TWO
It is early morning and the sun is creating a halo around my shades. After returning home the night before, I did my whole nighttime routine of washing my face, brushing my teeth, and moisturizing my face. However, instead of putting on pajamas, I simply took off my dress and underwear and got under the covers fully naked. Now, in the dim light, I found myself aware that my bare thighs were against one another.
I began to think of how the night before, Caleb touched my back to pull me in for a kiss and suddenly, my lower back felt a glowing warmth. When we were dancing together, sweat began to collect on his forehead and his white t-shirt began to wrap around his muscles. I remember playfully grabbing his shoulders to dance and feeling the moisture clinging to both the fabric and my hand. From what I had gathered, he was on the quieter side. Yet despite not being a good dancer, he danced with such an exuberant energy that I could not help but laugh and dance very sillily myself. In the moments I was able to get a whiff of him, I was surprised by how he smelt exactly like the first time I met him. There was no hint of cologne, but maybe some hints of some sort of citrus body wash combined with a natural slightly musty sweat odor. I began to press my thighs together and noticed that I was getting increasingly wet.
Images of me touching him kept running through my head. However, just like in real life, as if my head was unable to fill in the gaps, I could only see myself touching his shoulder or grazing his arm. So I kept trying to remember what his lips felt like and the feeling was so tender but yet so unfulfilling, that I nearly began to cry in frustration.
The truth is that up until now, I have only ever had sex with my ex-husband. We met when we were twelve, kissed for the first time at fifteen, started dating at sixteen, and were married by twenty-one. All of my romantic experiences happened with him, so much so, that whenever I thought of the word "love," I pictured him. After our separation, I no longer had a definition for the word.
I grew up thinking that love was THE goal in life. My father died when I was young and my mom tried to keep his memory alive by remaining ever loyal to him and recounting thousands of stories of domestic bliss. That is what I yearned for.
After our separation, a voice in my head asked me: "Well, how are you supposed to achieve domestic bliss by yourself?" And there was no other voice to answer the question.
Then I thought if I can't achieve domestic bliss, then I must spend most of my time out of the domestic. I began to go out a lot. At first, with friends who begrudgingly would accompany me more often than they would've liked to. And then, I began reconnecting with old college friends that were more into going out and drinking. A friend who I reconnected with and who I would go out with the most was Maddie. I only ever hung out with Maddie very casually while in college. She was studying psychology and was overall very talkative and social. We never shared any details of our lives with each other back in college, but there was something about the way she carried herself that made me feel comfortable. Maybe it was the way it seemed like she was always smiling with her eyes and never seemed to show she was judging you, at least not with her face.
Whenever we went out, she mostly danced with me, made out with a guy every once in a while, and always took me home after. The night after the divorce was finalized, we went out together. Normally, we would have a few drinks and dance for the rest of the night. That night, though, it felt like I was carrying an olympic-sized pool inside my chest in which every possible emotion-loneliness, anger, sadness, guilt, anxiety, fear, and confusion-was swimming around, causing waves and splashes that felt like punches. I wanted them to stop swimming and just stand still, so I sat at the bar and swallowed way too many drinks.
"Stop, Monica. Come on, let's go home," Maddie had told me.
We went home. I can't really remember how we got there. When we were there, I remember having lied down on the sofa as Maddie sat up on the other end. Lying down made me feel dizzy and soon I was running towards the toilet. It felt like the contents of that olympic-sized pool that were in my chest were pouring out of my mouth and into the toilet. It was uncontrollable. I felt Maddie holding back my hair and when it was all done, I sat down on the bathroom floor with my eyes closed.
"What is happening?" she asked, simply. I did not know how to answer that. I felt very disoriented. I kept my eyes shut and when she asked again, I simply kept shaking my head.
"I don't know... I don't know..." I said and I felt my eyes swelling up and the tears began to trace off the make-up on my face.
"I can't help you if you don't tell me." I sat there, kept my eyes closed, and tried to allow the darkness to consume me. If I did not open my eyes there was nothing to be afraid of and no one there with me.
"Can you please leave?" I asked her. I sensed a bit of hesitation but then I heard her hand slap the ground and her footsteps go towards the bathroom door. Once I was sure she was gone, I walked to bed and lied down, smelling of fermented vomit and with the sequins of my dress poking at my skin.
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For the past few weeks, I have been loving Saturdays, most likely because it is summer and I can go outdoors. Today I planned to go explore some gardens with Maddie and have a picnic. The gardens were beautiful and under that mid-summer sun, the scenery looked like an overexposed photograph of bleeding-red roses, green pastures, and white fences holding up weeping plants. We settled down on our big blanket in the middle of the field to have our picnic.
Eating with Maddie has always been very entertaining for me. She undertakes meal-planning as if it were a plan of attack. She packed us sandwiches, various fruits, a small cheese board, and brought along some packaged boba. And as she digs her nails into the orange, I can tell she's very happy with my reaction to the food.
"How was your week?" I ask her.
"It was good. Um... Do you remember Lina?"
