Page 49 of Well, Actually
“That kind of misplaced vulnerability is one hundred percent unnecessary,” I argue. “This entire ridiculous social media experiment we’re doing is unnecessary.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
Because I wanted vindication for my pathetic hurt feelings. Because every time I’m with Cooper he surprises me. Because I’m actually starting to like being around him.
“Because my job made me and I am nothing if not a meat puppet for the hands of capitalism,” I reply, crossing my legs and bobbing my foot.
Roberta looks skeptical. “Rylie?” she says, directing the question at him but keeping her eyes on me. “Why areyoudoing this?”
“Because I carry around my guilt like an extra appendage and I wanted a chance to make things right between us.”
My gaze snaps to his profile. He’s said it before—over and over—and it terrifies me that some naive part of me is actually starting to believe it.
Cooper looks back at me, pushing his glasses up his nose as he clears his throat. “I get it. You don’t trust me. But for once, I want us to have a conversation of radical honesty. No bullshit, no recordings, no confusion about if this is for our audience or for us. I want us totalk, Eva. I want to listen to you.”
My throat tightens, nails digging into the arms of the sofa. I feel the sudden urge to cry. To run. To curl up in a ball on his lap and beg him to hold me tight. I want to whisper every thought I’ve locked up in my head since I was a little kid because I knew no one would care to hear it. But how am I supposed to trust it? Trusthim? No one’s ever shown up for me before—not my parents or my partners or even my employers. How am I all of a sudden supposed to believe Cooper is being authentic about wanting to listen to me?
I cough, trying to blink away the pinpricks of emotions behind my eyes. “In the spirit of honesty,” I say when I think I can trust my voice. Big mistake, it’s still hoarse and horrifically timid. “I feel kind of uncomfortable talking about my hurt and emotions around the whole situation now that I know about what happened to his sister during that time. It makes my feelings on it all seem extremely trivial.”
Roberta nods, biting her lower lip for a moment. “I can understand feeling like that. It isn’t easy to learn about someone else’s pain, then have to explain your own. It can feel like the trauma Olympics and everyone loses. But life doesn’t existin a vacuum, and neither do our actions, even if they result from our personal experiences. It’s okay to acknowledge that Rylie was going through a tremendous loss and grieving process and offer him grace. But it also doesn’t do you any good to swallow your feelings altogether. You were swept up in the storm of his grief and injured by the whiplash. It doesn’t make you a bad person to admit that you were hurt by the actions of someone also hurting.”
I’m silent, my heart ticking like a timer counting down an explosive.
“Is that something you feel like you can explore?” Roberta nudges when it’s clear I’m not going to make this easy for her.
I look down at my hands, cracking each knuckle with my thumb, pushing back my cuticles. I ball my hands into fists, my nails digging into the fleshy pads of my palms. Cooper is giving me the courtesy of looking forward instead of at me, unlike Roberta, whose eyes feel like a physical weight. “Yeah, we can explore that,” I finally mumble.
“Good,” Roberta says softly. “But know we can stop at any time. You’re in control here. You have the power to say whatever you need to, but also withhold if you don’t feel comfortable.”
I nod tersely, lifting my chin and tossing my hair back. “Right. Of course.”
“Why do you feel your relationship didn’t work in the past?” Roberta asks, ripping the Band-Aid right the fuck off and dumping some salt on the wound along with it.
I snort, leaning into petulance. “Like I said, there wasn’t a relationship. There was me mooning over him for a few months, some sporadic dates when he could be bothered togive me the time of day, about four minutes of really shitty sex, and an extremely successful ghosting. Rather cliché.”
“Now, I will admit that I am aware of the video you posted online about all of this,” Roberta says, giving me an apologetic smile.
“I’ve been discussing everything going on during sessions,” Cooper adds. I still can’t look at him.
“Yes, thank you for clarifying,” she says, nodding. “It’s come up. It seems like that night, those four minutes of really shitty sex, as you phrased it, are actually quite a focal point for your hurt. That evening seemed to have a ripple that we’re still seeing the effects of now. You brush over it with flippancy but I wonder what details have stuck with you, Eva.”
I rememberallthe details. That’s the problem.
I remember the night before too.
We’d gone to a crappy college bar that sold lukewarm watery beers for a dollar on Thursday nights and never bothered to card anyone. The evening ended before nine, Cooper shit-faced and glassy-eyed, talking about his ex at a volume that got louder by the second, heads turning and girls laughing at my red face and his weepy voice.
I ended up paying the tab—an alarming total for how cheaply we were being served—and convinced Cooper it was time to go home. With his arm slung heavily around my shoulders, we stumbled back toward his frat house. We made it about a hundred feet before he started crying in earnest, blubbering about how much he missed his ex, how much he wanted them back. How he really thought he loved them.
Being shameless and jealous and nosy to the point of self-destruction, I asked who she was, but Cooper wouldn’t tell me,only shaking his head like a wet dog and crying harder. Even when he slumped onto the porch of his house, eyes closed and face flushed, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, trying one more time for a name.
I wanted to look her up, stalk her on the internet, study every grainy, filtered picture I could find until she was burned in my retinas, only to spend months trying to morph myself into a girl like her—a girl who could make a guy that deeply obsessed. I wanted so badly to be the object of that much want, to cup it in my hands, dive headfirst into being needed. But Cooper passed out on the porch and I walked home alone, brain spinning on how I could get him. Keep him.
Sex seemed like the surest way. It wasn’t by the heat of the moment I ended up on his twin mattress on the floor, bra pushed up over my boobs, Cooper’s beer-stained breath on my cheek, and my body thoroughly unsatisfied as I told him I loved him.
So unbelievably mortifying.
“I don’t know that there’s much to say about that night,” I lie, my voice cracking in betrayal. “He spent the party ignoring me until he was pushing his hand up my shirt and kissing me like he wanted me. Like I wanted him to want me. I wanted to have sex, Cooper wanted to have sex. We did it without talking about what it meant for either of us and I guess… I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t actually ready for it. I’d attached more meaning and significance to it than I think I realized at the time and I… I just felt so fucking naked. Not like, literally naked… A lot of clothes actually stayed on for both of us.” Cooper coughs, and I squeeze my eyes shut. “But I guess I wanted to feel loved at that moment, and I… I blurted out that I lovedhim.”
