Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

The door opens, and I remember all the reasons why I broke up with him.

“Hello? Enola?” he sings.

An irrepressible frustration emerges like it’s been waiting all day, and I feel like I’m covered in mosquito bites.

“You’re miles away!”

Virinder waves his hands in front of my face and expels air in something like a laugh. It’s always the same sound: indistinguishable whether he’s watching a funny video or being polite to a stranger or in this case just making a basic observation.

“Well, I’ll go first, then. You got my presents?”

He attempts self-deprecation but fails.

“I did. Yes. Thank you.”

I want to make him disappear, but he is hanging his Barbour jacket on the hook, putting down his leather bag, removing his heeled shoes.

“Oh, baby girl,” he says. “I’m right here.”

His eyes are wet with forgiveness that I don’t want. He needs me to go to him, like a child who storms off only to return for dinner. I shuffle to him, and he sways me as if we’re dancing. Is this nice? I’m not sure. He is still the same; the scent on his neck, the cool feel of his tie. It’s okay. This isn’t a mistake yet; it’s just a hug.

His face inches closer.

Fuck.

He angles his jaw, then he kisses me.

I pull away. “Wait, this isn’t… I mean, could we just sit for a moment, maybe?”

“Of course. Whatever you need.”

I feel some air release. This is fine. I just need to explain my mistake. I sense him smile as he follows me to the bedroom. He always smiles with both rows of teeth. I sit on the bed as far from him as possible and leave the door open, but he closes it and sits next to me. He exhales to show that he is enjoying the moment; he assumes the awkwardness is something else.

I adopt a casual tone. “So, how’s work?”

“Oh, the usual. Dull. Bleurgh,” he says. “Have you had any book news yet?”

“Not yet.”

Virinder loves that I’m a writer, yet despite his fetishization of my profession he never grasped the realities. Once, I told him that I couldn’t afford to go out for dinner, so he said that he would pick a cheap restaurant. I assumed that meant a six-quid burrito, but we arrived at a tapas place in Marylebone, and when the bill came we went halves because he understood that I was a feminist.

“You sound like you don’t really want to talk…” he says with that breathy laugh.

I look down at my bedsheets, but he reaches for my face.

“So, let’s not.”

He turns my face and kisses me again. His hands find the edge of my shirt.

“I guess you really have missed me,” he murmurs. I pull away again. He asks me if I’m okay but leaves no space for my reply. He notices my bruise.

“Ouch, babe. How did you get that?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Seriously, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. I—”

“No, don’t say anything. It’s okay. We got a bit overenthusiastic, didn’t we?” He laughs again. “Come on.” He sits us both up against the pillows and strokes my hair. It is almost nice until his fingers move down to my arm, the inside of my elbow, my waist, the side of my breast…

“No, stop. Just stop it , Virinder.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. But this was a mistake. I think you should go. Please, can you go?”

“Baby girl, you’re trembling!” He moves closer. “Have I done something wrong?”

“No, not at all. It’s me, it’s all me. I’m sorry.”

He nods his head like he understands. “Do you want to meet tomorrow and talk about—”

“No!”

“No?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can you stop apologizing?”

“Sorry.”

Virinder stares down at his thighs, smoothing the fabric with his thumb. Then he speaks in little more than a breath. “It’s him, right? God, I’m such a schmuck!”

“Don’t say ‘schmuck.’”

“What should I say then?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

He turns his lips under and nods repeatedly. “I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you this, but I had plans for us.” He waits for me to say something, but when I don’t, he continues. “I wanted to take you back with me to Mumbai this summer. My cousin’s getting married and I wanted you to be there. I almost bought the tickets.” He looks at me without moving his head.

“Are you waiting for me to say thank you?”

He slaps his thighs. “No, I don’t want you to say thank you , Enola.”

I grit my teeth. “Don’t you? Because whenever you do something nice for me you remind me that you’ve done it.”

“Well, is it so bad to want someone to tell you that they appreciate you? Besides, I only told you about the wedding because I wanted you to know that I was all in, yeah? I’m still all in. So, if you’re not, then you need to stop this.”

“Stop what?”

“Leading me on!”

“Leading you…?” I restart carefully. “Look, I’m genuinely sorry about tonight, and for ruining the plans I didn’t know you had made for us, but I feel like you’re rewriting things a little bit. This is the first time we’ve spoken since the breakup.”

“That was barely two weeks ago!”

“I know but—”

“So, are you with him now?”

“I’m—”

“No, don’t answer that.”

He slumps and sweeps his hands through his hair, which bounces immediately back into place. When he emerges, his face is pink and his lips are pursed. “Why would you go back to someone who was shitty to you!”

“I didn’t say that I was back with him!”

“But he was shitty to you, Ruth told me.”

Fuck’s sake, Ruth.

“Fine. But, Virinder, leveraging the shit I went through with my ex to benefit yourself is shitty too.”

Virinder breathes slowly and loudly, like he’s blowing up a balloon. I want to scream at him to say something. Finally, he speaks, but his sincerity makes me want to scream again.

“You know what I think?”

