Page 64 of I Never Said I Love You

I thought again about the months he’d kept me in limbo trying to guess whether he was still married, the studied way he seemed to keep his hands out of the camera’s view on the rare occasions he Zoomed with his camera on, the determined avoidance of any mention of his wife, who was always carefully lumped in with the girls and his parents and spoken of only asfamily.

“Liss, look at it this way. This is a man who, whether he would have followed through or not, at least wanted to have a conversation with you about him staying here, making some kind of life here in this country. Did he want that to be with you? I can’t answer that, and honestly, neither can you, since you wouldn’t even hear him out.

“But for the sake of this argument, I am going to say yes, that for at least a moment in time, he allowed himself to consider what life with you might look like. And your response…” Stacy’s voice trailed off as she thought how to chastise me without appearing to do so too harshly.

“I do a lot of work with high school kids, with college kids. I hear it all, the calls and texts that stop as suddenly as they start, the ex who ducks around a corner at a party to avoid being seen, the ones who change their bars of choice or the routes they walk to class. But you – honestly, what you pulled off beggars belief.

“So, he goes home, and he makes a life, a really successful life. Presumably, along the way, he makes his peace with it. With the life he has.

“And then you come barreling in from out of the blue. You are not exactly subtle, Liss. I have told you before that I am certain – certain – that whatever else you may represent to him, you are without question the most jarring thing that has happened in his life. Once when he was a young man and now in middle age.

“And so, you see, it is called self-preservation. He can’t tell you everything because he just can’t. He has learned with you that he has to be ready, for whatever comes next, whatever that is. It’s no wonder you make him nervous!”

I started to respond, but she wasn’t through.

“And, in case I have not provided reasons enough, I will add that you are the one who mixed business and pleasure, probably before he even had an opportunity to consider the implications. Not only that, but you’ve not exactly made a secret of your work advocating for more stringent sexual harassment policies at the university. Where are the lines? Any of them?”

She peered at me intently, her final words hanging between us. The lines. Maybe there weren’t actually any; maybe that was the problem. Not with me, not with Nao Kao, but with life. We tried to draw them, red lines, lines in the sand, lines between business and pleasure, between friends and lovers, between flesh and phantoms. Maybe the lines were only a deception. Maybe ambiguity was all there was.

I thought back to the first time my boss laid his meaty palm across the top of my thigh as we drove to the airport, the dawning realization of the slights to my soul I would have to accept in exchange for meaningful work I loved, for my star to rise. The lines I would distort or shift or even try to ignore, but that he would cross time and again. As Stacy had remarked more times than I could count, only my inestimable abilities to compartmentalize, to move and chase and blur the lines, had allowed me to build a career – to keep climbing – in these circumstances. Abilities, I realized with a sudden start, that I had unconsciously first honed in the aftermath of my time with Nao Kao.

Stacy let me sit with my thoughts for a moment, then started again, more quietly this time.

“Liss….Liss… Two questions for you. First, what is his name, this international man of mystery about whom I have heard so much?”

In an echo of Nao Kao’s behavior that drove me batty, for more than a year I had categorically refused to divulge his name, encumbering our conversations with such euphemisms as “my faraway friend” or “the guy from grad school.” Knowing my penchant for alliteration, Stacy once tested “the Laotian lover,” a label that horrified me, and which I quickly rejected.

I laughed.

“Nao Kao”

“Nao Kao,” she repeated, his name my gift to her.

“Liss, do you love him? Do you love Nao Kao?”

I sat silent for a moment, considering that loaded word. Love. Try as I might, I could not get my arms – nor my mind – around a concept as slippery and nebulous as “love.” It was, frankly and in all contexts, a topic, a feeling even, that I sought to avoid. I considered the fact that for nearly two decades his memory had not crossed my conscious mind, how I had never so much as Googled his name, how alone among past friends and lovers I’d never sought so much as a profile picture of a glimpse into his current life. I had fought tooth and nail for everything I had wanted in life, yet resolutely let him go, all possibility of contact severed as cleanly as an anchor through an undersea cable, the ship sailing tranquilly along by morning. It was as though my mind were a steel trap, and the doors had slammed shut on all sides, sealing him outside – or in – for nineteen years.

Surely none of that equaled love.

“Love is –” I stopped and then tried again, “I haven’t proven very good at love, not in any traditional sense, I suppose. So, I wouldn’t say I love Nao Kao, no. I would say that I know the world is a better, brighter place because he is in it. And I have a deep and abiding affection for him.”

Even before she said it, I knew. Again, it was about the lines.

“And what is the line, Liss, between affection and love? Show me, tell me, where, exactly, does abiding affection end and love begin?”

I squirmed. She tried another angle.

“From what I know, you speak with him often. As often, I suspect, as you speak with any of your closest friends. As often as most people would speak with their closest friends.”

I nodded, slowly, waiting to see where this was headed.

“Why do you think that is?”

“He gets me,” I replied immediately. “I can tell him anything, and I feel like he understands without me having to explain it. So, when I don’t talk to him –”

I paused. How to explain the antsy feeling that developed when we didn’t speak for more than a handful of days, as though something were suddenly missing again, or as though the words that for so long had gone unspoken were burbling like molten lava within me. No longer dormant, they bubbled constantly in their cauldron, erupting not violently, like Krakatoa spewing ash skyward, but slowly and steadily like Kilauea, lava rolling gently, placidly even, on its way to the sea, but nevertheless chewing up all in its path.

She waited, and I could almost see her considering my words. Whatever iceberg she sensed below the surface, I could see her weighing whether to let it lie or probe its depth.

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