Page 28 of The Sun and the Moon
My hand releases the vibrator, and that anxious restless energy coils around my thighs. No relief on any front. I get up, yank on my Ritz-Carlton bathrobe (stolen after a one-night stand in Vienna), and venture out into the kitchen. Maybe some chamomile tea will do the trick.
Joe is in the kitchen making himself a late-night Kraft Mac & Cheese snack. He’s standing over the stove, face above the lightly rolling water to get the pore-opening benefit of the steam. I watch him for a second with his eyes closed, his lips slightly open.
Joe was the first person I told I was bi. He was an inexperienced Midwestern bi baby himself, barely out. We bonded over the experience, shared dating horrors over Slurpees at two a.m. At the time, I was just starting to come out of my sexuality shell, and I didn’t yet understand how my queerness would affect my sexual experience. The broad spectrum of attraction, the way I approached intimacy—it was all a big question I was trying to answer.
Still am, if I’m honest. Romance is a whole other layer. You can feel attraction and not experience love. You can experience love and not feel attraction. Joe would say that my Sagittarius Venus just thrives on adventure, and maybe he’s right.
Sometimes I fear that it’s deeper than that. That if I found the right person, I would still itch to get away from them, eventually fuck it up.
Wind up on my own again.
“You’re staring at me,” Joe says. His eyes open, the dark row of lashes sticking together in little clumps from the steam.
“Oh good, you’re awake. I was worried for a second that you were sleep cooking again,” I snark. Deflection is one of my favorite forms of coping.
“You joke, but you also benefited from that little brush with sleep psychosis.”
“Your snooze brownies were exceptionally yummy.” I scoot onto one of the kitchen island stools.
He pours the pasta into the rapidly boiling water. “Glad you’re up. This way I won’t have to eat alone.” His eyes settle on me, and I know I’ve been caught. I can tell by the way his lips twist into an almost frown.
“I’m fine.” I try to head off the concern.
“Anything but,” he says. “After you came home cosplaying Oscar the Grouch, I was happy to let you brood in your room for the night. I planned to draw it out of you by whatever means necessary in the morning.” He stirs the pasta mindlessly. “This is better.”
“Just because it’s after midnight doesn’t mean I’m going to be any more forthcoming.”
Now he does pout out his lower lip.
“You’ll sleep better if you spill it.”
The problem with spilling it is I would have to know whatitis that I want to spill. And right now the feeling is more like a nebulous orb floating in a bowl of cosmic goo. Dark matter from the core of reality.
“I don’t know what’s actually gnawing at me,” I say in a burst of irritation. “But it’s driving me fucking crazy.”
Joe grabs the milk and a few slices of plastic cheese (more Kraft) from the fridge. I eye the extra cheese. He shrugs. “What? My toxic trait is that sometimes I eat literal garbage, and I like it better than Nobu.” I cackle. “You’re no different, Ms. Mama Zuma’s Revenge Habanero Chips with a Dash of Tabasco.” He mimics barfing.
“Don’t knock it until you try it.”
“I did try it. I had heart palpitations.”
He starts mixing the milk and cheese packet together, spooning out a little pasta water as he does. “You’re veering off when you should be baring your soul.” He plops the cheese in the milk mixture and sticks it in the microwave for thirty seconds.
“It’s something we talked about at dinner,” I say, but it feels like even those words are being excavated rather than offered.
“Who talked about it?”
“The psychic,” I say, pausing to watch for his reaction. In a calculated move, he turns around to grab the colander. “And me.”
“So a convo between you and the woman you’re treating like a pariah for falling in love with your dad”—he dumps the pasta out—“has you all shredded up?”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Like, on this planet?” He makes a yuck face. “Pretty sure it’s because May and Daniel Lee boned.”
I cackle. “You know good and well that’s not what I mean.”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t think about it like that. Like there’s some grand master plan and I’m meant to figure it out.” He adds two pats of butter to the noodles, then points at me with his knife. “Doyou?” He dumps the sauce over the top and stirs. I fidget with discomfort over the direction this is heading.
