The first time you saw him, you thought, No one should be that perfect. It was impossible. No one’s lips were that color naturally.
After the first time, you saw him everywhere: walking down the sidewalk on brilliant autumn afternoons; in the drugstore near closing time; smoking a cigarette each morning before his 8 a.m. shift wearing a denim jacket and indigo-wash Levi’s, black hair gelled into a pompadour, eyes rimmed with lashes so thick he appeared to be wearing eyeliner.
It is love at first—and second, third, seventeenth, forty-seventh, ninety-second—sight.
How do you seduce a man (or is he a boy, as a coworker suggests) that you pass on the street, with no one and nothing to make an introduction? How do you hold his gaze each time you pass, smile that smile like a secret shared? How do you say I want to know? How do you sit down on the curb beside him one cloudless November afternoon and ask, not to bum a light, but how often he gets a fifteen-minute, that is, is his presence in front of your store on purpose or is his boss generous with breaks?
The answer is more simple than you first suspect. Loneliness.
The first time you see her, she’s with him, wearing cherry red lipstick and a purple velvet trench coat belted at her Betty Boop waist.
Later, weeks later, during a late night alone with too many glasses of whiskey, you’ll find a picture of her online, time stamped from that same miraculous day—she’s straddling a borrowed bike along the campus on the hill, her plaid mini-skirt hiked up around her thighs, combat boots pumping the pedals, her hand thrust out with middle finger up, nail painted shiny black, and if you weren’t as old as you are—old enough to have lived through, in real time, the era she’s putting on—you’d think her novel, the very image of rebellion.
But you remember the underwear advertisements, everyone bored or high or hungry or too cool to smile, captured in black-and-white film. The consumed challenging the desire of the consumer. You remember striped thigh-highs and the Army Navy store that has long since been replaced by a noodle shop. You are old enough to have seen the indulgent apathy of youth rise and fall and rise again, to have perfected that stare, to know the urge behind it and the places it will meddle. To know, mostly, that it’s a facade.
You don’t expect him to ask for your number, but he does. You pat your pockets for a piece of paper, a pen, but he’s already got his phone out, fingers perched over the screen. You say, Sara, no H, and recite the ten-digit string. Cool, he says, I should get back in, and you nod and say, Me too, though it doesn’t really matter that you’re out here because you’re the manager and you doubt anyone has even noticed you’ve been gone anyway.
It takes him two days to text:
hey sara without an h, are you free at all on friday?
It’s a Wednesday, exactly 102 days since the bright, humid afternoon you last saw your ex-partner and signed the papers to finalize the sale of the house you used to own together. Exactly 71 days since you last heard from the man you’d been having an affair with, though his spirit still hangs around the damp apartment you’ve settled into, pressing against you at inopportune moments.
I work Fridays, you text back. Till 9—a drink after?
There’s a pause, long enough for you to wonder if that was the wrong answer, too needy or something, long enough for you to get up and start washing the sink full of dishes. Your phone pings as you stack another coffee mug.
9’s good. But heads up, I’m 20.
You hold your phone and laugh. It has been at least forever since you last felt this buoyant or lusty or absurd. You want to grab the feeling. You want to grab it and hold it and never let it go.
A bite to eat then?
Sure that’s great
Meet me outside the shop at 9:15. It takes me a few to close up.
Dare I tell you how old I am?
Go for it
I’ll be 34 next month. I’m laughing as I type this.
That’s awesome
See you Friday.
Unless we run into one another sooner
Looking forward to it
That’s how easy it is; you’d almost forgotten.
His figure, outlined by streetlights, waits just a few yards off as you lock the door and pull the handle three times, wrapping a shift the way you always do. He waits for you to walk over, but betrays no nervousness when you say Hi. He says, Where do you want to go?
You say, I’m craving pizza. Though you haven’t eaten a slice of pizza since college days; dairy doesn’t always agree with you.
He says, Sam’s then.
