Page 75 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
Then he straightens up, moving farther from Lisa as he does so. “Well, to hell with him. It’s not like you really loved him.”
—
YOU’D THINK MY WORRIES WOULDend once my relationship did. That without someone to cheat on, spit droplets would become irrelevant.
You would be wrong.
Every ounce of guilt dedicated to the possibility of cheating transfers, almost instantaneously, to guilt over my possible sexual deviancies. When (I imagine that) a drop of spit from someone’s mouth lands on my hand, I no longer feel compelled to wipe it away because I think I’m cheating on my boyfriend; I feel compelled to wipe it away because I think that to leave it on my hand is akin to admitting that I am, in fact, a lesbian. Or sexually attracted to one of my family members.
In fact, the Worry expands. It grows to encompass almost all bodily fluids: spit, period blood, pee, anything. If I don’t wipe awayevery last dropafter using the bathroom, the pee will be on mypants, and if I sit down on a chair in class, the pee will now be there, and then someone else will eventually sit in that chair, and it will get onthem. And it came from my vulva, and my vulva is the source of my sexuality, and only someone to whom you’re attracted is supposed to go near that. And if I justletthat happen, if I just leave the pee there without wiping it away completely, does that mean I wanted that to happen? That I wanted someone else to touch my pee?
By bedtime, I’ve collected so many hot spots—tiny circles of skin upon which a droplet might have landed, a constellation of wrongdoing—that my body feels like it has an invisible case of chicken pox. An illness that only I can see. So I wash it away. All of it. I develop a highly specific end-of-day shower routine. I start at the top, always the top, and work my way down. Hair, neck, shoulders, chest, torso, legs. Don’t start with your pelvis. Don’t break the routine. Ensure every last drop funnels down the drain.
—
ON MONDAY, LEO DOESN’T SHOWup at theTrevian.Not on Wednesday, either, or the next week or the following. On the fourth, the editor in chief tells us Leo resigned. All eyes glance at me.
I wait for the sadness. For grief over our back corner, his hand around mine.
Instead, all I feel is relief.
—
FOR THE REST OF THEyear, the Worries stay steady. Awful but steady. By the time summer rolls around, I need Cradle like a man in the desert needs water.
“Any regrets?” Manuel asks on our first afternoon out on the lake. We’re lying on a paddleboard, floating off the empty western side of the island.
Today, the lake is glass. We’ve arranged ourselves in a comfortable yin and yang: face up, heads next to each other in the center, torsos pointed in opposite directions. Legs dangling into the water off either side of the board. On our bellies, we balance two cans of Labatt Blue.
“Regrets about what?”
“I dunno. Freshman year. Things you wish you did.”
“You mean, like…care about homework?”
Manuel snorts. “No, no. You were doomed in that regard from the start—except maybe in English.” He traces a circle in the water. “I mean serious stuff.”
“Such as…”
He takes a sip of Labatt. “Well, what about Leo?”
“What about him?”
“Were you upset? About the breakup?”
“Not really.”
Another circle. “What happened, at the end?”
“Diverging interests.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means”—I flick my Labatt can, leaving small dents in the side—“he wanted things that I wasn’t willing to give him.”
“Wait.” Manuel rolls his head over on the board to face me. “Are you telling me…after all that time…”
I shrug.
