Page 11 of Only After We Met
“No. Right. It was better for me to ask if you were a player. How magical.” We laughed. Then I thought of something. “Have you ever readThe Little Prince?”
“No, why?”
“It’s my favorite book. It was even when I was little, before I could understand it. I have a copy full of underlines, marks, and notes in the margins. I reread it all the time. One of my favorite parts is where he’s talking about adults and how they like numbers, and he says:When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, ‘What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?’ Instead, they demand: ‘How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?’ Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.”
“Interesting,” he whispered, serving the noodles and taking twobeers from the fridge. He walked off to the mattress on the floor and set his bowl on his lap. Then he took a sip of his beer.
“You eat in bed?”
“Where else?”
I sat down in front of him.
“You can take off your shoes.”
I did it because my feet were killing me after all those hours walking. I crossed my legs and picked up my bowl. I twirled the noodles around my chopsticks as we ate, looking up occasionally and laughing for no reason. None of it made any sense, and at the same time, it meant so much… I still had beer left over when I was done eating. I took little sips and looked around, memorizing every detail. The piles of books. The stacks of records on a table full of cables and electronics. The half-dead plant on the kitchen windowsill.
“You know what I liked most about tonight?”
“You’ll break my heart if you don’t say me,” he joked.
“You’re part of it… Have you ever had the feeling that all the people who know you think you’re someone else? I mean, maybe that’s my fault. Sometimes it’s like time sets a pattern for you and you can’t change it. Like everyone thinks I’m so understanding.Oh, tell Ginger; she’ll get it. Ginger won’t get upset.And I don’t get it. And I do get upset. But I’ve spent so many years pretending to be the person others say I am, the girl who never loses her grip, who always thinks of others first… I’ve been doing that so long that I don’t know where the real Ginger is. Maybe I killed her. Maybe she’d dead and buried. What do you think, Rhys? Because I’m scared to think about it.”
I don’t know where all that came from, and all of a sudden. I just know I was thinking that since Rhys didn’t know me from Adam, it meant I could be myself in a way I didn’t allow myself to be with the people who had gotten used to the fake, stick-on Ginger, who never said what she thought, who always put other people first, the good girl who was never selfish.
“She’s not dead. She’s here, with me.”
“I think I’m going to cry again, Rhys.”
“No, please. Shit. Don’t cry.”
“Like, how’s it possible I can tell you this and not my sister or my friends? It should be just the opposite. It should be harder with a stranger. And you still haven’t told me anything about yourself, and I’ve been talking all night without stopping.”
“If that bothers you, I’ll tell you something about myself.”
“Something you can’t tell anyone else?”
“Okay.” His expression changed. He seemed nervous. “My dad. I haven’t talked to him for more than a year. Lots of people know that, basically all my friends do. But they think I hate him. That we had a fight over something dumb. But that’s not true. He’s always been the person I love most; it’s just that something happened…and we argued…and we said stuff neither of us can forget. We haven’t seen each other since last Christmas.”
His eyes were glowing as I bent over—I don’t know why; it just came from inside me, spontaneously—and hugged him, so tight that I almost fell on top of him. Rhys held me in his arms. I was wrong when I first met him: it wasn’t his gum that smelled of mint; it was his hair. His shampoo. The smell surrounded me as I sank my nose into his hair.
We separated slowly until our noses were touching, and he held my hand in his. The hours were slipping by.
“Look, to hell with all this sad stuff; let’s talk about something else. What do you do?”
He smiled, and his look was sweet and tender like a caress. “I’m a DJ and a composer. I make electronic music.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know; I just didn’t expect that. It’s like if you told me you were a beekeeper or something. I didn’t imagine you listening to…that kind of music.”
“I like all kinds of music.”
He got up and turned on his stereo. A song began to play, sung by one of those women whose voice feels like an embrace. Soft. Low. Rhys danced his way back to the bed. He looked silly. He didn’t care. I laughed.
“So that’s how you make your living? How old are you?”