My Heart Insists It’s a Glob of Viscous Jelly
My heart thuds when I see who’s calling, but I accept the call and press the phone to my ear. “Hello?” Sinking onto the barstool in the kitchen of my apartment, I reach for the counter to steady me. I’m not sure why I’ve answered, knowing it’s him.
“Hannah? Hey. I just wanted to check in on you.” Sebastian’s voice sounds the same, deep and resonant. Masculine. It’s something I’ve always liked about him.
Nine weeks ago, I’d hoped he’d turn into a troll under the bridge with a voice to match, but that isn’t what he sounds like. Unfair. How can things be so different, yet the threads that make us remain the same? I don’t feel the same at all, even if my face appears the same when I look in the mirror.
“That isn’t your job anymore,” I say.
I picture him sitting at the desk in his bedroom at his own apartment a mile or so away, running his index finger along the edge of the desktop littered with school stuff. His head bent forward—dark, auburn hair perfectly coiffed—and propped up by the other hand. I don’t like that my mind slips to picture him so easily in such a casual, attractive image and force myself to remember the last time I saw him: dressed up, standing in the cold, head bent, frowning at the ground with anger-shaped eyes as I waited for my ride. He’d broken up with me that night after admitting he was seeing someone else, then had been angry I’d walked out on him at the restaurant.
Sebastian clears his throat on the other end of his line. “I– yeah. I just–”
I press my finger against the ivory Formica countertop and run my finger along a groove that shouldn’t be there. When my roommate walks into the kitchen from the back of our apartment, I look up at her. Jewel tilts her head, her braids framing her face, as she arches her dark brows with the unspoken question: who is it?
She gathers her braids and ties them back before mouthing: Sebastian? Then she rolls her large, dark eyes and screws up her face, collapsing her features together in a grimace before reaching into the faux oak cupboard for a coffee cup.
“Just what?” I repeat what he’s said. I want to know what he wants, but simultaneously don’t. Why had I answered his call?
I’d loved him, or so I’d thought. Over the last two months, I’ve done a lot of reflecting about what I’d thought was being in love with him. I’d done all the things to create that perfect picture of it. Spent all my time with him. Exchanged gifts and did things to make him feel special. Took him home to meet my mom and sister in Cantos. Planned a future beyond college. He was the one, or so I’d believed.
When he took me out right before finals and I got the I’m-seeing-someone-else talk, I’d been blindsided. Now, I’m questioning if it was really love.
Looking back over my shoulder at our relationship, it was waving yellow flags at me all along. Now, there are sharp edges pressing against the softer skin of me asking that I pay attention, only I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be paying attention to. The ultimate knife—the fact he was cheating—was enough to kill whatever we’d had. What more is there to pay attention to?
“Why are you calling?” I ask.
Jewel leans against the counter near the coffee pot and looks at me over the rim of her mug. She’s holding the green one that I got her for her birthday that reads: I’ll bring the sass. That wary look on her face—her eyes narrowed, her frown—communicates she’s less than enthused that Sebastian is on the phone. After we’d broke up, she’d said, “He’s the gum that sticks to the bottom of your shoes on a hot summer day.”
I’d laughed. It felt good to have her on my side. She was the one holding the tub of cookie dough and spoons after he’d pulled the plug. Then she was the one scooping me from the floor that first week, helping me get through finals. I’m not sure what I would have done without her, and I’m so glad I hadn’t moved in with Sebastian when he’d suggested it over the summer.
“Girl,” she mutters, shaking her head, turning back to the coffee pot. I watch her add more coffee to her cup. “Tell him to go to hell.”
I offer her a wan smile.
“I just–” he repeats and pauses again as though weighing and measuring the impact of his words. “I know the anniversary is coming up, and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
I have a fleeting impression that maybe he’d been planning on saying something different, but then settled on what I’ve heard, taking a 90-degree turn. I dismiss my doubt, wanting to be kind even if I’m feeling wary. What he’s asked is more endearing than holding onto any negative thoughts about his intentions.
“I’m going home. I’ll be okay. Thanks.”
Silence stretches between us, creating awkward terrain.
“Was that it?” I say, ready to end this.
“I miss you,” he says at the same time.
The silence returns like an earthquake.
