F*ck Love

Kit hit me out of nowhere. I had a dream that made me take a closer look at a guy I was otherwise ignoring. And from that dream I discovered a connection. I don’t even think about the dream anymore. For the last eight weeks I’ve been living it.

But I don’t think about that as I answer calls, pack some pieces up for shipment, and deposit checks. I feel like all of my insides have been taken out and replaced with stuffing that has made me stiff, and numb, and mechanical. I do not get my usual text from Kit when it’s time to lock up and go home, so I stay later than usual. I remind myself of my granny, who moves from room to room, managing to look busy without really doing anything.

Kit is probably on his way back to Florida by now, a plastic cup of shitty wine in his hand. To think of him being so far away causes the muscles in my heart to stretch painfully. This isn’t okay. I am not okay. There is no one on the street when I leave. It’s eerily quiet; the only sound is of the rain and the distant hum of a generator. It’s a cold night; the wind has been touching the tops of the snowy mountains and blowing our way. I shrink deeper into my coat and look toward the cannery. I don’t want to be there. Or here. Or anywhere. I walk toward the harbor, my steps determined. Deep in my pocket, my wine cork sits clutched in my fist. I’m not feeling quite as numb as I was before. The shock has worn off and filled with something sharper. I think it’s called realization. Ha! The Belle is not in her slip. It’s the first time I’ve found her spot empty. I stand on the dock, shivering and wondering what to do next.

“Helena.”

I’ll always find you.

“Don’t bother,” I say without turning around. He comes to stand next to me, and we stare at the water together. I can see my breath.

“I thought you would have left by now.”

He looks down at his feet, and I hear him sigh. “I fly back tomorrow.”

“Ah.”

More silence.

“A baby. You must be very excited.”

“Don’t, Helena. This is … I didn’t plan for this. I have to go talk to her, take care of things.”

“You have to go take care of your family,” I say, turning to face him. “That’s the right thing. I mean, what were we even doing here, Kit?”

He makes a face, starts to say something, then looks away, grinding his teeth. “We were doing something good. My intentions were to get to know you. To really get to know you,” he says.

“We weren’t doing something good. It just felt good. I betrayed Della. What was I? Your little distraction before you settled down?”

He’s bouncing on his heels, shaking his head like he can’t believe what I’m saying.

“You know that’s not true. We have something, Helena. In another life, it would have been a beautiful something.”

That hurts. God, does it. I’ve seen that life. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. In his mind, I’m just some possibility that could have been, but in my mind, he’s the only possibility.

I step close to him, close enough to see the stubble on his cheeks. I reach up to touch it, and it scrapes against the tender side of my hand. Kit closes his eyes. “There’s a house uptown on Washington; we live there together in that life,” I say softly. “Everything is green, green, green in our backyard. We have two children, a boy and a girl. She looks like you,” I say. “But she acts like me.” I caress his cheek because I know it’s the last time I’m going to get to do it. Kit’s eyes are open and storming. I run my teeth across my bottom lip before I continue. “In the summer, we make love outside, against the big wooden table that still holds our dinner dishes. And we talk about all the places we want to make love.” I lick the tears from my lip where they are pooling. Running in a straight line down my cheeks, a leaky faucet. “And we’re so happy, Kit. It’s like a dream every day.” I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss him softly on the lips, letting him taste my tears. He’s staring at me so hard I want to crack. “But, it’s just a dream, isn’t it?”

Before I move away, I touch the crease between his eyes. He hasn’t said a word, but his mouth is puckered into this angry frown. He has less right to say things now. I understand.

“Here,” I say. I hold out my fist, and he lifts his hand. I drop the wine cork into his palm. “Will you do me a favor?”

He’s looking at the cork; I can see the confusion on his face. There are a hundred things going on behind his eyes. I point to the water.

“Throw it in,” I say.

“Is this the … why?”

“Just do it,” I plead, closing my eyes. “Please.”

He’s struggling. He wants to say more, but he turns to the water and lifts his arm above his head. I can only see it for a second before it disappears into the dark.

There. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Goodbye, Kit,” I say.

There are days—many of them. I can’t tell you what happened on those days: who I met, who I spoke to, what I ate. I definitely can’t recall the details of my thoughts, only that my dread jangled around the quiet corners of my mind until I couldn’t keep it sectioned off from anything. It soaked into work, and into home. Into my dealings with customers, and my phone calls with my parents. I was dreading life without him, and that was a sad, sad thing.

Numbness. That came next. After weeks of feeling pain so potently, it was a welcome relief. It is what it is, I tell myself. And I feel so proud that I made it to the point of nothingness.

But, then it comes back. Fucker. I don’t expect that. I wake up one morning with the sun streaming through my window. The sun, for God’s sake. Isn’t this the land of no sun? I roll over onto my stomach and pull a pillow over my head. And that’s when it happens. Everything comes rushing back—the intensity of what I feel for him, the dream right down to the ridiculous Pottery Barn couch, and the way he left with a big fat sorry. I can see the sinews in his neck pulled taut when I close my eyes. The full lower lip that falls into a pout when he’s thinking about something. I know his smell—not of his cologne—but his actual skin. I think of the day in his closet when he caught me smelling his shirt. God, that seems like forever ago. I am so devastated. So utterly devastated.

I tell Phyllis. It’s an accident, really. I’m browsing through knitted hats that look like doilies when she suddenly smiles at me from behind the register. I start to cry right away. It’s not even normal crying—it’s an ugly cry.