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[pleasantsoulobject]

Jeffrey Lewis - flash fiction

I miss those early mornings in your apartment.

I miss watching the sunlight hit your face in a way that made your eyelashes glow. I miss your soft eyes and your messy hair and that look you'd give me whenever I made a stupid joke.

(If you were here now, you'd tell me that I should be kinder to myself. You never thought my jokes were stupid even when they were. You used to think that all of my jokes were funny; You'd repeat them to your friends and brag about how you had such a clever, witty girlfriend, about how you were so lucky to be dating a girl like me. It used to make my heart soar. I had always wanted to be someone's clever, witty girlfriend.)

I miss laying in your bed and watching you doze off again. I miss waking you right back up with a shake of your shoulder and the tired, irritated glare you'd give me directly afterward. I miss laughing softly at that glare and the way that would irritate you even more.

I miss getting up out of your bed and padding over to your kitchen, sitting on the countertop as I waited for your coffee to brew. I miss putting on that one Jeffrey Lewis CD you had and listening to him warble on about feeling unlovable. I didn't even like Jeffrey Lewis all that much. I think it just made me feel better that I couldn't relate to what he was saying. Not when I was with you, my love.

I miss watching you reluctantly drag yourself into your kitchen a few minutes after me, your face lighting up at the sound of Jeffrey Lewis' voice. You'd say that you loved whatever song was playing. I'd say that I knew that. Of course I knew that. I'd hand you your cup of coffee and we'd sit at your kitchen table in comfortable silence. I miss staring out of your kitchen window, watching the cars zip past on the street below. I miss the light and the warmth and the smell and your smile and the way you used to make me feel.

What I'd give to spend another early morning in your apartment.

What I'd give to turn that your into ours.

[pleasantsoulobject]

Automatic Sink - a short story

“What happened to your hand?”

Anne points to the tightly wrapped bandage around my bruised knuckles. I had been trying to hide my hand in the sleeve of my sweatshirt the entire time we’d been sitting in this run-down diner that’s halfway between her house and mine. It’s dingy with walls that might have been considered modern in 1985 and chairs that creak every time you slightly adjust your position in them, but what has really been bothering me is how warm it is in here. This wasn’t an issue at first, but they must have cranked the heat up in this shitty diner or something at some point, making it unbearably warm. It’s as if the managers in this place thought it would be funny to sweat me out, forcing me to take off my hoodie and expose my injured hand to my older sister because those sick fucks were bored. Well, sick fucks, guess you won. It’s so hot in here that I feel like my face is melting off.

“I fell,” I say, not looking at her as I say it. She raises a skeptical eyebrow at me. 

“You fell?” she repeats after me, clearly not believing this terribly vague lie I have made up on the spot. 

“Yes.” I answer promptly, standing my ground. It’s not like I can tell her that the real reason why my hand is bandaged is because I punched an automatic sink while I was in the bathroom at work a few days ago.

It’s absolutely humiliating to admit that because it just sounds so stupid.

I’m not even a particularly impatient person, but something about the way that sink would turn off whenever I put my hand under it pushed me over the edge. That sink had one job and it wasn’t following through, so in a wave of frustration, I just punched it. I thought I had broken a couple of fingers before I decided I was being dramatic and bandaged my hand up at my desk. It’s easier to tell my sister that I fell than admit that I lost a fistfight to an automatic sink.

“How did you fall?” Anne pushes, leaning forward. I try not to shiver as her dark brown eyes stare into my soul. If my sister is skilled at anything, it’s getting me to spill my guts when I don’t really want to.

“I tripped over a trash can on my way to work,” I say. Maybe I said that too quickly. She doesn’t look any less suspicious. If anything, she looks more suspicious than she did just a couple of seconds ago.

“Hm,” she purses her lips in thought. “Then how did you fall on your hand like that? Shouldn’t your palms have taken the brunt of the beating?”

Shit.

“I don’t know,” I shrug. The heat in this diner is starting to get to me again. I feel like I’m a witness on the stand in a courtroom who’s desperately in need of a handkerchief for their sweaty forehead.

Anne looks at me for a moment longer before she sighs, picking up her water glass and taking a careful sip. She’s letting me win this round. Thank god.

“Alright,” she nods. “Looks like it hurts,”

“It does, but I’m okay,” I say. I watch as she sets down her glass of water onto the sticky gingham tablecloth.

“What did Liz have to say about your hand?”

I draw a blank. I may not be able to tell Anne that I broke my hand because I punched an automatic sink, but I certainly cannot tell her that what drove me to punch the sink was the fact that Liz had called me earlier in the day to break up with me.

“It’s not your fault,” Liz had said to me over the phone. I was curled up in my desk chair at work, trying not to lose my mind.

“Cut the crap, Liz,” I had snapped back. It felt weird to snap at her. I had never done that before. “What’s the real reason why you’re breaking up with me?”

Liz went silent. I thought I had gone too far before she cleared her throat. “Because you’re still in love with your ex, Nick.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked her incredulously. She was right, of course, but I felt like it was common courtesy to pretend that she had caught me off guard with that assessment.

