Page 37 of Only After We Met

She set her coffee down on the table and took a deep breath, as if she needed a few seconds to know what to say. I could feel myself tense up. Not because she had seen those messages, but because she had decided to barge into that part of my life without even knocking on the door. I only let Ginger in. She could climb in through the open windows, the hidden cracks, the chimney…

“I’m sorry. I only saw the last couple of emails…but my battery was out, and when the screen turned on, the messages were just there, and… I don’t know, Rhys. I feel like we met two years ago, and I still don’t know anything about you.”

“Sarah…”

“And that thing about how with her it was different…” She stood up, walked over to the window, and closed it. The light dimmed, disappeared. But I looked at the place where it had been.

“I wasn’t going to say anything, okay? I woke up this morning and was like,Okay, I’m going to just pretend everything’s okay, and by the time we see each other in New York again I’ll have forgotten it. But then I asked you what you were thinking about, you said, ‘Nothing,’ and I knew you were lying.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Just what you told her. That phrase.”

“Which?” I got up.

“How sometimes you just meet a person and let them in for no reason. I don’t think that’s it. There needs to be an explanation. And I want to know what it is.”

My stomach ached when I saw her like that, eyes damp, lip trembling, gaze hoping that I could give her something when I knew I couldn’t. Maybe I’d been selfish with her. Maybe I hadn’t paid enough attention to the signs.

I took a deep breath. Pensive. Uncomfortable.

“It’s the truth, Sarah. There is no reason. I don’t know why I can open up to her and not to you. I’m sorry.”

She was quiet, and I stepped forward to hug her. She didn’t pull away. I closed my eyes as I felt her lips on my jawline, her handsrising up my shirt, her skin against mine as I sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and pulled her on top of me. I hesitated. Not for me, but for Sarah. Because I wondered if I was hurting her worse then. But I let her keep going. I let her body move against mine, push her hands through my hair, and kiss me hard, with teeth, reclaiming me.

Then our panting filled everything. She came. We came.

She stood up. She had kept her T-shirt on as we did it. She looked at me with a mixture of anger, affection, and confusion. I took her hand and pulled her back into my lap, kissing her on the forehead.

“What are you doing, Sarah?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“This was never a problem for us before, Sarah.”

“Yeah…” She looked wounded. “But I thought that was just how you were, Rhys, the way I knew you. I thought you just didn’t like to talk about yourself, that you couldn’t relax with another person and tell stories about your childhood or worry about what another person was feeling. And now I find that. Another person. One I’ve never even seen. I accepted that I couldn’t change you, but this…this ruins everything.” She shook her head, walking away.

“You’re giving it too much weight…”

“I’m spending tonight in a hotel.”

“I don’t get it. We have an open relationship. And she’s a friend. You’re acting like we’ve been going out for years and I just cheated on you.”

“It’s not that. It’s that you’ve opened my eyes.”

“Fine.” I sighed as I buttoned my pants.

“See? That’s exactly what I meant. Would you act that way ifshe was the one about to go sleep in a hotel? No. And we’re both your friends. That makes it worse. You haven’t even fucked her. Whatever. You’re not going to understand. And I don’t want things to end all ugly with you.”

I was nervous, frustrated…a little bit of everything. Because I didn’t want to think about it, basically. Sarah took a quick shower, came out dressed, grabbed her bag, and left. I assumed she’d return that afternoon, when filming was over. I stayed in the kitchen, tracing out the faint shadows on the table, pensive.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that before I walked over to the synthesizer.

Then I lost all sense of time. Everything was that sound, the bass, pounding in my head, over and over, tirelessly, until I found the rhythm I wanted, the only one that would work.Boom, boom, boom. I closed my eyes, thinking about what was to come afterward, remembering feelings.Boom, boom, boom. It was almost midday when I saw my phone vibrate on the table and took off my headphones.

It was Logan. He’d been at my door for twenty minutes.

I opened up, and when he saw me, he shook his head. He had a bag from a nearby burger place. He headed straight to the dining room and took out everything.