Cackle(5)

I take my shoes off but don’t bother to change into the pajamas he laid out for me on the coffee table, along with a glass of water and a lone birthday cupcake. There’s a card, too. I open the envelope, swatting aside the false hope that inside it will be a change of heart.

The card has a T. rex wearing a party hat on the front and inside it reads Hope your birthday is Dino-mite!

I laugh because it’s funny, and because it’s 100 percent Sam. I set the card back down on the coffee table, eat the frosting off of the cupcake, close my eyes and fall right asleep.



* * *



—

I wake up to discover a small spray of vomit across my pillow. I remove the case and wash it in the bathroom sink, then hang it over the shower rod to dry. I brush my teeth and take three Advils instead of the recommended dose of two, because I’m hard like that.

I’ve stumbled into the living room, ready to go back to sleep, when I hear rustling in the kitchen. Sam is in there, standing at the counter making coffee. His hair is crazy, as usual. I always tell him he looks like a mad scientist emerging from the lab after an experiment has gone awry.

He takes it as a compliment.

“Morning,” he says. “You were talking in your sleep again.”

“What’d I say? Anything interesting?”

“Something about who killed JFK, the identity of the second shooter. Don’t know. Wasn’t really paying attention. You want coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“How was last night?”

“Pretty fun,” I say. “Except she dragged me to a psychic who said I have dark energy.”

“Ah,” he says. “Well, I guess you’re fucked, then.”

“Totally fucked.”

He pours my coffee first, adds two packets of Stevia and only a splash of half-and-half. Exactly how I like it. He pushes my mug across the counter.

“What’d you do last night?” I ask him. It’s a casual question, a standard conversation starter. But there’s a brief flicker of suspicion that passes across his face. He thinks I’m fishing. He thinks I’m asking, Where were you last night? Whom were you with?

I wasn’t, but now his reaction has me wondering.

“Nothing too exciting,” he says. “Worked late. Made spaghetti. Then, you know . . . my vigilante stuff. Mask, cape, gadgets, catching bad guys, fighting crime.”

“Right, right.”

“Then got some bodega snacks, watched the Cooking Channel and went to bed.”

“Combos and Oreos?”

“Famous Amos.”

“Close. I was close.”

“Yeah,” he says. He’s looking elsewhere. He seems particularly fascinated by a certain point on the ceiling.

“All right,” I say. “Well, I’m just going to be hanging today. So . . .”

“I’ll be out of your hair,” he says. He inhales deeply, squints into his coffee. He’s pondering something. “You want eggs? I was going to make eggs.”

“Fancy Cooking Channel eggs?”

“No,” he says. “Just regular eggs.”

“Then okay,” I say. “Sure.”

I sit at the table and watch him take the eggs out of the fridge, butter the skillet, break the eggs into a bowl, whisk them. We’ve had so many mornings identical to this one. The same silly banter, the streams of sunlight coming through the window creating the same lattice patterns across the kitchen floor.

I replay the conversation. Us sitting on opposite sides of the couch on a lazy, rainy afternoon in late April, a nineties sitcom muted on the TV, me hugging a pillow, him playing with the fringes on the throw blanket.

“I guess I just don’t feel the way I know I should,” he’d said. I honestly can’t even remember how marriage came up, which, in retrospect, is likely because I’d been bringing it up too much. Working it into conversations where it didn’t belong. Dropping hint after not-so-subtle hint. This one just happened to be the one too many.

“Oh,” I said. What was most shocking to me about that moment was that it wasn’t shocking at all. I didn’t know it was coming, so how had I known it was coming?

“I don’t want to have this conversation,” he said, pinching the skin at the bridge of his nose, like he always does when he’s upset. “I really don’t. But we can’t keep avoiding it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’ve been feeling, for a while, that we’re more like friends,” he said. “It’s just . . . do . . . do we love each other anymore?”

I couldn’t answer the question. Any words I could hope to speak drowned in my throat. Words like “yes” and “of course” and “always.”

“That came out wrong,” he said. “I meant, are we in love? Because I feel like the spark we used to have, it’s just fizzled. Over time. It fizzled. And now we’re basically roommates. Roommates who have sex, sometimes.”

The way he stressed the “sometimes.” It was decimating.

“Do you think we could work on it?” I asked, my voice anemic. “We could . . . I could try.”

He sighed. “It’s on me. I should have brought it up sooner. I was scared. I didn’t want to lose you. As a friend. You’re my best friend.”