You head up the street to a pizza place you’ve never stepped foot into, though it’s been in the same spot for most of the ten years you’ve lived in town. Before that it was Bart’s Ice Cream. The counter is manned by bored college kids and there’s a live trio covering Cher’s “Life After Love,” and he asks what’s so funny. Oh, this song, you say. But you leave out the part that it was popular the year you graduated high school, that you danced to it at your prom. He would have been in diapers. I like it, he says, bobbing his head.
The pizza is decent, but his eyes are brilliant, almost black and as sparkly as the night sky in a national park. He stares at you as though you are the most gorgeous thing to ever materialize before him. Or maybe he’s just good at eye contact. Eventually it occurs to you that he’s waiting for you to suggest what happens next. You can’t take him to a bar but it seems obvious enough that the night is far from over.
Do you want to go back to my place? you ask. I have bourbon.
Sure, he says. You live by yourself?
I do, I say. But it’s not fancy.
He shrugs. When you get outside, he asks, Mind if I smoke?
Mmm, not at all, you say. I used to—I still miss it.
You want one? He holds out the pack of American Spirits. Blue.
No, thank you. I’ll enjoy your exhales.
He laughs and sparks the light.
Your apartment is, to put it kindly, a fall from grace: an itty one-bedroom with water-damaged walls and grimy windows, tacked on to a concrete slab behind an 1800s farmhouse. Most of your furniture is in storage and the hot water works only sporadically.
As you swing open the heavy barn door that fronts the place, a strange, romantic, decorative flourish, and hold it ajar with your hip to unlock the normal door behind it, he says, This is such a cool spot. How’d you land it?
You tell him the name of the realtor you used, but leave out that you called her with two weeks’ notice and three cats and nowhere to go; this was her only listing.
He looks around the apartment while you feed the cats and get the whiskey. There’s not much to see: it’s mostly overfilled bookcases and a desk piled with papers, story maps taped to the walls. Books are stacked on the floor by the bedroom door and next to the couch. He points to the iPod docked on a speaker and asks if he can put on music.
Sure, you say. Whatever you want.
You pour two tumblers of whiskey and set the bottle on the tiny coffee table. He chooses Elvis Costello and settles next to you and you hand him a glass and cheers and then the song is over. You don’t have the album, just the song downloaded from who knows where. You get up, click through the iPod wheel.
How about Iron & Wine? you ask. It is the music your ex-partner used to put on when she wanted to have sex. The married man you fell in love with preferred Bon Iver.
Sure, he says, shrugging. Reminds me of middle school.
You raise an eyebrow and he raises one back.
Reminds me of my early 20s, you say, which elicits his perfect laugh. Seriously though, he shouldn’t be this perfect. It’s plainly unfair.
For a while, with the music soft in the background, you just talk and lean into each other. Closer and closer on the couch, limbs entangled. Laughing. God, it feels good to laugh. He is silly, and smart, and charming, and, without warning, nineteen.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You surface from your joy-haze to this fact. Nineteen?
He nods.
Not twenty?
He scrunches up his face and says, Twenty sounds so much better, doesn’t it?
Let me see your ID, you say.
What? Why?
Because I need to know you’re legal.
For a split moment, he appears torn between embarrassment and pride.
You offer, I’ll show you mine, too. To make it fair.
Sure enough, he is 19, photo of his younger self starkly different—not yet inhabiting his bad-boy good looks and devastating smolder.
You pull out your license and hand it to him. The picture is almost a decade old, not updated in the most recent renewal, which you did online to save time.
This doesn’t even look like you, he says. You look way better now.
I know, you say.
Because he’s right. Age becomes you, despite what an endless stream of beauty advertisements otherwise insists. Pain has also become you, something you didn’t know was possible until the last few months: the long nights crying, the inability to stomach a meal, the meditation practice taken up at the behest of a growing stack of Pema Chodron books.
What happened to you? he asks.
Hmmm?
You know, why are you—ah, here, with me?
Oh, you mean alone? My ex left me for another woman.
What a dick. He must’ve been crazy.
She, you say. And I deserved it. I slept with a married man.
So you’re bi?
I hate that word.
He shrugs. Most of my friends are.
Your friends?
Yeah, like friends with benefits?
So, you have open relationships? you ask.
