Last Girl Ghosted(6)

She pins me with her stunning green-hazel eyes. Jamaican mother, British father, Jax always says that she’s a true American girl. Her ancestors hail from all over the world, but she is Brooklyn born and raised. So, New Yorker first, everything else second.

“He’s not still here, is he?”

She looks past me, her gaze traveling down the hall toward the stairs.

I shake my head, gratefully take the cup of coffee she hands me over the quartz countertop that sits, not properly secured yet, atop the unfinished island. “I told you I wasn’t going to do that again. No more Torch hookups.”

She shrugs and lifts her eyebrows, as if this is some unreasonable assertion, takes a sip of her coffee. “So what happened?”

What did happen? Something. I felt something, which I wouldn’t have said about my last encounters.

I woke up thinking about you, Adam, wondering if we are really having dinner tonight.

“Nothing,” I tell her. “We talked, we walked. It was—nice.”

“Did you take a picture?”

I laugh at this. Jax lives online. It’s 8:00 a.m. and she’s probably already posted on Instagram about her morning run. I keep a much lower profile. “He wasn’t the selfie type.”

“Okay,” she says, drawing out the syllables. “What type was he?”

“I guess the type I’m going to see again. He asked me to dinner tonight.”

Raising her eyebrows again, this time in surprise, she slides into the seat next to me and we drink the strong coffee in companionable silence for a moment. She’s scrolling on her phone. Glancing over, I see that she’s pulled up your profile.

The picture is unflattering. You’re better looking in person.

Her frown tells me that she doesn’t approve of you. “What about the other guy?” she asks.

“Which one?”

“The literary one. You said he was nice, you know—talented.” She laughs, moving her shoulders, mock sexy.

I find myself staring at her; I’m often a bit enthralled by her beauty—her high cheekbones, gleaming eyes, full lips. My friend doesn’t think she’s beautiful, but she is.

“Drew,” I say, remembering him—nice body, thick head of dark hair, bedroom eyes. I don’t remember thinking he was talented. Our night together was serviceable at best. “He didn’t call.”

She tips her head to the side, considers this. “You didn’t call him either.”

“Exactly. There was nothing there,” I say, thinking that will be the end of it. But she’s still watching me. “What?”

Jax looks for a long moment at your picture, tugging at her braid. “This guy. He just seems—too serious. I just want you to—you know—have fun.”

As far as my friend is concerned, Torch hookups need to be light and easy—nightclub dates, weekend trips to Miami Beach, champagne brunches that end back in bed. That’s her. Not me.

She looks at me like she wants to go on, but then presses her mouth shut.

“What?” Instantly defensive in the way that you can only be with people who know you too well.

She lifts her palms. “I’m just saying. Don’t get hooked into one guy, date around a little.”

Date around a little. She uses the app as a catalog of potential hookups. I’m not sure she’s seen the same guy more than twice. This is the way of it. Swipe left. Swipe right. The pool is big and shallow; if reality doesn’t measure up to socials (and when does it?)—block, unfriend, delete, move on.

The idea—her idea—was for me to get out there. Stop working so hard. Live a little, let loose.

“What are you worried about?” I bump her with my shoulder; she reaches for my hand and gives it a squeeze. “He probably won’t even call. I’ll never see him again.”

“Hmm,” she says. “What about this guy?”

She holds up a picture, an extremely fit man with a goatee and slicked-back hair flexes his muscles and stares suggestively at the camera. We both break out laughing.

“Uh,” I say. “Pass.”

There’s a tapping at the window over the sink, and I look up to see a blackbird there. He gazes inside, inquiring. I’ve been leaving seeds for him. There’s a postage-stamp-sized backyard behind my town house and I’ve filled it with plants; the blackbird has made a nest I think in the gutter over the back door. I walk over to the sink and look out at him. His body gleams blue in the morning light.

And just like that, I’m back there.

My father’s house. Big and rambling, run-down and with a list of problems we didn’t have the money to fix. Isolated on a huge tract of land that had been in his family for generations. The house where he grew up, and where he moved our family when I was ten for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time.

I put my fingers on the glass, and remember the foggy window in the old kitchen, the warm, nutty scent of oatmeal on the stove, my mother humming softly, my brother Jay sulking, angry about something—everything. There was a blackbird that visited that window, too, attracted by seeds my mother left. Birds are the messengers of the universe, she used to say. They sing its song.

“Wren.”

I startle back to the moment, to Jax. “Earth to Wren. Where did you go?”