friends of friends

He was waiting for her in the oversized armchair. His pale face periodically yanked his overarched black eyebrows down toward its mean little center, where the ruddy mouth pruned as he baked in his own anxiety, working himself up. Every once in a while he would think he was hearing her approach and would straighten with anticipation, so that by the time she actually arrived, late as usual, he was so well-practiced in this endeavor that her footsteps failed to move him.

He remained spider-like in his many-pointed expression of awkward geometry, long legs sprawled and his arms clutching their counterparts to keep his raging center protected, holding the hot pride of righteous indignation. He'd realized he was being dramatic, but he no longer cared. He had to look out for himself. And that meant he had to keep her around! She'd wounded him in her newfound want to get on with her life, had made him ugly in her self-preservation effort. Ignoring her and trying to inspire jealousy had been working for a while, but now he was starting to feel her slip away from him forever. She had said she needed space. He would throw her a curve ball tonight.

Keys jangled and fell outside the door, he heard her whisper, "Shit". He smiled briefly and then regained his stillness. She giggled as she bent down to pick up the keys, and for some reason this bothered him. Bothered him so much that he suddenly hated her, unknown to him for all their time together. She was already insensitive to him and his intentions, fumbling about outside the door to their apartment, prolonging his unease. Taking her time and giggling to herself, what did she have to be giddy about? He pondered her hours, mused on where her evening might have taken her, who might have been with her, if there was a threat looming there.

She opened the door and breezed by him, with scarves and jackets unraveling in a dervish of activity that allowed her amnesty from his stare. She could undress first, he told himself, it didn’t matter; he said nothing. She smelled new and old, pine cones and a whiff of jasmine, temperate conifers and delicate tropical flowers. His stomach lurched.

"Oh!" she said as she emerged from the kitchen and saw him. "Hey".

He looked for a moment as if he might cry, there was a tremble there. But instead he pronounced decisively, "I had a dream last night that I cut you up into small pieces". It wasn't exactly what he'd meant to say, but it was true. Somehow this divulgement bared sharp teeth since he couldn't be held responsible for a dream, and, in turn, she couldn't find fault with it. And he knew that she found some deeper truth in dreams than in what actually occurred in life. She was nonsensical like that, believing in hidden truth more accurate than what people said and did. He'd hated that about her. But right now he could use it.

She rolled her eyes back into her head, rubbed her forehead, and looked at him in disbelief. The disbelief quickly transformed into belief, which summoned forth a stare of profound disappointment. He remained stone faced. He wondered if he should feign concern, the victim of dream physics unknown to him...but decided against it. When he looked at her again, she had raised her eyebrows in mock interest. A half-smile perched on her little mouth.

"Was it satisfying?" she purred. She was defensive now, and for reasons unknown to her, it was making her act sexual. He could trump her, though. He could always trump her, because she loved him, she had been desperately in love with him! If he could just get that hook back in her, if he could just wiggle it around, she would confess that she missed him. And they could be friends again. He needed to know that she still wanted him in her life. And he knew how to keep ex-lovers around him, had made an art of it. He liked the attention fixed on him, newly unattainable, something removed from grasp; he shimmered in it. It was convenient, it was powerful and it provided lasting relationships. With girls, which he preferred.

"Yes, it was" he said quietly.

"That was not a very good dream story, Ryan. Where are the bears? and phantom smells? and anatomical inconsistencies?". She had heard his dreams before. He made them up, often. When he had nothing real to say.

"I didn’t tell you to amuse you, I-"

"And you haven’t amused me, I'm not amused. I am thoroughly not amused or even slightly interested. I'm over it, ok? You can be such a little bitch sometimes. I don’t even know how we ever got along…we’re so different. Let’s just drop it for now, ok?". He looked down, unsure of how to proceed.

But she also didn't know how to pretend the fight hadn't happened. She was mad, now, and obstinate when she was angry. She felt raw and energetic, a tick, a bobbin , a wound thing. She opened a book but didn't read. She thought to herself, "Lord, I'm not a dramatic person, why does his bullshit seem to work on me, to get to me so much? Lord, I need you to provide me with other thoughts". She did not believe in God, but she would pray for her own amusement from time to time. It was a structure for self-communication, like 'Dear Diary'. She flirted with self-parody, making mockeries of her emotions. Right now it wasn't helping. She should have left, but it was late, and she had nowhere to go. And she was in it now, waist deep.

"I just really miss you", he said with real emotion in his eyes. They were slick with potential tears. She felt herself softening, and wanted to scream. She was being rolled around in her own emotions, made to smell them. "This is how he gets away with everything", she thought. "He's a mindfuck, a psychic vampire, a leech full of ego and odious hidden motives. Does he even know what a passive-aggressive asshole he can be? How selfish and horrible and sickeningly false? You know it, you figure it out. And then somehow you just end up back in his corner. He's manipulative, that's what. And he isn't even conscious of it". Actually, she wasn't sure if he was conscious or not. He had not wanted to be with her after they'd broken up, not romantically, and she had dealt with his weird montage of putdowns and come-ons for years. No matter what pretenses he had for doing the things he did, it was all about him. And she hadn’t taken another serious lover in three years, holding out for him.

She couldn't speak. In an act she would regret for at least the rest of that night, she raised her middle finger at him. He got up and went into the bedroom, where he let her hear him dial his cell phone and then he shut the door before she could glean who he was speaking to or what he said. "Some climax," she thought, irritated. She coached herself, thinking, "Everyone has one of Those. Someone who, because they're so thoroughly fucked, confuses you into caring. It's exciting but it's stupid. I don't work on Saturday. I'm not going in that bedroom". In a last ditch attempt, she shouted, "You're not even that hot!" and grabbed the wine bottle off the table. She was going to get drunk.