"I'm sorry."
Zach sat next to Maddy in the common room, strangely empty on a rainy Friday afternoon.
"You should be," Maddy said. "But now that you are talking, I have a few things to tell you. First: I've been spending a lot of time with Mia. My question is answered. You know which one. Second: I don't know what all that was, last weekend, hypnosis or what. Whatever is going on with you, Zach, I wish you well, I really do. I admit I was super excited by it all, and our first time together is a beautiful, beautiful memory. But I need someone who's not going to walk away at the first sign of something hard. You need to figure yourself out, Zach."
Zach felt his mind go numb. This was not the conversation he was expecting. He had put everything into words in his mind, and was ready to share it all, and now his mind was as blank and grey as the sky outside the windows.
"I..." he wanted to defend against accusations of hypnosis--how could she even believe that?--he wanted to tell her that he
had
figured himself out, that that's what this week had been, that he was ready now. He wanted to share everything, even the very hardest stuff, especially that!
He also saw that she didn't want to hear it. He gritted his teeth. "Ok, Maddy. Just let me say this: after that night, things got weird for me. It wasn't us that got weird. It was something later. And I needed to figure that out."
"I'm sure it did, Zach. Weird shit happens around you. I thought I was up for that, but maybe I'm not. Good luck. And Zach... if any of it is real... please don't mess with me or Mia, ok?"
Zach was just tuning in to figure out what was really going on in her. At her words, he pulled his awareness fully back into himself.
"I promise," he said. "Good luck, Maddy. I really care about you, and I want you to be happy. And safe."
She gave him a dark look. After a breath, she nodded at the finality of it and left him by the windows.
Zach watched water droplets crawl down the glass in slow fits and starts.
* * *
"Jacob, I'm sorry I've been in such a cloud this week, man. I didn't even ask you what happened between you and Ava."
Jacob was playing an FPS on his laptop.
"Meh, it happens. She just ghosted me, dude. Monday morning, nothing. All week. She finally texted yesterday, said there'd been a family emergency, and apologized and all. She's back on campus today, but I don't know. Never been ghosted before."
Zach couldn't remember seeing him so serious.
He tried to tune into Ava, but he couldn't find her.
He lay into his bed, staring at the ceiling.
"How about you," Jacob said. "What about Maddy? You talk to her yet?"
"Yeah, we talked. Nothing's going to happen there, after all."
"Sounds to me like something already happened," Jacob said.
"Maybe, but I guess it was just a flash in the pan."
Jacob grunted, firing wildly at an opponent in his game.
* * *
Zach had the unfamiliar experience of feeling angry. It was not his go-to emotion, and he didn't know what to do with it. He didn't know who he was angry at: Maddy? Enkins? Himself? All of the above?
After stewing for a while, he went for a walk.
The campus was damp, empty. Dorm windows all glowing with light. Students being studious. He had time to get into the meal hall before the closed down the lunch line, but he wasn't hungry. He wandered into the student center, which was lively enough. TVs on in the scattered lounges, various club-spaces mostly lively. They were having some kind of a party that was spilling over between the student newspaper and student radio offices.
He dropped himself into a lounge and let CNN roll over him. Wars and rumors of wars.
He shut his eyes and let the familiar voices lull him, letting the anger drain out of him.
He began to tune in, feeling the brightness of the other students around the lounge. Some were studying (how can you study with a TV on? he had to wonder!), some chatting, some actually paying attention to the news (something going on between China and Taiwan), some taking a chill rainy Friday afternoon.
Zach let his awareness float and linger until he found a woman with a flare of arousal already alive. He didn't open his eyes, but just let himself linger with it, feeling it and gently letting his own come into alignment with it. He could feel how connecting to her arousal gently nudged his up.
He let his eyes drift open just enough to see who he was tuning into.
The woman sat curled up on some carpeted cubes, reading a tablet. She had her back to him. He got an impression she might be a little older than him, maybe a grad student. Dark hair, cheekbones, curves.
He went back to the place of feeling, letting himself settle more finely in alignment with her. She was reading, something that stirred her arousal. He felt into the layers, travelled the networks of threads. It was now easy for him to nudge up her arousal. He could feel it flare as he harmonized his energy with hers. He felt that intensifying
aliveness
spreading through himself and knew that it was expanding with her also.
He built the intention of her standing to stretch, to turn to face him. He walked the careful line between the
feeling
of it which was what had worked with Jasmine, and the visualization of it, which so far had never worked with anyone, and yet which somehow he could not stop his brain from trying again and again.
It took him some time. He remembered the sensation of successfully pushing an intention into Jasmine, but he discovered that all those tangles that form a person are wildly unique, and it took some discovering to figure out how to translate the intention from himself to her, leveraging the alignment of arousal, and then
move
it, using the force of his own will.
But it clicked. He felt like he was struggling in a net, and then in the space of a short breath, the resistance to his will slid away and she stood.
