Page 6 of Guy's Girl
Clay sticks out his falafel and fries and shakes them under her nose. “Want?”
Ginny eyes the grease. Once upon a time, she would have. Once upon a time, dinner was guerrilla warfare, Ginny versus her three brothers, everyone stealing food from everyone else’s plates, Heather rolling her eyes in the corner. Once upon a time, Ginny fought for her share of macaroni and onion strings and French fries and every other delicious calorie bomb she could get her hands on.
Not anymore.
Ginny reaches out and plucks exactly one fry from the stack, popping it into her mouth. “Yum.”
Clay’s eyes narrow. Ginny tenses, anticipating a comment, a question, even an interrogation. She mumbles something about refilling her drink and pushes off the couch, heading to the kitchenette.
On the way there, she passes the bookshelf. She pauses to scan the authors: Zadie Smith, Sally Rooney, Kurt Vonnegut, Chang-rae Lee. “Whose books are these?” she asks.
“Mine.”
Ginny turns around to find Adrian leaning against the wall. He smiles, pulling at his collar.
“Really?” she asks.
“Really.”
Her gaze lingers on the sharp length of Adrian’s jaw. His white T-shirt is cut with a low vee, thin curls of chest hair peeking out. Dark hair still wet from the shower.
For years, Ginny has had no interest in men. None. Finch was the last person she ever remembers actively wanting. She tried, in college: pick the cutest boy at the party, touch his arm, go back to his dorm. Once in his bed, she would do her best to rev herself up, to tell herself she was enjoying it. But when he finally pushed inside her, she was dry as sandpaper.
Every time, a dull, muted sadness unfurled in Ginny’s chest. She didn’t understand what was happening. She thought she wanted this boy, but now that she had him, she didn’t any longer. She didn’t want anything. She faked an orgasm. She draped herself over his torso and wore his body heat like a sweater until a dreamless sleep pulled her under.
Eventually, she stopped trying altogether.
Ginny is broken. She knows it, but she can’tdoanything about it. Her brokenness isn’t like a grammatical error or a bad subject line, which she can fix by writing and rewriting. Her brokenness is anxiety without cause, a weight on her chest as heavy as first snow.
But when Ginny’s eyes travel over Adrian’s chest, over the dimples pressed into his cheeks, her heart flips suddenly, unexpectedly, in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time.
She clears her throat. “You have some of my favorite authors.”
“And, one day, you’ll be up there with them, Gin,” says Clay, raising his plastic cup.
Tristan and Finch yell, “Hear, hear!”
“You’re a writer?”
Adrian’s question drifts over the merriment. When Ginny looks back at him, something has changed in his expression. It’s no longer detached, elsewhere. He looks genuinely interested in her answer.
Ginny pulls at the hem of her skirt. “Not really. I’ve never published anything.”
“Hey, now.” Clay leans over the back of the couch and pokes her in the side. “I read what you sent me right after you moved to Minnesota. Stuff was legit.”
And she’sstillwriting. Every single day. See, the thing about working a nine-to-five right out of college is that after work Ginny has five whole hours to fill before it’s acceptable to go to sleep.How am I supposed to live?she asked herself over and over during her first weeks in Minnesota.How am I supposed to fill my hours? What makes a proper adult?
She could’ve joined a club. Could’ve taken piano lessons. Could’ve gone out to a bar and tried to make friends. But, during the day, she eats so little and works so hard that, by sunset, she’sexhausted. She doesn’t have the energy to join a club, take piano lessons, or make friends. She’s sad and hungry and alone.
So, one evening, she opened her laptop and started to write.
She wrote without purpose. Whatever came to her—a fisherman in an Alaskan bay, a mother who goes for long walks beside old train tracks, a boy growing up near the Boundary Waters. She wrote about being sad and hungry and alone.
She hasn’t stopped writing since.
She sent her first story to Clay, but not the rest. The rest are just for her.
What she likes about writing is that it captures her attention and fills the empty hours. It captures her emotions and fills her empty body. It takes her somewhere else. It lets her live, for just a moment, outside a self she does not particularly like.