He waits for me to answer his rhetorical question.

“What do you think, Virinder?”

“I think I’m too nice for you and that’s not what you want.”

I want to laugh. It’s the idea that there are just two types of men available to women: the Bad Boy and the Nice Guy. If we don’t want the Nice Guy, it’s because he is too nice. It’s just a myth perpetuated by the opposite sex to soften the blow of being dumped. It’s the compliment attached to rejection: I was just too nice for her. It’s a clever weapon, really, because it’s such an innocuous word: “nice.” Nice guys deserve girlfriends. Nice guys are entitled to girlfriends. Nice guys earn girlfriends. Nice isn’t a personality trait or a characteristic; it’s an adjective for a tablecloth. It’s the bare minimum. It’s what women have to be or they’ll be called a bitch.

She’s not worth it, mate, leave her. Bitch.

“Virinder. I’m sorry but I never asked you over with any intention of things happening.”

Virinder stands and moves to the bedroom door, folding his arms like punctuation. Mean doesn’t suit him. He is a child learning emotions from a nursery chart: this is what anger looks like, this is what sadness looks like. This is what nice looks like.

“Why did you invite me over, then, Enola? You clearly knew how I felt!”

I put my head in my hands. “I don’t know, okay? It was a mistake.”

“I don’t understand you. Why won’t you give this a real chance?”

I look back up. “But we did give it a chance! We were together for nine months!”

“But you never let me in! Not really. I don’t understand. Why don’t you want to be happy?”

I remember his words to me: Because you’re happier being miserable. Why is it that not being happy with them must mean that you’re not capable of happiness? I’m not happier being miserable. No one is happy being miserable.

“I do want to be happy!”

“Fine, be treated well, then—why don’t you want to be treated well?”

“I do! But I don’t just want to be treated well. I’m a woman, not a dog! Other things are important.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, I don’t know—shared interests, chemistry, a common sense of humor?”

“We have the same sense of humor!”

“Do we?”

“Don’t we? We laugh all the time! And chemistry, Enola? Come on, we have that!”

I pause to consider my response, and Virinder’s brown eyes widen.

“You don’t think we have chemistry?”

“Virinder, what good is this doing? We’ve been over this already!”

He shakes his head. “Well, apparently, you didn’t do a good enough job tying up the loose ends. The loose ends meaning me, BTW, the rebound guy.”

I want to scream at him to use the full words. He’s not on the internet. God, I hate him. It’s not right or fair or deserved, but I actually hate him. He is leaning against the door like he’s off to work. His brown suit perfectly matches his tie, and his hair looks like Sonic the Hedgehog’s. Why does he highlight it? His highlights are shit. They’re like little squares of paint or refractions on carpet where sunlight hits. He lifts up his shirt to tuck it in, and I know that he has tensed his abs for that exact moment. To let me know what I’m missing. To let me know that I’m walking away from someone who takes care of themselves. Who makes me cum. Who buys the good paper and colors inside the lines? Okay. Breathe. Be kind. Be nice. Be a tablecloth.

“I could have been the love of your life, Enola. But you’ve fucked it.”

Be. A. Tablecloth.

“Virinder.” I say his name like I’m closing the argument. “We’re not the loves of each other’s lives. I don’t think you love me. You love giving love and there’s a difference.”

His face lights up like he’s finally realized my problem.

“So, that is the real issue! You don’t believe that I love you, Enola?”

He shifts like he’s about to move toward me, but I stop him.

“No! That’s not the real issue. I’m just trying to say that I think you’ll realize this is the right thing for both of us.”

He retreats; his shoulders drop.

“God, Enola. You treat me like I’m this…” He searches for the word, but I’m not going to help him find it. “No one’s ever treated me this badly,” he says, shaking his head.

I think about how easy it must be to be a man sometimes.

“And it takes a lot to hurt me.”

With that, he turns to go but stops and looks over his shoulder. There’s a softness in his face that disarms me; I think about his clean shower, the anxiety medication he keeps in a small copper pot, how he kissed me on the forehead before leaving for work. Amy once said in the writing group, when Hugo became annoyed with a fictitious character, that the people who frustrate us the most are the people who remind us the most of ourselves.

“The thing is,” Virinder starts in a new tone, “it’s not even your fault. It’s mine. I knew that you didn’t love me. Sometimes I wondered if you even liked me. It always felt like everything I did… like I was never… And my friends warned me, but I thought, well, she’s come out of a bad relationship and she just needs some time. So, mock me all you want but that does make me a schmuck .”

With that, he leaves, swinging the door so hard that the handle hits the wall.

I listen to the actions of his exit: the clip-clopping of his heels, the swish of his jacket, the door being opened and closed. Then I go to the door and watch through the peephole. He is waiting for the lift. He is looking at his Rolex. He is opening the door to the stairwell, where he will take the stairs down two at a time. Confident that he isn’t coming back, I return to the bedroom and take out my birthday CD. I trace the list of songs, where I still exist somewhere, in the curves and slants, the comets, the stars.

Well, this is going rather well, isn’t it?

I scream into my pillow.