I longed to solidify our friendship by telling Jillian about R, the very actress of the cult comedy in which two nerdy girls move to China, where they are suddenly popular, that we used to love. But I’d signed papers in Cape Cod stating that if I ever disclosed personal information about R, I would end up in celebrity court, and who knows what would happen to a normal civilian there. They could rescind my name or gender marker change, or worse.

We talked more about the shows we were watching, who from our high school class had divorced already, and her parents’ trip to Spain, sketching over our old map with new details.

Finally, she said, “I’ve gotta get up early for spinning.”

I stood up to hug her, pressing my body into hers and inhaling the scent of her closeness. She walked out and took with her the painfully sweet town of Clayton, Missouri, and its careful brick houses, trees everywhere, very few Black folks and queers, and Jewish deli with better corned beef than Katz’s.

When I was alone again, I briefly considered getting wasted and taking a hangover day because having an honest conversation with Jillian had bowled me over. Watching both of us go to the edge of tolerance and come back was not warm, not inevitable, but frightening, and if such tension existed between the two of us, wouldn’t the rest of my life be a gauntlet of partially understood dialogues, yelling over a gorge instead of meeting on Monet’s bridge? Didn’t I deserve some peaceful oblivion in a dark former blacksmith den? I was already tipsy enough to see the other side. Couldn’t I slither over there and collapse?

Naw.

Sophie was right. There were too many forces working against me for self-sabotage to take on more than a fleeting glow, and as sexy and self-evident as the television tried to paint alcoholic bliss, if I got wasted, I would feel terrible trying to watch TV on my computer without Blithe noticing, worried that he might take my plunge into alcohol as an endorsement of meaningless abandon.

I was already moving against habit, standing before Jillian in my stripes and polka dots, newly renamed.

“Hey, man, do you want to start a new tab?”

“No thanks.”

I grabbed my jacket and my bag and headed toward the mouth of the forge, scraggly rock framing darkness.

What I longed for was the unseen and the unknowable, the cave that still stood.

The whole apartment smelled of actual lemon and lavender. Aiden was sitting on the couch. He had gotten another haircut. He gave me a little smile.

“How’s Blithe?”

“He wouldn’t talk to me,” Aiden said.

“Did you do this?” I asked, gesturing at the stove no longer splattered with sauces, the scrubbed trash can lid, the row of shoes by the front door, a vacuumed rug, the vanished row of fish bones that always stank.