“Are we really going to do this?” she said, her voice sounding tired.

“Yes, we are,” I said. “Tell me why you think I’m still in love with Robbie.” I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t actually want to know.

“Just give him a call, maybe he still has feelings for you, too.” Liz ignored me.

“I don’t think he does,” I mumbled.

“How would you know if you never even tried to reach out?”

“I don’t know, I just— this isn’t what we’re talking about. I don’t want to break up with you,”

“Well I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else to say.”

“Say that you’re not breaking up with me,” I said pathetically. I felt like I was a teenager again, begging my high school girlfriend not to leave me after she told me I was emotionally unavailable. It’s funny how some things never change.

“I— c’mon,” I can imagine Liz shaking her head at me over the phone. “Could you make this a little easier for me? Please?”

“Liz, please,” I continued on, curling up a little more tightly. I knew that I was fighting a losing battle, but I couldn’t help myself. “I won’t bring up Robbie ever again. I didn’t even know that I brought him up so many times. Could we just forget about this?”

“What do you mean you didn’t know you kept bringing him up?” Liz said suddenly. Her voice became strangely hard in that moment. It caught me off guard, especially because it wasn’t like Liz to become impatient. My heart sank knowing that the first time I had seen this impatience was due to my own lack of maturity.

“I just … Liz, I’m so sorry,”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Look, I didn’t—”

“You didn’t know you kept bringing up your ex? All you do is talk about him,” Liz sounded angry, but underneath the anger, I could hear the hurt in her voice. I felt my heart sink even further. “Don’t you understand how odd it is to hear you constantly talk about this perfect, untouchable ex-boyfriend when we are actively in a relationship? And you’re telling me that you didn’t even realize you were doing it?”

I was at a loss for words. I didn’t have any excuse, any way to defend myself, because I was the one who was fully in the wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, having nothing else that I could possibly say.

Liz sighed. “I know you are,” she answered softly, her anger fleeting before my eyes and revealing the Liz I knew. Calm, collected, mature Liz. Someone that I wish I could’ve been. “But I think you should give Robbie a call.”

And that was that. 

And then when I used the bathroom later that day, that stupid fucking sink was my final straw. Why don’t things just work out when I want them to? When they’re supposed to? When they’re designed to work a certain way and then don’t?

Liz was the third girlfriend I’d had in the last eleven months. All of those relationships ended for fair reasons, but this was the first one that made me question why I kept on dating in the first place. Everyone is the same. They really like you for a few months, accuse you of being in love with that one guy you dated two or three years ago, and then they leave.

The thing is I don’t even know why I’m so hung up on Robbie. He wasn’t even as much of a catch as Liz or Rachel or Kayla or any of the other people I’ve dated since him. He would always cut his hair too short and wear clothes that were too loose on him and had a stupid gap in between his two front teeth. He had horrible acid reflux and would take up the entire bed at night and was terrible at returning phone calls. If anything, he was below average. I was out of his league.

But he was also so gentle. He was kind to me when I couldn’t be kind to myself. He had seen me hit rock bottom more times than I can count and still continued to throw down a rope to pull me up every single time. When I wasn’t sure if I would be able to pay my rent, Robbie had loaned me money without a second thought. When I had blacked out after drinking far too much, Robbie had taken me home. He had sat on the bathroom floor with me as I spent hours throwing up, rubbing my back and silencing my desperate, drunken apologies. When my dad had called me a slew of horrible names after I had told him I was dating a man, Robbie had held me as I sobbed into his shirt in the driveway of my childhood home. He was the only partner I’d had who made me feel like I could lean on him when I really needed it.

That was of course until he told me he was moving to New Mexico and broke up with me.

Turns out he was just like everybody else.

When it happened, I wasn’t even upset about it. Some part of me had almost expected it. I thanked him for everything, kissed him goodbye, and left. It wasn’t until I was sitting alone in my empty apartment that night that everything had come crashing down, except there was no one to shield me from the falling debris this time.

But that’s life, right? People really like you for a little while, get you to trust them, get you to fall in love with them, and then they leave. They leave you to pick up the broken pieces of your life, to dream about that stupid gap in his teeth that you actually loved and found very charming even though you are pretending that you didn’t as a method of self-preservation. You loved everything about him if you’re being completely honest with yourself, even his too-short hair and horrible acid reflux. Yet, no matter how much you loved him, that still wasn’t enough for him to stay.

Maybe I’m just not designed to have a life partner despite everyone telling me that I am, the same way that those fuckass automatic sinks never work even though everyone tells you that they should.

“Nick?” Anne’s voice snaps me back to reality.

“Huh?” I shake my head, trying to ground myself.

“I asked what Liz had to say about your hand.”

I look down at my hand, the knuckles black and blue and throbbing in pain. It’s been a few days at this point, but it feels just as painful as it did when it happened.

“Liz didn’t say much,” I tell Anne as I feel sweat trickle down the back of my neck.