FROM THE ARCHIVE Tried Feelings Overnight by Anna Myers

What I remember most vividly is the smell. The thick smell of onion in the apartment, so sour you could almost taste it. I sometimes wish I could forget it, but I’ve learned it’s always wiser to remember.

*

This is how it happens: my hands are so clammy, it takes me three tries before I manage to slam the taxi door closed. I walk slowly, my blood in my ears. I wait until I get to the slightly run-down doorstep at number 43 to press send on the text message I typed out while waiting in line at the gate. I watch as the blue bubble on my screen pops up and settles down. I start fiddling with the strap of my luggage. I make a mental note to pay the corner shop a visit as soon as I have the chance, find out whether the alcohol there is any good. I hear him before I see him: loud laugh and arms spread before the door is even fully open.

And sure, I wasn’t expecting it to be easy. But he looks exactly like he used to, and I just wasn’t ready for that. He looks like he did in the group picture we decided to take on our very last night, before Jenna threw up all over the piano and I locked myself in the bathroom until everybody else had left. He looks like sin and glory and youth, like the most pained cliché in the book.

He looks at me expectantly, and, well. I step forward.

*

It starts innocently enough, even though I’m the one who throws the first stone. I’m looking through my Messages app to find our chat, blanket up to my chin and news muted on the tv. The last messages I scroll through are stupidly ordinary, something about his schedule changing and how I was going to order Chipotle for dinner, but they still hit like a small punch in the gut. I stare at the date for a long time: two years ago in June.

So that’s what happens when you jump ship, I think.

I type quickly. Work is sending me to the city for a few days, and can I crash, and if you still live there. He replies almost immediately, before I can start worrying that he might have deleted my number. Sure thing, and then. Good to hear from you, C. Hope you’re not drinking and will remember this tomorrow.

Eight minutes later, I get a ticket confirmation email with a booking reference number.

Enjoy your trip, reads the subject line.

*

It’s performance art at its finest. I hit my mark and say my lines. I catch him staring as he gets two large wine glasses out of the cupboard and wonder if he, too, knows what scene comes next.

He tastes like hunger and heartbreak and I am rapt with want. I am nineteen again, sweltering in the summer heat and paralyzed under his spotlight. I am twenty, I am dating a sweet boy named Jake and trying my fucking best. I am twenty-one and kissing middle-aged men in dirty bathrooms downtown, high on freedom and novelty and unafraid to push until I hit the right buttons. I am twenty-two, crying in my grandmother’s arms and thinking that his is the only number I want to call. I am sitting on the black leather couch in his grown-up apartment, one hand in his jeans and the other still gripping my wine glass. I am floating above my own body.

In the time it takes him to reach my arms over my head and catch my mouth with his again, I watch everything good in me build up and crash back down.

Afterwards, we sit on his fire escape and he asks about my family, about Emily, about a job I am not passionate about but don’t hate enough to leave just yet. Account coordinator, what a farce. We joke about AJ who used to hack into the school computers overnight to change all of the passwords, and about the time I accidentally cut off half my hair and had to wear a hat for the better part of six months. We finish our wine in silence and I see green flashes of words unsaid behind his eyes, entire books written and ripped to shreds before me. Entire worlds in the space of an easy slip, the easiest of all.

In the faint blue light of the night we get into his bed and wait for time to run out. In hiding, we hold onto what we think we are and what we wish we were. We wait with bated breath for our bodies to burn just a little longer, and as Shura’s new album fills up the room I mouth along this is not love this is an emergency this is not love this is an emergency this is an emergency this is an emergency.

*

He gets up early for work but remembers to put the coffee on before he leaves. It’s the little things, I smile to myself through the 6:40AM haze. Mug in hand, I sit on the couch and text a few friends. I put on a podcast I’d started on the plane and half-listen to the guest, a self-described femmepreneur, describe how she ‘monetized her passion and turned a hashtag into a booming business’. Some people have all the luck, I guess.

I turn over the mail sitting on his counter just to see his name written on the envelopes. With every phone bill and local council notice, I tell myself this really is his apartment and I really am in it. I spill some coffee on the table and quickly wipe it with my sleeve, only to realize I’ve now ruined his shirt since he insisted I wear it last night. I turn off the podcast lady mid-sentence and find some stain-remover under the kitchen sink. I spray it on and watch as it foams up and becomes a paste. I cover my face with my hands and sit in silence, in peace, in waiting.

