dot. A dot like an atom, teeming inside. I touched my finger to it as Ryan emerged from the bathroom. He came over to me. I looked up from Nebraska, finger still on the dot, as he sat down beside me and pressed his lips to mine. Smooth.
“You shaved? Just now?”
“Out of courtesy. Just in case.”
“Wait, are you my consolation prize?”
“If I can bring you consolation, I’m happy to do that.”
I was curious, now that I was sober, what it would feel like, so I kissed him. Warm. I liked not wanting it but not not-wanting it—a safe feeling, like standing a few feet back from myself. “It’s not wrong, is it? It kind of feels wrong.”
“To whom?”
I thought about Flynn. I thought about her closing the door behind Vivian. I liked that Ryan had said whom.
“I guess I can do whatever I want,” I said, and realized it was true. “This can be our secret, right?”
“You really overthink things,” he said.
I closed the atlas and dropped it back on the floor.
It’s not that I had never done anything with a guy. In middle school and high school, I’d had kisses, crossed a couple bases, though never all the way. In college I’d made out with a gay boy or two. And it’s not that I’d never known cock: I had encountered them in many sizes and colors. They were silicone and lived in drawers and under beds. But when my hand grazed the one under Ryan’s jeans, I could sense its neediness, its greed. I jerked my hand away.
“You okay?” said Ryan, pausing with his hand just under my shirt.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just adjusting.” Ryan pushed up my shirt and began to kiss my stomach.
I closed my eyes. His hair fell from behind his ears and brushed against my skin, like a girl’s. Human mouth touches human body. Species solace. This is what the species does. Not mating, only pleasure. It was okay. It was all okay. With my glasses off, the bedroom and the person were blurred, nothing more than shifting forms, warmth on my skin. This was relief, to feel an objective sensation of affection. Not to be turned inside out and upside down, and yet still to feel good. No storming inside, just quiet seas, a clear sky.
“You are so beautiful,” he said into my knee. And even though he was a man and I knew I’d never love him, to hear it felt like getting a whole report card of A’s when you thought you’d failed out.
“Come on,” I said. “I haven’t shaved my legs in a decade.”
“I like that,” he insisted. “I like you.”
“I like you too,” I said, and I did.
“See?” he said, and I laughed. Ryan was now kissing the inside of my knee, sneaking his way up my leg, even though I had ushered him away from my underwear twice.
The sex would have been easy; it seemed so uncomplicated in its mechanics. But I knew too well what it was like to be on his end with a girl, the power in it. I’d been there. I’d also given myself up with pleasure, many times, but I didn’t want to for a man. It was too personal.
I drew my limbs in and said, “I can’t. I can’t.”
Ryan looked up at me. His hair fell into his eyes. “You sure?” He bit my inner thigh above the knee and I felt a disarming surge but said, “Yes.” I liked bumping up against my limit, feeling it firm and solid as a fence.
“Think about it,” he said. “It’s so fun.”
“I bet it is.”
“How would you know unless you try it?”
“I’m not bi-curious,” I said.
“But maybe you’re me-curious. Or why did you come over here?”
“Scrabble,” I said. He batted my leg and I laughed. “I like a challenge!”
“So do I.”
“Well then,” I said. “Good luck.”
Ryan sighed and crawled up next to me. We lay on our backs in our underwear and socks. I rested one hand on my bare stomach. He slid his hand into the other one and held it. My webbing stretched. His arm was much longer than mine. His whole body was much longer. Everything seemed of crazy proportions.
“I have to ask you something,” I said. “What happened to that guitar out there?”
He sighed. “I got angry and smashed it. Sometimes I do that to things. Just objects.”
“And you got angry with the guitar?”
“No. I loved that guitar. I’d had it forever.” He put a hand over his eyes.
I felt a spike of concern—poor Ryan, his favorite guitar irreparably wrecked. Then the thought corrected: by him. Unnerving. I squeezed his hand and disentangled myself.
Rummaging around in the dark for my discarded clothes, I attempted a light tone. “We can never speak of this to anyone. Especially Flynn.”
“She might come after me with her blowtorch,” said Ryan. “So would my ex-girlfriend.”
“Flynn of all people would have no right to,” I said, pulling my T-shirt over my head, “but you might be right. Who’s your ex? Recent?”
“Extremely,” he said. “Let’s not ruin a good night by discussing her.”
“Was I wearing a bra?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said. “I only own one.”
“You’ll just have to come back and get it later.” He sat up on the edge of the bed and handed me my glasses. I put them on and the room solidified into focus. There was Ryan, half-lit by streetlights through the window, smiling up at me.
“I think this has to be a one-time venture,” I said. “I can’t get into something complicated.”
“But you can do something uncomplicated.”
“Yes,” I said. “Like go home now.” I put a hand on his face for a moment—warm, still smooth, just the faintest hint of sandpaper by his jaw—and felt an unexpected twinge. He could like me all he wanted and it wouldn’t make any difference. I knew what that felt like. “Trust me, this isn’t worth the trouble it would cause.”
“Come on,” he said. “You’re trouble. And you like it.”
“Maybe I am.” The thought pleased me.
“Maybe I am.”
“I’m sure you are.”
At the door he grabbed my sleeve. “Andrea,” he said. “I’m leaving tomorrow. What’s your address?”
I fished a card for the studio out of my wallet, letterpressed brown cardstock.
The dark houses and quiet street were like a movie set of a neighborhood, empty. The only sound was my engine rumbling to life as I backed out and drove away, back to the house where eagle-eyed Summer was mercifully still at work, where the dog would be the only one who knew I’d ever been gone. Animals never tell.