Short Talk

 Tue, Aug 18 at 6:32 PM

 I just actually utilized darn tough’s
 lifetime warranty because I burned a
 hole in my socks trying to dry them
 with a hair dryer on a trip

“Utilized,” he thought. Just like that professor told him he should avoid. When you utilize something, she said, you imply that you’re using it for a purpose other than its intended purpose. People treat it like a fancy way to say “used.” High brow. Lots more letters. It’s wrong, but people use it anyway.

“Used,” he thought. No, he hadn’t used her, or she him. Christmas really was a bad time to text her. Did her family even do Christmas? He thought so, but for however much she stood apart from the others, the memories were now soupier than before.

Short talk, he thought. It could just be a short talk. They could catch up on places they’d been, and lives they were leading, and the sports and the weather and the news. Probably he would make a joke about how he loved sports, and she would giggle, because it would make her remember how little he pretended to care about what others thought. The giggle would remind him of how easily he could make her laugh. Ten, fifteen times in two or three minutes. Trying at first, until she was in tears, giving him the eyes she always gave as if to say he still managed to surprise her with the things that made her love him to begin with. Then just letting the words unroll themselves like big scratchy bales of hay, tumbling and shrinking until every last bit was laid out, and they could look back and see it all blowing away, piece by piece. Not the whirling, tugging, falling way she was unrolling him now. Maybe she was just being polite. He remembered that he had given her the socks. A nice excuse to text him, that he made up, for her.

A talk probably wasn’t a good idea, he thought. They had tried it. Maybe February? There was snow, so must’ve been a while ago now. Phone call. The hate in her voice like January was the only thing, like everything he ever did and didn’t do and said he’d do was all just a backdrop, the story of how he met her, all just so that the story could be about a mistake he made in stupid January.

Really she did want to talk to him. She was mad that he said still loved her. She was mad that she couldn’t bring herself to say the same. Mad about all the consequences, the problems, the who-said-whats and the tears he would never know she had cried. She cried and thought about how he said “hey, Daisy,” and not “hey, Dee,” like she was some kind of colleague that he’d flirt with and fuck and then pretend nothing had ever happened. She felt like she was wearing a straitjacket. She cried and watched Ten Things I Hate About You and got to the part where Kat reads the poem in class, and then she really, really cried. Over and over in her head, for weeks. His big dumb combat boots. She really, really did hate his big dumb boots. She closed her laptop before the part at the end where the movie gets all happy again. She wanted to be sad.

Short talk, she thought. God, it wasn’t a good idea. He was just on the other side of town. She could make some excuse to end up at his door. She could pick a day when it was raining so that he would know how she felt, and maybe try to invite her in to at least sit down in the warm and the dry, and so that she could say no, that she wouldn’t come in, that she was fine just under the portico, that she had to go off to some thing with some other friend, that she just wanted to talk. A short talk. Just to see him.

I wasn’t surprised when she told me. I knew she wanted to talk to him. I knew the whole story, more or less. I knew how much she used to love him, how she pined and battled and bought that leather jacket after they broke up. How she talked about him when she got drunk at first, and then slowly she didn’t anymore. Knew how she got with Sam, how he was better than Ernest was, how he was witty and tall and a little more self-important, but in a good way. Knew how it took her a while to get used the newness, how she forgot it was new sometimes and did things that Ernest used to like, knew how she hid her sadness when Sam didn’t notice or care. I was only surprised that she hadn’t said anything to me since there was still snow. Something about calling it girls’ night makes a girl want to spill her guts, I guess, even though nobody else had been to our apartment in quite some time then.

“Real talk,” I said. “What do you even want to say?”

“I don’t know.” She paused. “That I hate the way I don’t hate him, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all?” She started to laugh, and mostly stopped herself.

“Stop, god, ew,” I said, and didn’t really mean it. Her eyes did that thing they’d do for him that I always used to hate. “This isn’t a rom com. You’re not Kat and I’m not Bianca and Ernest is just an asshole.”

“At least he’s not Joey.”

“Oh, if Joey was real and pretended to be a philosopher you’d let him tie you up and have his way with you.” Daisy didn’t respond. She was red, like embarrassed red, then red like mad red. Big, red, ugly tears welled up.

“Fuck you, you bitch” she said. “Sam’s better for me than Ernest was.” She hoped it would be true if she said it.

