So I’ll breathe in this baby powder, and like a baby, have something to wonder at. A world shinier and happier and, most of all, at least a little new. I will speed up, my pulse will slow down, the music will sound better. I’ll feel something. We’ll go to a club, we’ll go to a dozen clubs, and we’ll drink and we’ll dance and we won’t even really get drunk because we’re already so high, and it will be wonderful. It will be wonderful. It has to be wonderful. And there, underneath the Herculean beats and lying lights, underneath this desperate, fake intimacy, this will be my salvation.

I lay hung-over in bed as my phone buzzed. A text message from Mark.

I think I might be getting a cold.

Goddammit, he was going to whine again. Reluctantly, I texted him back.

Fluids! Sleep! Chicken soup! Pre-emptive meds! Come and make me soup then. I already slept and took Dayquil.

Haha. I would if I could:)

You owe me a dinner for that time you didn’t show up for the one at my place ☺

That dinner had been the cause of one of our big fights, the one that had ended things the last time in a long list of recurring times. Classes, exams and research papers are enough to keep anyone busy, but I had extensive rounds of the bars to do every night as well. I had cancelled on Mark several times over the course of our two-month relationship, and he finally got pissed when I didn’t show up for a special dinner he had pencilled me in for weeks in advance. I used that opportunity to pick a big fight and call off the relationship. Then I boarded the plane to India boyfriend-free and only slightly guilty, the diamond necklace he had given me as an early Christmas present sitting heavy in my bag. The necklace was beautiful, a dainty little heart encrusted with diamonds dangling from a gossamer-like silver chain. It was also something I would never wear—the diametric opposite of the oversized glass cocktail rings and feathers on thread I always wore.

And you want to waste that on chicken soup? Absolutely.You taking care of me when I’m sick and making me chicken soup? So worth it. Bonus points if you can make me a grilled cheese sammich too I knew what I wanted to say. For one, stop talking to me like I’m your girlfriend. And stick your grilled cheese sammich where the sun doesn’t shine, please.

I hated what he was doing. Trying to be cute, employing sass and coquettishness to impress the object of his affections. It revolted me.