Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

When Elizabeth complained about Andrew, it was about him having to go off somewhere, to some hippie-dippie shit, or to climb some mountain with his own special Tibetan Sherpa. Jane never left the neighborhood. All Zoe wanted was some goddamn space. And attention. She wanted Jane to miss her when she was gone, but she never went anywhere except to bed.

“Jane? You here?” Zoe knew she was. She grabbed an orange off the counter and walked up the stairs. It was just before noon, which meant that Ruby was at the restaurant and Jane was probably in her pajamas. She knocked on the door to the guest room and opened it after Jane growled a response.

Someone had once told her that you should never marry anyone you wouldn’t want to divorce, but Zoe had always thought that Jane’s ornery qualities were among her most attractive. She didn’t give a shit about how she looked. She didn’t make small talk. She didn’t pretend to like people she didn’t, which Zoe thought probably saved about a dozen years of wasted time. Bitchy Whitman parents? Jane looked right through them. She was rough, and she was fair. She was a junkyard dog that made popovers for no reason, just because she was in the mood. Zoe poked her head into the room.

“Can we talk?”

Jane rolled over, the futon nearly rolling with her. She scooted backward until she was leaning against the wall. Her head knocked on a low-hanging picture frame, a drawing of Ruby’s from kindergarten. “Sure,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Elizabeth is not the problem.”

“I know that.”

“You went straight-up Hulk at the police station.” Zoe sat down on the floor next to the futon.

“I know that, too. But I also know the way she looks at you, like you’re her fucking chocolate ice cream cone and she wants to eat your brains and live inside your body.”

“Are you saying that she wants to lick me, or that she wants to kill me? I’m confused.” Zoe peeled her orange, sending sprays of citrus into the air.

“Maybe both? Both.” Jane paused to consider. “I don’t actually think she wants to kill you. But I do think there’s some weird shit happening over there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she thinks about you when she jerks off.”

“I don’t think Elizabeth jerks off.”

“Exactly my point. There’s some weird shit going on over there. Listen, that was nothing, okay? It was nothing. I was just tense, and worried about Ruby, and then I saw Elizabeth making her stupid Elizabeth faces at you, and I just went crazy. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I know things have been low for a while, but I’ve actually been feeling so much better, haven’t you? Or am I crazy for thinking that, too? How are we doing? Are we okay? Should I stop asking you so many questions?”

Zoe laughed. She offered Jane a section of the orange, her fingers wet and sticky. When they met, Zoe had been in all kinds of relationships: good ones, bad ones, short ones, long ones. But nothing serious, not ever. She thought she’d been in love before — with a girl in high school, with a couple of girls at Oberlin and one after — but as soon as she met Jane, she knew she was wrong. Everything else had been make-believe, practice for the real thing. She’d learned how to say all the romantic words, and how to use her tongue just so, but it had all been pretend. Training wheels. With Jane, the wheels were off, and Zoe was flying.

She’d never thought about getting married: it seemed so square, so boring. But when she met Jane, so determined and purposeful, she understood: it was the acknowledgment of steadiness and trust, the shouted-out claim. Jane was already an adult, whereas Zoe and all her friends were still acting like teenagers. Oh , Zoe had thought. Marriage was something that grown-ups did, and if she grew up, she could do it, too. Jane made her want to stand up straight and stop referring to herself as a girl. When Jane’s fingers reached the orange, their hands touched, Zoe smiled.

Harry had been looking forward to the SAT class all week. His mother had been taking his phone whenever he was home, which was like living in pioneer days, but only during mealtimes and when he was playing video games on the Roku in the living room. Elizabeth didn’t quite seem to understand that his computer did everything his phone did except make phone calls, and who wanted to talk on the phone anyway? He’d been playing by their rules, though, and hadn’t been in touch with Ruby since leaving the police station. It all felt very Romeo and Juliet, minus the suicide. Still, he understood. If they’d gotten caught having sex in his bedroom, it would have been one thing, but in public, the police station — that was worth some punishment. His parents had never been strict or unreasonable — his father in particular had always been willing to sit down and have lengthy conversations about why Harry had to wait until Hanukkah for a new Thomas the Tank Engine train or whatever. This seemed fair.

Iggy Pop had been gone a week. They’d put posters up all over the neighborhood, at bus stops and on telephone polls, plus on corkboards at the three different coffee shops on Cortelyou. Iggy had never been gone longer than a day before, and Harry was starting to imagine the more bleak possibilities. He’d told his friend Arpad about both the cat and having sex with Ruby in one phone call, and Arpad had only asked about the cat, assuming the latter was a joke. Harry wasn’t sure what the bigger joke was — that he’d gotten to lose his virginity to the girl of his dreams, or that he was never, ever going to have sex ever again, at least not with Ruby. There were no other prospects. There had been other girls at Whitman whom Harry had stared at across the library, but now that he’d touched Ruby’s body, now that he knew what was possible in the universe, he wasn’t going to settle for just anybody.

His parents had been clear: he was in trouble for the first time in his entire life, and his punishment was not being allowed to sit next to Ruby, or to speak to her unless absolutely necessary. But they also weren’t going to be there. Harry was jittery on the walk to the karate studio. He was running through all the different ways he could say hello — he could saunter in and pretend not to notice her, but sit right next to her as usual and then pass a note. He could kiss her right on the mouth in front of the Queen Dork and Eliza and Thayer and everybody. He could wait to see if she said anything to him first. Maybe she was secretly glad to be rid of him — after all, nobody wanted to have to teach her boyfriend how to have sex. Not that he was her boyfriend. Was he her boyfriend? Or rather, had he been? Harry wanted a neon sign in the sky, anything that would tell him what to do.

Ruby wasn’t there yet — of course not. That was good — that meant that where she sat was up to her. Harry took his regular seat in the last row and pulled his notebook out of his backpack. In a funny way, having Ruby in the class had made him significantly less stressed out about taking the SATs. He did take notes, at least as often as he and Ruby passed notes back and forth, and he did feel like he had learned a few things. College was the light at the end of the tunnel, and Harry wanted that light so badly. He thought he probably wanted to go somewhere small but not small — Amherst, maybe, or Wesleyan. But fuck! Maybe he wanted to go to Deep Springs or whatever it was called and learn how to be a farmer and a gentleman poet. He swiveled around in his chair every time he heard the door open. Everyone else seemed to have made friends with one another — Harry hadn’t noticed. The rest of the class could have been taught in Chinese and he wouldn’t have noticed.

Rebecca opened her computer and projected an image of a geometry problem. An isosceles triangle, the easy kind. Harry tuned out as she started to talk. He knew enough to get by. Class had started, Ruby was late.