*

I’m looking for mayonnaise when I hear the key turn. I’ve spent twenty minutes trying to locate some toast and came up with brioche bread instead, the only carb I find among a mountain of bacon chips, a family-sized jug of protein powder and about a dozen cans of chickpeas. That’s how he finds me: crouched down on the floor peering into the bottom cabinet, my entire kingdom for any kind of dip I can squeeze directly into my mouth. I’m leaving in less than 48 hours and all I want is mayonnaise.

He doesn’t call out hello, just removes his jacket and places it on the worn red armchair by the door. Probably IKEA. Most definitely. I could have helped him build that, I think.

I was looking for a snack, I say in lieu of an explanation for the brioche bread in my hand.

I should have popcorn somewhere, he says. And then, I was going to make some pasta. Ham and peas, if you still like that?

The ‘still’ cuts my throat as he moves imperceptibly closer, makes a motion with his hands and stops mid-air like maybe he’s constantly second-guessing himself as much as I am. He takes a tentative step forward and then another, and I’m frozen in place.

The kitchen tap is leaking and the entire flat reeks of onions even though I haven’t seen any, anywhere. On his last step towards me, I hide my face in his neck and shut my eyes. I listen out for droplets intermittently hitting the bottom of the sink, and I am struck by the realization that no matter how this weekend ends, I have never been more willing to let someone break my stupidly tender heart. Over and over until my mouth is dry and my legs weak. Until I can pinpoint every airport and railway station where I convinced myself this wasn’t just a fantasy and connect them all to draw a map of the entire country.

We eat sitting face to face on the couch, a Law & Order re-run that neither of us is paying attention to playing in the background. Our feet almost touch but not quite, and my longing for the normalcy of a thousand Thursday nights just like this gets heavier with every passing minute. I long for a dreamed-up time where I won’t live a four-hour plane ride away, or maybe a parallel universe where I never did.

I make up entire lives in my head and play them out like a poorly written theater show, but in each scenario I give them a happy ending. I can’t resist.

*

He says to look for a toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet, second drawer to the left. Where I’m expecting a new pack, I find a purple one left in the plastic cover and another five wrapped together by a thick brown hair tie. Red, blue, green, yellow, pink. One, two, three, four, five. I slam the drawer closed with more force than I need to and brush my teeth with my finger instead.

*

Some friends are having a birthday thing, a super chill thing, he tells me with a shrug, which I only realize is meant as an invite when he asks what I’m going to wear and I regret filling my luggage with a panicked collection of tight dresses as much as I do eating a second serving of pasta at dinner. I spend 35 minutes straightening my hair just for it to start raining as soon as we walk out of the apartment. I don’t think he notices. I tell myself it’s for the best.

He holds my hand as we walk but lets go of it as we get there: a brown door hidden between a takeaway chicken place and a barber shop with blinding neon lights, way too strong for the small space. The knot in my throat gets tighter and my hands get sweatier. He greets a tall guy called Adrian with a toothy smile, then gestures to me and introduces me as a friend who’s visiting for a few days. He says he’ll get us both drinks and disappears into the kitchen, while I resolve not to hide in the bathroom and wait out the game of high-stakes cruelty ping pong that’s currently playing out in my head.

Instead, I congratulate Adrian on how nice his apartment is and speak to Gemma about the upcoming holidays. I tell Colin I’d always wanted a cat even though I am really a dog person and spend 20 minutes debating the correct use of the word literally with Dean and Claire. My eyes dart back and forth between the bathroom door and the kitchen, where he is leaning against the fridge and talking to a brunette wearing a yellow Frankie Says Relax T-shirt.

I swallow bile down, because of course I do. Because of course, he doesn’t spend his evenings watching movies with an average Imdb rating of 5.2 using his sister’s Netflix account and eating noodles straight out of a plastic pot that turns gooey and smelly if you leave it in the microwave for too long. Of course, I still live a four-hour plane ride away. And we are not eighteen anymore.

I bite the last of the supposedly longwear lipstick off my lips and push my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I think of the toothbrushes in his bathroom drawer. I think of the girls he dances with on his Instagram stories or the ones who comment things like ‘Handsome!!!’ or ‘Miss you xxxx’ under the pictures of him holding tiny puppies or a giant fish. I think maybe if I, too, had left a comment under the fish pictures, then my toothbrush could have ended up in the white glass on the sink instead of sandwiched between Red and Green deep in the second drawer. I think of the girlfriends he must not refer to as such but still take to all the fancy restaurants downtown and send semi-ironic heart emojis to. How he probably fucks them on the bed, not the couch or the tiny shower, and definitely not in AJ’s basement like that one time.