My heart stalls at the tremor, waiting for the earth to shift under me, waiting in suspended animation for something visceral to restart it. He doesn’t get to say that.
“I’m not sure what to make of that,” is what I actually say.
Being with Sebastian at one time had been so easy. We’d fallen fast, the instalove I’d heard about and had always thought was bullshit. His attention, at a time when I was hungry for it, felt like a gift. Here was this amazingly handsome, charismatic, talented man giving me attention. But what’s the saying? Hindsight is twenty-twenty? The knowledge that I’d been so easy to replace slashes and burns the already damaged parts of me. Hearing him say he misses me drags me back toward what used to be and makes me feel like a hollowed-out version of myself.
“I feel lost,” he says. “And you always helped me figure myself out.”
My eyes slip shut, because I can’t look at Jewel, who’s giving me the evil eye. Her gaze isn’t directed at me, I know, but at Sebastian, who she loathes.
Everything is about Sebastian, in his world, just like my seventeen-year-old sister had pointed out over the break. “He’s selfish,” Ruth had said.
Their dislike of Sebastian wasn’t always that way. My family and friends once liked him. It wasn’t until later, when my relationship with him was the tenuous tension of a series of aftershocks waiting to tremble at a moment’s notice, that their acceptance of Sebastian crumbled. Our ending became a relief.
I open my eyes again and look at Jewel. She gives me an encouraging look, her brows arching over her eyes.
As she stands there with a look that says, “You can do this. Stick to your guns,” I sigh, draw from her support, and say, “Sebastian. I can’t do this.”
“Hannah–”
“We’re over. Remember?”
His silence is confirmation enough that he remembers those words.
“I can’t be your go to, Bash.”
“You’re right. It’s just–”
I lean back, surprised by his acquiescence to my perspective. That’s new. The swirls of us had mostly been the opposite. But I’m also worried about sliding into a trap he might be setting, so I say, “I have to go.”
“Can I see you later? Or maybe call?”
“I don’t know.” I inwardly groan at myself.
“Just to talk.”
I don’t know how to let him down. I don’t really want to see him, but he sounds so down, so contrite, and I don’t have it in me to just say the words Jewel has suggested. “Maybe.” I lay my head against the counter and listen to Jewel walk from the room. I’ve disappointed myself. And Jewel will be supportive and helpful and the million other ways she’s been in the year we’ve been friends.
Sometimes, when I look at her, I think, I don’t know why she likes me. We shouldn’t work, but somehow, we do. She’d been looking for a new roommate, and I was transferring schools when I answered her ad. The fact we get along like we do is a testament to some higher power, I think. We’re complete opposites. She’s an athlete and grew up in Portland, a big city. I’m not athletic and grew up in tiny Cantos. She’s blunt. I’m squishy. She hates most people. I’m a people pleaser. She’s all business. I’m all emotion. Somewhere along the way, she became my lifeline.
Sebastian says something about later, but I’ve zoned out, angry with myself for not drawing a tougher line.
I end the call and imagine myself in the shape of a gooey heart where everything gets stuck inside the viscous jelly of my inability to set limits. Annoyed, I bump my head a couple of times gently against the counter. Why can’t I just be stronger? I’d returned to the term ready to move forward. Returning to rehash Sebastian—even if that isn’t what he wanted to talk about though I know that’s where it will go—isn’t good for me.
It’s good for him.
Just like Ruth said.
Why did I answer his call?
I hear Jewel walk back into the room. She stops at the end of the counter. “You’re going to see him?”
“No.”
“Then what was that ‘maybe’ for? And why are you mangling your head against that countertop?”
I sit up. “He asked if we could talk.”
Jewel sighs for me. “Hannah.”
“I know. I know.”
“Hon.” Jewel sits down next to me at the counter and bumps my shoulder with hers.
“Don’t say it,” I tell her and tilt my head, laying it onto her firm shoulder. “I know it.”
She hums a noise.
“I need to be stronger. Like you.”
She leans back and levels a serious look at me, which is uncharacteristic of her usual sarcasm. “You are strong. Stronger than you give yourself credit for.” She quirks a brow.
I sit up, take a deep breath, and offer her a quick nod, wishing it were true.