Girls hate it when you tell them they have a type. Guys are different. Guys just think about it and go, “yeah, haha, I guess I do like brunettes.” And they don’t even have to try to ignore it. They’ll just go date some blonde and won’t think about it. That’s why guys never had a problem with Freud. Tell any guy he is looking for his mother in a woman, and he’ll say, “yeah, haha, sure.” And ignore you. He won’t even get mad. He’ll just ignore you. Guys will date a mirror and tell you that opposites attract.

Girls don’t do short talks. That’s really the problem. Girls put on makeup for an hour, and then listen to Rhianna, then almost cry but don’t, and then do a short talk, and then a debrief, and then a bubble bath, and then candles, and then chocolate and they cry again. Daisy wanted to hate it all like she wanted to hate Ernest. She didn’t wear much makeup. But she did like Rhianna, and she did like a bath, and she did always sneak a little bit of chocolate when nobody was looking.

That’s all why Daisy never could get away from Ernest. He’d tell you Freud was an asshole and mean it. He’d tell a mirror it should really work on not cutting people off mid-sentence. He’d have a short talk with her, or a long one, and it didn’t matter and she didn’t need a bath. He loved that about her. Loved that she was so at ease with him, loved that she thought he was the special one and didn’t realize how perfect she was, how serious she got when she was serious about something.

Daisy was biting her lip. Her temples and her cheeks and her jaw all ached from the tears, and her ears were hot. She put her hand over her mouth, and instantly she thought about how Ernest used to press his knuckle to his lips when he was thinking, or when he was trying not to laugh about some inside joke when they were in public, and her tears stopped and she felt deeply, deeply sad.

“You’re going to text him, aren’t you,” I planted.

“Probably,” she said, and sulked. She put her head back onto the armrest of the couch and thought about how it felt just, just exactly like the little soft spot above his chest but below his clavicle where she used to sleep for hours and days and sometimes what felt like years. She stared down at her socks, a little thicker than the other pairs she had, and pulled out her phone.

I checked mine. One notification. An email, from the bank. My monthly statement. I looked through it. Nothing very interesting. Some bills, some dates. I thought about how guys were supposed to pay. It’s not stupid, I thought, it really is nice. As I slid it back into my pocket, a short buzz. The text message kind of buzz. Ernest.

 Tue, Aug 18 at 6:33 PM

 she texted me

 i don’t know if i can really bring
 myself to talk to her

 sorry

 is she still with Sam

 i’m sorry about January

 i was really drunk

 not that that’s an excuse

 i know

 ugh

 i just feel awful

I giggled. She glared at me.

“Is that him?” She was accusatory, but not yelling. I lied. “Oh,” she said, apologetically. She held her head back again, looked up at the pine tree behind the house. The raindrops looked funny, streaming from front to back across her upside-down eyes. No wind, so they ran straight, and she tried to figure out what they looked like. She settled on headlights down 65.

“Wanna go for a drive?” she asked. “Short drive. CVS or something. We can chit chat.”

Before she could say yes, a ding. Daisy’s phone. Eyes did the thing.

 do you like apples?

i swear to god if you make a stupid
good will hunting reference

 no no

 just answer the question

yes

but I don’t usually eat a lot raw bc
I’m allergic to the skin

not like anaphylaxis allergic just
like annoying itchy throat

 i know

 okay follow up question

...

yesss

 do you wanna go apple picking?

 in the fall

Ernest

 do you?

She put the phone down. Eyes weren’t doing the thing anymore. Tears were back.

“How come a stupid little nothing talk does this to me?” Daisy said.

“Can’t help you, girl. I got over it a long time ago.” Lying again.

“Alright, let’s go,” she said, “I’m driving.”

“No you’re not,” and I grabbed my keys.

“Fine.”

The car. Short talk about someone’s something. Long nothing.

“Do you like apples?” she asked.

“No, they make my throat itch.”

Daisy turned to look at me. “But don’t you still like them?”

I sighed louder than I meant to. Finger tapped the wheel a couple times. “I don’t know. It’s one thing to talk about here. I don’t think I’d go out of my way to eat an apple. But it’s another thing when someone offers you one.”

“Yeah,” she said, still looking at me.

Red light; we slowed and stopped. I looked at her.

“Yeah,” Daisy said again, trailing off, and looked back away. In front of us, a couple, crossing the street, hand in hand. Eighties or so. She took a turn to sigh.

“Wanna go apple picking?”

“Right now?”

“No, like, in the fall.”

“I haven’t been in forever.”

“Me neither.”

And that fall we went apple picking.