Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List (19 page)

No, I’m so passive-aggressive that I didn’t even bother turning on my phone.

“You’re kidding me with this, right, Naomi?”

“You’re not even going to
speak
to me?”

We can do this without speaking.

I’m not here for angry recrimination:
You stole my boyfriend, Ely! Stole my trust—in YOU, not in him.

I can’t speak, because I’ve run out of lies.

If I say now what I really feel, Naomi & Ely really never will be Naomi & Ely again.

Why did it take you stealing my boyfriend to make me finally understand that you will never love me the way I love you?

If I did speak, I’d probably say something scary and stupid, like “I always imagined our daughter having your beautiful eyes and possibly my chin and hopefully not Ginny’s nose. Susan’s laugh and my mom’s great hair. She’d have your math skills and my distrust of prime-numbered streets. Her soul would be her own. We’d protect it always, together.”

When does the hurt stop? I need a timetable.

Ely’s not waiting on
. He sets down the first item—my “girl kit” of feminine supplies I kept in what was my drawer in his room, but now the drawer has probably been claimed by Bruce the Second’s stuff. “I can’t wait forever, Naomi. Let’s get this over with. Even if you’ve gone mute, I’m sure your hands still have the capability to cough up your end of the bargain.”

Ely’s face looks too flush. I think he’s coming down with a cold. I should have chosen the Starbucks on St. Marks. They keep the temperature four degrees higher. Why am I such a bitch?

I still can’t speak, but I do reach down to the box of his stuff that I’ve placed on the floor.

If you could offer me a guarantee, Ely, a guarantee that the hurt that makes my heart feel like a boulder sitting inside my chest, beatless, if I knew this hurt would eventually go away and I could feel hope again—for me, for you, for us—then maybe my lips could
now and we could get on with this. The End.

ELY

I remember this feeling. When Mom Susan discovered that Mom Ginny was having an affair with Naomi’s dad . . . I remember thinking,
Is this it? Is it all over?
I thought,
Are they going to split up?
My parents. Naomi’s parents. And I realized— no,
realized
is the wrong word.
Realized
makes it sound like a fact I learned rather than a fact I felt. So let me say
knew.
I
knew
for the first time that when you say a couple is splitting up, it’s not just the relationship that’s splitting. In some way, everyone involved gets split up, too. Each of my moms was splitting. Each of Naomi’s parents was splitting. Naomi was splitting. I was splitting. And the reaction to that—my reaction to that—was to hold on as strong as possible. To try to hold things together. Because to let go would be the end of everything. To let go would be a murder of what once was.

Maybe Naomi and I haven’t learned anything. Or maybe your history just repeats and repeats until it batters you enough to snap the seams that hold you together. I don’t know. All I know is that this feels wrong. But if she won’t talk to me, there’s no way to make it right.

I am so mad at her.

What we’re doing is, technically, the opposite of splitting. We’re reuniting our possessions. Returning them to the rightful owners. As if some kind of iron curtain fell in the hallway between our apartments and we’re exchanging the refugees.

“Here,” I say, handing over her
I
JAKE RYAN
T-shirt and her Pokémon watch and her
Dawson’s Creek
DVDs and her Hello Kitty pajamas—the ones where I wrote in a mouth on every damn Hello Kitty because it always freaked both of us out that Hello Kitty had no way to speak, like a cartoon geisha vulnerable to any dog who came along.

She takes everything I put on the table and doesn’t say a word.

“How are things with Gabriel?” I ask. Rumor has it he’s gotten a bad case of the Naomis, to the point that he was overheard whistling “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” when she checked her mail the other day.

No answer.

“Things with Bruce are great,” I say. “Thanks for asking.”

Truth: Things with Bruce feel precarious, although I don’t know why. I find myself wondering what he’s thinking much more often than I ever have with any boy.

I know it’s not exactly good form to mention Bruce to Naomi, but all I’m looking for is a reaction here. Any reaction.

But instead she dumps a bag of my own possessions onto the table.

NAOMI

When he laughs, I want to laugh, too. I almost smile back.