I think of two years ago in June and jumping ship, of my nineteenth birthday party and that velvet green dress I only wore because I thought it made my ass look great even though I later learned it didn’t, and how he said he was going to kiss me because everyone deserves to be kissed on their birthday. I think of all the other things I deserve, like butterflies and respect and the hazy possibility of things working out despite my best efforts. The hazy possibility of one day finding myself at a wine bar on a summer evening sitting across from someone who would hold my hand under the table and know what to order for the both of us. I think of how I’ve never learned to fight for anything I deserve but he was the first to give it to me anyway.

I wonder if Red or Green feel the same way, whether he sent them almost-love-but-not-really letters, too, and whether they, too, keep theirs in a black shoebox under the bed but only dare to look inside after 2AM on a particularly tequila-fuelled night. Because that’s the kind of thing you promise yourself you’ll never do again even though you live for the high and the comedown makes you wish you’d never turned nineteen in a velvet green dress, never kissed him back when he pressed you against the wall and told you you looked really pretty, never sent back your own almost-love-but-not-really letters, never let him hold your hand under the table or choose the wine on that summer night two years ago in June.

One, two, three, four, five toothbrushes in a white drawer.

I feel a sudden urge to throw up and realize that I’m still waiting for him to come back with a drink. I excuse myself from Annie and Sinead, but I don’t think they notice when I start looking for my jacket. I only exhale when I close the door behind me. And then I start walking.

*

I get a hotel room for the night, although it’s really more of a hostel and it’s really all I can afford. The wallpaper is bright orange and it makes my head spin, but my chest is surprisingly light and the noise of the city coming in brash and bright from the open window lulls me until I fall asleep.

I wake up early and go for a walk in last night’s clothes. I tell myself I’ll only be an hour but before I know it I’ve walked three neighborhoods and it’s almost noon, so I buy a spinach roll and eat it with the wrap still on. When a bit of plastic ends up between my teeth, I spend two blocks fighting to edge it out with my tongue, the same four songs playing through my headphones the whole time.

Around the time I reach the river, he texts where’d you go?

And then, miss your laugh.

I pause my music and throw a few stones into the water, but I don’t answer.

*

There’s a story I read about a girl whose boyfriend died, except he wasn’t her boyfriend and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t cry about it. This is what happens when we refuse to give a name to feelings, and situations, I remember thinking at the time —millennials and their phobias, and: why is everyone I know so damn scared to send the first text.

But I was wrong. That wasn’t the story at all.

The girl whose boyfriend died realized he wasn’t really her boyfriend when she was asked to give a eulogy and couldn’t come up with anything to write. She messaged his ex on Facebook, a girl called Lauren who hadn’t slept since she heard the news, and they met up to work on the text together. And Lauren was it, the story made very clear. Lauren was adored by the dead boyfriend’s extended family as much as she was supposed to be the sole author of the eulogy, anybody would have agreed. Lauren somehow found it in herself to be very nice to the girl whose boyfriend died as they discussed why he really didn’t deserve to die, and even told her a funny story involving him and his friend Sammy and an otter. The girl whose boyfriend died used the story in her speech. Everybody thought it was a great eulogy. She never managed to shed a tear, but she did think it was unfair of him to die when Lauren was still so in love with him and she wasn’t.

What a good girl, the story goes.

Instead: our story goes like this, fuck being a good girl.

Instead: I’ll burn entire cities to the ground before accepting a supporting role in the movie of a life I’ll never be a part of.

I’ll hit my mark and say my lines. But I’ll never let myself forget that we’re only playing pretend, and at some point we’ll pay the price.

*

The drive to the airport is long but eerily peaceful. I don’t bite my lips until they bleed, or rehearse apologies in my head, and I still have half of my spinach roll left. I let my brain get wrapped up in familiar fuzziness, take my shoes off and insist the driver take the scenic route. For the first time in a long time I’m acutely aware that nothing is chasing me anymore.

My flight gets delayed by an hour and 23 minutes. I lock myself in a bathroom stall and eat the last of my cold roll sitting on the floor, trying my best to avoid the wet spots. I let my finger hover on the ‘Delete This Number From Your Contacts’ button for a long time, but in the end I just block him on Instagram.

I think, that’ll send a message.

………………..

Anna Myers is a writer living between London, Milan and Paris. Her work has appeared in print and online in publications like Dear Damsels, Soul Anatomy, Fgrls Club, The Financial Diet and many more.

Twitter: @annamyers139