Open, he says. Sure. I do what I want.
Before you have a chance to ask if this is his arrangement or theirs, he asks, Is it okay if I kiss you?
You’ve never been asked this in such a direct way. It makes you giggle, but from his face, you can tell he is perfectly serious. He’s waiting for an answer.
Yes, of course, you say, I’m pretty sure that’s why you’re here.
When you see him next, a quick pass on the sidewalk as you rush into work—your store’s owner is in town—he is with her again, the girl of cherry lips and direct gaze. Today, you are also wearing red lipstick and she stares, too long, before turning away. You wave to him and keep walking.
You find her on social media later that night, a few more clicks through his likes leads you to her screen name: JuicyViXXXen18. A compelling taunt, it seems. Her squares feature menstrual blood and a used tampon filling a toilet bowl, a distorted mirror selfie showcasing a prominent hickey, her seated on a bed with a large orange cat shielding her nakedness. Her comments are brash, provocative; she is public about her sexuality in a way that repulses you, and is undeniably erotic. She is, also, it appears, a doting friend/lover to the electrifying man-boy who just spent a night in your bed, though by the time—4 a.m.—you tumbled in there, lips swollen with kissing, sleep was the only thing on your mind. Your alarm went off at 7 a.m. for a weekend retreat with a friend. He slept beside you, affable and consensual as ever, and in the morning, when you woke him after showering, he asked for only a sip of coffee, complimenting you on your sweater. I love clothes, he said. You have good taste.
You wonder, scrolling down her feed, if you could fall in love with him and worry that the thought means you already have.
Could you be like her? The question itself feels dangerous, rattling around your brain. You’ve never had a friend/lover, and the one time it was propositioned, your rejection of the offer detonated like a grenade tossed amidst your too tidy life. She’s an exhibitionist, naive about how the world works—two luxuries you’ve never been allowed. No, you’ll never be like her.
And yet.
The next time you see him, he shows you his efficiency apartment, bathroom down the hall, and takes you out for Vietnamese food. Over Bahn Mi and spicy noodles, he asks without a hint of irony in his voice if you’re a liberal. His innocent intensity doesn’t surprise you but it is humorous, and uncomfortable. You know, tangentially, at least three other people in the restaurant and they all seem, suddenly, to be listening. The lights are dim, the decorations flimsy paper. The remains of soup swirl in your bowl. Where is that waiter?
Finally, you pull it together and say, I’m a half-gay, half-straight woman living in Northampton, what do you think?
He shrugs. Never know. So that’s a yes?
It is, you say.
Your place or mine? you ask, as soon as the check lands on the table. He grabs it before you can protest.
Yours is nicer, he says.
This is only marginally true, a margin widened by the bottle of Irish whiskey you pour.
It’s a week night and he asks after the second pour if you’d like to head to the bedroom. Sure, you say, because this is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? But there’s no heating vent in the bedroom and the walls are thin, the mattress chilly when you slip in beside him.
He is a deliriously good kisser. Eventually the shivering stops and the heat of lips mashing lips and skin gliding over skin drives you to reach for him. What you find is—well, you’re unsure what to make of the soft roll of flesh in your palm. You caress, tentatively, then less so, withdrawing your hand after a few minutes to concentrate on kissing. His skin glistens with a film of sweat, his lips flushed deep red like a throb. After what seems like a long enough time, you ask, Do you have a condom?
I don’t think so, he says. Do you?
It’s been a long time since I slept with a man, you tease, though this isn’t technically true. You fucked a man less than a year ago, no condom, no conversation about a condom, and you didn’t regret it. Your period wasn’t late that month, in fact, it came early, brought on, you assume by the close proximity to a body coursing with testosterone. Your now ex-partner was out of the country, not that she would have noticed. She was good at looking everywhere else.
Um, I could check my wallet.
He returns with his wallet, and pulls a battered foil square from its fold.
How long’s that been in there?
I dunno. High school, maybe.
Isn’t your generation supposed to be all about safe sex?
He flips the condom onto the night table. That’s your generation.
You smile and roll your eyes. Fair. Though I think we’re technically the same generation.