He’s looking at our favorite panel of Hello Kitty cartoon bubbles, on the left shoulder side of the pajama top. In Ely’s handwriting, one Kitty purrs, “Me love you long time.” The next Kitty, in my handwriting, points out, “No nice kitty appreciate racist stereotype.” The last Kitty, rounding the shoulder in Ely’s scribble, promises, “I would be most delighted to give you pleasure at the time of your convenience.”

Now seems the appropriate time for the movie exchange. I take out our shared classic and return it to him.

“I really didn’t need this back,” Ely says, reaching for the DVD of
Mount Fuckmore.
“Watching straight people have sex really creeps me out.”

We found the DVD in a trash can on the street the summer after ninth grade; the find merited a sleepover at his apartment that night while the parents were out. And if I want to laugh now, it’s not at the sight of Ely sitting in the world’s most wholesome beverage establishment, holding up what I swear to Lincoln and Jefferson combined is the
filthiest
DVD cover in the history of our forefathers. I want to laugh because I’m remembering that first time we watched
Mount Fuckmore,
when Ely hit pause at the grossest part and turned to me to ask, “You know that song about
You’re a grand old flag, you’re a highflying flag
?” and I was like, “Yeah?” and he said, “Well, that part where it goes
Every heart beats true ’neath the red, white, and blue / Where there’s never a boast or brag
?” and I was like, “Yeah?” and he goes, “Well, that’s totally false. The
whole song
is about boasting and bragging!” and I was like, “Yeah, you’re a genius!” and we fell out of his bed, we laughed so hard.

I refuse to take the DVD back. Much as I can’t help but be intrigued by porn, at the same time, watching it makes me feel unbearably sad and empty inside. Like there’s nothing left to wish for.

Discovering
Mount Fuckmore
at too tender an age is probably what screwed me so badly with men. I mean, yeah, there’s the whole parent situation, and the Ely baggage, and the weird convergence of my looks and my body and my bitch streak, plus the ick way ick men have been looking at me since I was fourteen. But I blame
Mount Fuckmore.

I could give less of a fuck how Bruce and Ely are. But how does Ely know about Gabriel?

How much of a loser am I, anyway? The hottest doorman in the history of our forefathers and their foreskins really likes me, like
like-likes
me, and I can’t like him back, because I’m overwhelmed with grief, and also, I know if I like him back, if I let it happen, I will fuck it up. And then I won’t just have to avoid my former best friend across the hall, I’ll also have to avoid the entrance and exit of my building. Which would be awkward as well as logistically impossible.

But, Mr. Lincoln? Hello? Gabriel is sooooo cute. Honestly. I sooooo want to let it happen.

I sooooo wish I had clue one as to what I am supposed to make of the mix Gabriel gave me.

“Is that my glitter belt?” Ely asks.

I don’t want Ely to take back the belt. I want him to say I should keep it. It’s the belt that binds us. If I keep it—if he offers—then maybe not all hope is lost.

I nod.

Ely reaches for the belt.

ELY

I have to know it’s pretty bad when the sight of glitter depresses me. I guess I just wanted to see it one more time. Then I move it over to her box.

“You can have it,” I say.

It’s sad that I don’t want it anymore.

The things I want, I’ve kept. All of the notes and letters we’ve passed to each other. The place-mat drawings she’d give to me like a proud kindergartner every time we went to a restaurant where there were crayons. The pipe-cleaner jewelry we made for each other. The NYU sweatshirt she bought me when she found out I’d gotten in; her mail came a day later, and I had to hop on the subway to reciprocate immediately. I can give her back her tampons and her porn and her hair clips and her Plath and her Sexton. But some things have to remain mine, or else the falling apart will be too complete.

I can’t do this anymore. I push the box back in her direction.

“Just keep it all,” I say. “Or throw it out. Or give it to Housing Works. Or mail it to some orphanage for fellow mutes. If you wanted to make me even more miserable, you’ve succeeded beautifully. I hope you’re really proud of yourself. Bravo.”

I get up to leave.

NAOMI

This is so much worse than I imagined.

He’s actually crying as he stands up to leave. He’s not outright sobbing like the pathetic fool I feel like right now, but tears spot his flushed cheeks and his eyes are wet and he is insistent on staring straight into my gaze—he will not back down or look away. It’s like he’s squeezing every last ounce of matter from my heart.