Page 39 of Finders Keepers
“Thank you. Tell him I can forward him the potential dates.” She grabs her pencil again, replaces her reading glasses, and zooms in even closer on the penis’s base. Mom sketches out a thick, veiny line as she says, “I’m going to make those little frozen IKEA meatballs for dinner.”
“Great,” I say. “And I’m going to pretend we never had this conversation.”
At least my interest in being extremely weird about the wedding photos on the Sprangbur site has now been obliterated by distressing thoughts of my mother and a naked Quentin in the same room. I head upstairs and throw myself on the bed. My phone buzzes, alerting me to a new text.
My heart jumps up a few centimeters at the thought it might be Quentin (coping mechanism) before plummeting to new depths as the nameCole Dixonappears on my phone screen. Then it bungees back up an inch. What if he’s trying to mend our relationship? Or at least put us on civil terms moving forward? Maybe even good enough ones that we could manage to be roommates until I find a new living situation! That would be immensely helpful—to have a Boston address on my résumés, to be easily and promptly available if I ever do get called in for an interview…
Of course, my luck being what it is these days, the message winds up being the exact opposite of that.
Emailed you a form to fill out in order to take you off the lease. Complete and return asap. Thanks.
Really? Not even a “How are you?” I would have even accepted a cursory “Hope you’re well.” Like, that’s a bit trite, but it’s the bare minimum you should send before asking someone to do something. Not that this is even an ask—it’s more like an order. The kind of message he’d send to his department’s administrative assistant. Although I bet she would at least get a “please” thrown in somewhere.
I have had a weird day full of treasure hunting and sneaking around a historic house and fake engagements and Quentin being…enticingly, frustratingly Quentin-y. There was already enough going on without Cole adding his asshole-ish tendencies to the mix. So I am deciding here and now that this text is the last straw. I need to press pause on keeping it together for a moment, or I’m liable to burst at a much more inopportune time.
I’ll let Pathetic Nina back out. But only for a few minutes. Like letting a little kid go to the playground to wear themselves out before naptime.
Stomping heavily around my room only results in my mom calling up the stairs to ask if I’m okay and also if I could please stop because it’s distracting her from her drawing. If that’s too distracting for her, then I assume releasing a primal scream is out. I very responsibly take off my glasses before I throw myself back on the bed, folding my arms across my chest and kicking my legs as hard as I can against the mattress. But after the initial burst of angry energy, I’m left pretty beat. Which I guess was sort of the goal all along.
I must have actually fallen asleep, because my room is darker when I open my eyes again. There’s also that gross post-nap whole-body grogginess that makes me feel coated internally with a wispy layer of cobwebs. As I attempt to move around enough to clear some of it away, the scent of Swedish meatballs and mashedpotatoes finds my nose and sends my stomach growling. A little after eight o’clock, my phone says. I missed dinner. Knowing my mom, she came up to find out why I wasn’t responding to her shouts that it was ready, saw me asleep, and decided not to wake me (though I wish she would have, since I’m going to be up all night now). She’ll have a plate saved for me in the fridge, covered with a shower cap she swiped from a hotel five years ago, the way she does for my dad whenever he can’t be pulled away from whatever he’s working on. I’ll head downstairs in a second and—
The quiet yet unmistakable slide of Quentin’s window opening makes me freeze mid-stretch and mid-thought.
I could ignore it. Could simply get up and leave this room, refusing to engage any further today. Yet the same part of me that was pissed off at Cole a few hours ago now feels…hollow. Noticeably numb. It’s a sensation too reminiscent of a bout of depression for my liking. The thing about Quentin Bell, though, is that, for better or worse, he’s never once failed to make me feelsomething.
So I move to the floor and lift my own window’s sash, wincing in anticipation of the screeching before it even happens.
“Bonjour, Nina,” he says, almost as if he was waiting for me.
“Hello, Moon.” I sigh heavily.
“What iz zee matter?”
“Nothing. Just…Men are the worst.”
There’s a slight pause before the answer comes. “Aw haw, oui, indeed zey are.”
“Oh. A little surprised to hear you agree. Figured you’d side with them, because, you know, the man in the moon.”
“Aw, haw, gender is a, how do you say, social construct. And I am zee Moon, which belongs to no one society.”
“That’s a good point.”
“Regardless, zee men…zey often disappoint. Tell me, what have zey done zis time to…” Quentin seems to struggle here to keep up the horrible accent as he settles on, “irk you?”
How do I even explain it in a way that doesn’t make me sound whiny? Poor me, my ex wasn’t friendly when he requested I do a necessary administrative task. But that’s not really the issue, is it? It’s that once I send Cole that form, everything becomes officially over between us. Even if I can see now that we weren’t good together, even if I have no desire to reconcile and try again, there’s something painful in the finality of it all. Something that Cole’s message doesn’t give its proper due. “My ex-boyfriend and I were together for six years,” I say at last. “But now that things are over, I wonder if we really were ever together at all, or if I just assumed things and he didn’t care enough to correct my assumptions.”
Quentin’s voice is soft, accent fully dropped as he responds, “I know the feeling.” There’s a brief pause, then: “I’m here if you want to talk about it.”
He is here, and god, I still can’t quite get over that. The way I still want to confide in him, despite everything. The way I do want to talk about it, because talking to him about my worries was once as natural as breathing and some residue of that old easiness has managed to linger over the years, even though it would be simpler if it hadn’t. It’s sort of like a stubborn price sticker on the glass part of a picture frame.
“I thought…I mean, I don’t know, I guess I thought that he cared about me? That we were in love.”
“Reasonable assumption after six years,” Quentin says.
“Except now that it’s over, it’s like I’m finally waking up and seeing things for how they truly were. Which was…veryone-sided. Which makes me wonder about all of the other times I’ve misjudged or misunderstood situations and relationships in my life.” I let out a small huff of sad laughter, thinking about mine and Quentin’s. “How do I trust my memories when six whole years might not have been what I thought they were? How do I trust myself?”
I wait for him to answer. He doesn’t, but I know he’s still there, listening. So I continue, not wanting to linger on the question any longer. “You know, when Cole and I started dating, he said what he liked about me most was my ambition. He said it equaled his, and that together, pushing each other to be our best selves, we could be unstoppable.”
