Open Water, Caleb Nelson [best summer books txt] 📗

the way, so he holds you, he holds you close, he holds you with care. You allow yourself to be held, as you have done for him before. You allow yourself to be soft and childlike in his arms. You allow yourself to break.

You’re coming out of your house, a week after you’ve turned your phone off, when something small and hard and purposeful shoves you in the back, connecting with bone and tissue and muscle. You’re sent barrelling forwards into the road.

‘What the fuck?’

A flurry of long limbs comes towards you, and you push them away, separating from the owner, gaining perspective.

She’s standing in front of you, breathing heavy.

‘What are you doing here?’ you ask.

‘What is your problem?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Why is it that if I want to speak to my boyfriend, I have to come all the way from Dublin to see you?’

You don’t have words.

‘I tried texting, calling, I asked your friends, I asked everyone! Do you know how worried I’ve been? You’re so selfish. So, so selfish. You’re not thinking of us, you’re just thinking of you when you do this. And this isn’t the first time. Since I’ve been back at uni, whenever you feel like it, you’ve just ­gone –’ She mimes being pushed away.

‘I didn’t ask much of you. I just wanted you to be honest. I wanted you to communicate. Just open your mouth and talk to me. But instead you shut me out. You’ve literally locked yourself away from me. Can you imagine how that feels? Can you? Put yourself in my shoes. Stand where I’m standing. Do it!’ She takes a step back, and manoeuvres you to where she stood, so that you are facing an empty space. ‘How does that feel? Hmm?’

‘Not good.’

‘Of course it doesn’t feel good! Fuck!’

‘Hey –’

‘No, no, no. You’re gonna listen to me. You’re moving mad. Do you know how much we risked getting into this? Do you know how guilty I felt for so long? I was still with Samuel when I met you and a few months later, we’re the best of friends, and a few months after that, we’re partners. Do you know how long that’s been for me? Do you know how many people in my circle have shut me out because of what they think happened? But did I care? No. Because when I met you, I thought, I love this man. We’ve always been able to talk to each other. About anything and everything. I didn’t have to be anything but myself around you. I thought we could be honest with each other. I thought we could be honest here.’

It’s easier to hide in your own darkness, than to emerge, naked and vulnerable, blinking in your own light. Even here, in plain sight, you’re hiding. She’s right about all she has said. Here was a place you could be honest. This was a place you could be yourself. This was a place where you didn’t have to explain, but now she’s standing in front of you and she’s asking you to explain. You wish you had the words, no, you wish you had the courage to climb up from whatever pit you have fallen into, but right now, you do not. You watch her watching your internal struggle. Her features soften. She reaches for you and you step back. You feel dirty with your heaviness and fear and you don’t want to stain her. She too steps back, your backwards movement like a shove in her chest. There is a difference between being looked at and being seen. She sees you now, she sees what is being presented to her. She shakes her head, and begins to pull the hoody she is wearing off her body. It’s yours, or at least it was. You gave it to her but now she dashes it in your direction. She walks away from you. You do not chase her. You stand there, frozen, hiding in plain sight.

26

You have been booked for a portrait session and you’re on the way to a studio, because you must go on. This is your life now. This is what you have chosen. So you’re on the way to the studio and it’s a day where the sky is giving away nothing, stuck between bleary autumn and an empty winter. You’re listening to Earl Sweatshirt’s ‘Grief’ because that song aches but it ends with a joyful refrain. You’re trying to feel something, anything, but you are numb. The music you had with her has stopped. You’re trying to play the same song you played together but two has become one. You and she were forever improvising, but two has become one, and without her there’s nowhere for you to twist and turn. The music has stopped.

If the heart always aches in the distance between the last time and the next, then heartbreak comes in the unknown, the limbo, the infinity.

You’ve been booked for a portrait session and you’re in the studio. You’ve asked the person you’re shooting to relax a little. His shoulders are bunched up, the tension in his jaw causing his eyes to narrow. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands and holds them, holding himself, folded inwards. Relax, you say. He tries to smile, but cannot. He’s trying to put himself at ease, but he cannot. You realize you are gazing in a mirror. The artist always gives something to the portrait, and here you’re seeing what manifests when you cannot say what you feel: it escapes anyway. You excuse yourself to the bathroom. You stand alone. You gaze in the mirror and you see that you are not a coward but you have done a cowardly thing and that you’re not malicious but you have hurt her and you’re not an embarrassment but you are ashamed. The music has stopped. The rest is noise. You cry. You cry through your own shame and ache and pain. You hold yourself. You wrap your long arms around your own body and allow yourself to