Page 26 of Eye Candy

Mike wrote back immediately.

CAROLINE IT’S 4 A.M.

DON’T ASK ME ABOUT YOUR WEIRD SEX LIFE

I NEED MY BEAUTY SLEEP

I knew Mike wasn’t sleeping. He would be up. My brother was always up. I messaged back:

Don’t lie. I know you’re watching YouTube videos about miniature horses.

My phone buzzed again, four times in quick succession.

Mike couldn’t keep all his thoughts to one message any more than he could write in lowercase. Every message from him looked like a ransom note.

NO I’M NOT

NO TIME FOR MINIS

I’VE PICKED UP SOME MILKING WORK FOR A FEW WEEKS

LEAVING HERE IN TWENTY

This information settled over me like a lead blanket. When things at the café were especially tight, Mike took on a second job on a nearby dairy farm. He had to be up at four a.m. every day, as work started at five, and it was backbreaking labor. Not to mention it didn’t pay that well and Mike hated it.

Meanwhile, I was at a downtown NYC party, wearing Louboutins and crying because I had a crush on a man who was handsome, kind, and saidfuckin a way that made me shiver.

How’s milking going?

He replied quickly.

HODGES IS AN ANNOYING CUNT

Despite myself, I laughed.

Americans never used that word, and I missed it. Once, a few months into rooming together, I’d called Lyssa a good cunt—the highest compliment known to my people. She’d gone into a state of shock and it had taken hours of talking and calling other New Zealanders for backup to get her to understand that I had a different relationship to that word than people here. I hadn’t risked it since. If Lyssa didn’t want the honor of being called a GC, she didn’t want it. I could respect that even if it made me feel homesick.

Mike lit up my phone again.

IF I MURDER HODGES, PROMISE U WILL VISIT ME IN PRISON

BRING CIGS 4 TRADES

I texted Mike some choice words to relay to Brent Hodges—the farmer we’d known since childhood had an embarrassing mishap with a gravy boat once and I was the sole witness—and promised to bring him cigarettes in prison.

Then I did what I always did. I pushed my guilt down, down, down, where it mixed with sadness in a kind of a feelings soup, and got on with the show.

My crush on Chase was contextual; it wasn’t real. I was a very sexual person, and we weren’t sexually compatible. I liked good guys, but I also liked being bent over a table and railed. So there.

Chase was a decent enough guy, but he didn’t have the range.

As long as I remembered that I could stay the course.

CHASE

Anna tookthe news I didn’t want to see her again well, all things considered. She was surprised, and I probably should have gotten through the night and sent an I-think-we’re-better-as-friends message tomorrow, but I couldn’t. It felt wrong to be sitting here with a date when I couldn’t stop staring at another woman, thinking things like, ‘Mine, fuck off.’

I apologized profusely and Anna left gracefully, accepting my offer to call her a cab.

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