Sure, he says. Technically.
He kisses you and your stomach gives the finger to the demographics and data in your head.
As much as I want to trust that ancient condom right now, I’m about to ovulate, you say. Rain check?
You know when you’re going to ovulate? he asks.
I do, you say. It’s a perk of aging.
I need a cigarette, he says. He yanks on his jeans and shirt, pats down his pockets.
You dress and join him outside. The hunger is gone, and you both have work in the morning. You offer to let him stay the night but he declines and part of you is relieved. He does, however, ask for one more gulp of whiskey before he kisses you goodbye with the promise of next time.
The next time you see him, she stands beside him in a black wool trench coat, belted at her wasp-thin waist. He meets your eyes across the bustling sidewalk but makes no acknowledgement, so you take your coffee and sit on the curb, facing away. The weather has turned, finally, seasonably, cold, and your breath and the coffee steam into the bright day like smoke signals.
That night, tired and alone with a bottle of Chardonnay, you click down a rabbit hole of the internet, discovering her abandoned Tumblr, a site teeming with gauzy NSFW photos. Some, you think, are her. The naked thigh with scabbed up razor slashes crusty against the milk of sunless skin; a close-up of lips encircling a lit spliff flaring to life; two naked female bodies pressed together, in profile. Nothing as shocking as her current Instagram, but the fact that you’ve found this old place, that you’re looking at this old version of her, coils like a snake inside you. Does she even remember it exists? Does she care?
You fall asleep with the lights on and dream she visits you, smirking at the empty bottle of white, and you show her the collection of bourbon atop the antique hutch in the corner, she leans forward and kisses you, a volatile and forceful kiss, and when you startle awake you are sweaty and your head is spinning. The cats look on impassively.
He comes the night after next with a fresh pack of condoms, which he tosses on the coffee table. These are expensive, he says.
You shrug, and say, Worth it?
He asks for a drink, and you oblige, and after he gulps the first whiskey, he asks for a second. You wave your hand at the bottle. Help yourself, you say, and he does, twice more. In your impatience to be fucked, to be desired, it doesn’t occur to you that he is steeling himself for what’s to come, that he might be, for all his smooth sweetness, nervous.
Finally, he stands and grabs the condoms and gestures toward the bedroom, You ready?
The bed lacks a headboard and is pushed up against an outside wall. The mattress is glacial. Underwear to underwear, skin prickled over in goosebumps, for the splittest of seconds the thought crosses your mind that it would be okay just to keep kissing, kissing into delirium, and then call it a night, but he bought the condoms, and they’re here, on the table next to the bed, and he’s humping against you in such a way that reminds you of an untrained puppy. You’re used to lovers quick to fire so when you reach below the waistband of his boxers and find a limp guppy you pull back and ask if he’s okay. He strokes himself a little, but goes soft again when you try to roll the condom on.
I hate condoms, he says.
I do too, you say, but here we are. And you spent all that money.
He gives you a sleepy side-eye, somewhere between amused and baleful, and says, If you pump really fast, that should do it, then get on quick.
His suggestion works, and in an outlyingly graceful movement, he flips you onto your back. Pounding, pounding, which is enjoyable for about two seconds, and you think it can’t last long but he keeps pounding, pounding and you bite back a laugh at the seriousness of his expression and also the absurd idea that this could have been, somehow, any different.
Afterward, you share a shifty-eyed cigarette and another glass of whiskey and he tells you he has to work early. He shrugs into his jacket. He’s not doing a James Dean impression, but he may as well be: the pouty lips, the coiffed hair—even now perfect, when your own resembles a bird’s nest or some other untamable mess—the sultry stare. You kiss him long and steady and his grin wobbles as you press Tropic of Capricorn into his hands. Tonight, before the tumble, he said he reads, that he has a copy of The Dharma Bums on his night table, and this has sparked delight in you.
You’ll like it, you say, Miller paved the way for the Beats.
He looks at the book in his hands, looks toward the door, says, Thank you.
You are imagining all the naked conversations you will have in bed about books and writers and cities and ideas as you bolt the barn door behind him and pour yourself the remainder of the whiskey. What does he talk about with her, you wonder as you sip. Does she read? Does she give him books?
Eventually, much later than is healthy for a work night, you leave the two empty tumblers, side by side, on the table and head to bed.
So, how did it go??? your best friend—a mom of one, pregnant with a second—wants to know.
Heavy pelvis, sore head: the light in the apartment diffuse and watery.
Good, you tell her.
Good?!?! she shrieks. That’s it, good?
As good as fucking a 19-year-old can be.
She laughs, says, He is a fox, but there’s a reason sex gets better with age.
I think my pelvis is bruised.
Oh, god, she says. Lucky you.
You send him a series of texts to which he replies with single words, and then an invitation that he accepts but cancels at the last minute.
The apartment seems smaller and dirtier, the darkness of pre-winter solstice like a crouched animal. It starts to snow and never stops.
The days drag on, interminable, a series of drawn tarot cards and self-help chapters, until the day you pull the Strength card, and she, who you’ve now followed through a number of online profiles and posts, each more jarring and alluring than the last, arrives in your store, looking for all the world like a tourist who got off at the wrong stop. With her is another girl, this one blonde and prone to moody stares, whom you recognize from late night romps through the internet wilderness. Despite her skittishness in this strange land, the girl of black nails and intense eye contact flashes a radiant red smile at your greeting. Your heart thuds. Does she know who you are?
You keep to the order of hand-poured soy candles you’re putting together while she scans the jewelry cases. Try not to look up too often, try not to feel whatever magnetic pull her moves exert on your synapses. White cable-knit stockings under a band-aid skirt, shiny Mary Jane heels tap-tap-tapping over the acacia floor. In a low, but not low enough, whisper, she tells her friend that the boy who has weeks since stopped answering your texts will meet them for lunch. You wonder what it is like to be so oblivious to your impact on those around you—if this is indeed oblivion and not guile.
Then, she’s at the counter, her eyes a pair of cut-sapphires ringed in kohl, piercing you. Though it shouldn’t, her youth—the simple nervousness of it—catches you off-guard. For a moment, you feel protective, not of yourself, but of her. The world, and you in it, wants to devour her—wants, as you well know, her beauty for its own. Wants to break her of it.
Hi, you say.
Can you help me? she asks. With a pair of earrings?
Sure, you say. Heart wild dancer in your chest. Key in hand. What are we looking at?
She leads the way to a pair of garnet studs. She points, and as you open the case, she asks, Are they— elegant?
The word hurts, though you couldn’t say exactly why. She watches you reach for the card and lift the posts to the light.
It’s a bezel setting, but it’s hammered, which gives it texture, and the backs are left open. You pop a stud off the card and hold it up. It lets the light through, so the stone glows.
You hand her the earring, fingers brushing ever so slightly over her palm. She lifts it, cautiously, to the light.
Are they for a special event? you ask.
For a friend, she says. It’s her birthday.
The pair is much too nice for a college student’s birthday present, but you nod and say, She’d be crazy if she didn’t love them.
As she follows you back to the register, she says, You smell really good. Is it perfume?
You shake your head and tug a strand of your hair, which is blown out to look like the lion’s mane on the tarot card.
Probably the gloss and spray—I just washed my hair this morning.
She smiles and you imagine she knows everything that happened between you and the boy.
You do have a great mop, she says. You remind me of one of those cats, you know, the shy ones, with all the fur.
A Maine coon, you say.
Exactly, she says. Her smile isn’t perfect, but it’s close.
After your shift, you buy a bottle of cheap Merlot and walk home in the long-dark streets to your cats. You don sweats and crank the heat and put a frozen pot pie in the oven. It’s late and the bottle is nearing empty when you click into her latest Instagram account. There’s a new picture, posted only minutes before—so new no one has yet liked it—of her hands cupping a dead cardinal over a background of dirty snow. The black nail polish on her thumbnails is chipped. There’s no caption.
Without thinking twice—or at all—you tap the heart.
Sara Rauch is the author of What Shines From It: Stories and XO. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.
Artist Photo by Stephen Oparowski
Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson
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