Dates, Not Dating

The day before I moved out of my apartment, Tanner came to see me. No call, no text, not even an email. I answered a knock at the door, holding a bundle of spoons in my hand, and there he was. He wanted to talk before I left town. I couldn’t think of a polite way to turn him away, so I let him in.

I hated having company at that apartment. One bathroom, a kitchen, and space to set up a bedroom by the front door. Nowhere to escape.

My bed creaked as Tanner plopped on the end of it. I glared at him but said nothing.

“Packing?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow, right?”

“Yes.”

I dropped the spoons into a box on the kitchen counter. Tanner looked at the furniture, at the boxes scattered throughout the room, anywhere but at me. His hunting boots scraped the tile floor as he kicked his long legs out, repeatedly hitting my metallic bedframe on the backswing.

“I haven’t heard from you since finals.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I didn’t see you at graduation, either.”

“You were there?”

I took a ladle out of the top drawer.

“Yeah, Sean invited me.”

My fist clutched the handle until my palm ached.

“How is he?”

“He’s fine. I’m fine, too, by the way.”

I tossed the ladle with the silverware. He still wouldn’t look directly at me but I knew that he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. I threw a spatula in the box next and he flinched. I thought of our first date at Raja’s on Main Street, how he wouldn’t let us eat until he had straightened our napkins and utensils, and a laugh gathered in my throat. I put away a colander with even less care than the spatula. His neck tensed.

“Why haven’t we talked?” he asked.

“I’m guessing it’s because you haven’t called.”

“You could’ve called.”

“I told you I’ve been busy.”

“With what?”

I motioned around the apartment.

“The entire time?”

“I’ve also been editing reports for a client. Some of us have to work, you know.”

My bedframe clanged as he kicked it hard. “I’ve been working.”

“You got a job?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“Pardon me for not knowing.”

“It’s on my Facebook page.”

“I don’t stalk your feed.”

He went to my nightstand and turned on my lamp. I stopped packing to watch him rearrange my glasses case, my water bottle, my anti-depressants, and my anti-anxiety pills. I tapped my nails against the counter but I could not catch his attention.

“Your status says you’re single,” he said with his back to me. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

He opened the top drawer of my nightstand.

“Why the heck do you have DVDs in here?”

“Because that’s where I like them,” I snapped. “Now, get your nose out of my shit.”

“Language, Angie.” He picked up a stack of DVDs. “Let me help you pack these.”

“Put those down.”

“Fine.” He set them back in the drawer and slipped a DVD off the top of the pile. “What’s this?”

He held it over his head. The front cover had a crude drawing of a pale woman with red lips and a red shirt, set against a sky-blue background.

“Todo Sobre Mi Madre,” I replied. “Don’t drop it.”

“I won’t.” He dragged his thumb across the drawing. I groaned at the thought of having to clean his fingerprints off it. “I didn’t know you watched foreign films.”

“You also didn’t know who Murnau was.”

He flung the movie inside my nightstand. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Do not manhandle my stuff.” I stormed over and straightened the pile. “And for God’s sake, he directed Nosferatu.”

“Why would I care about that Dracula rip-off? Some of us have lives, you know.”

“Did you just come here to rifle through my things?”

“I’m not.”

I made a show of putting my nightstand back the way I had it. He pretended to examine my bedsheets, running his calloused hand over them and rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, but his movements were stiff.

“It’s funny, I didn’t even see your bed when we were dating.”

“We were not dating. We went on dates.”

“Three.”

“Exactly, three.”

He smiled. Dimples brightened his dull brown eyes. “You remember that Cajun place we went to? The one on Fifth Street?”

I sat on my bed to stop him from touching my sheets. “The Bayou? Yeah, that was great.”

He shifted to sit beside me. His hip touched mine. I wanted to move away but I would have been sitting on my pillow if I had.

“Remember that spicy shrimp dish?”

“Yeah, it was awesome. Best shrimp I’ve had in years. Wish I could remember the name.” I chuckled. “You couldn’t even finish a bite.”

“But somehow you downed the whole thing.”

“What can I say? My grandma’s from the South. Purebred Yankees just don’t have the guts for it.”

We both laughed.

“You handled the chicken tikka masala pretty well, too.”

What I wouldn’t tell him was that the chicken tikka masala kept me on the toilet for half an hour after I got home from Raja’s. I knew I shouldn’t have cuisine I had never tried before but I wasn’t about to look like a prude. The mango smoothie he recommended didn’t do my stomach any favors, either.

“We should go there again.”

“Where?”

“Raja’s. The Bayou’s closing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they’re putting in a Chipotle. I guess that’s good if you’re in the mood for it.”

I held my hand over my lower stomach. I tried to avoid Mexican food, too.

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t come up to visit.” He placed his hand on my knee. “Or we can go tonight.”

I took his hand and dropped it on his thigh. “I have a lot to do.”

“Too much to go to dinner? We’ll only be gone a couple hours, and I can help you finish up afterwards.”

“I don’t feel like going out.”

“Then we can order a pizza.”

I felt pressure build behind my eyes, as though I would cry if one wrong thing were said. My heart fluttered. Before I could answer him, I had to pop an anti-anxiety pill and chase it down with some water.

“I want to be alone.”

“But it’s your last night here.”

The pain in his voice stung me.

“I’m tired.”

“That’s why I said we could stay in.”

As when he asked me out the first time—and the second time and the third—I didn’t know how to turn him down.

“You told me we couldn’t go out because you were busy with school,” he said when I didn’t reply. “You’ve graduated. I know you’re moving but we can make the long-distance thing work.”

“I’ll be four hundred miles away.”

“We can text, Skype—”

“Tanner—”

“Just hear me out.” He grabbed both my hands. I tried to pull away but his grip tightened. “I really like you. We’d be good together. Don’t you at least want to give it a try?”

Heat rose into my cheeks. My eyes threatened to burst from the pressure.

“Let go of me.” I yanked my hands away and this time he released me.

I walked to the opposite side of the room. My chest tightened and I could feel him watching me. I didn’t know how to respond. I begged my anti-anxiety pill to kick in so that I might be able to think.

My gaze fell to a box at my feet labelled “Harry Potter”. My lips twitched but it was hard for me to smile with so much blood pounding to my extremities. I forced myself to focus on something else, anything else, but all I could think about was our third date. Tanner and I had a Harry Potter marathon at his apartment—well, not a full marathon. We had planned to watch as many as we could bear in one sitting but I knew our attention spans wouldn’t survive all eight movies. That was the one thing we shared. He was a loud, proud Potterhead, and the franchise was my guilty pleasure. He called me a “closeted Potterhead.”

I felt as though a hand had reached into my stomach and twisted my insides. That date was also the night he tried to kiss me. I had to use the “busy with school” excuse. I had no other way to end the relationship, if it could be called that.

“I don’t want to try,” I said. “I didn’t want to try before, and I don’t want to try now.”

“Then why’d you go out with me in the first place?” His sharp tone tore at my stomach.

“You caught me off-guard. I didn’t even know you that first time. You were just some guy from my discussion session.” And the guy who blocked my view during lecture and the guy whose shirt always reeked of sweat. I wasn’t about to mention that.

“Why’d you lead me on?”

“I didn’t. We went on three dates. Just three.” I pressed my forehead against the cool white wall. I had never been so impatient for my pills to work. “Leave, please.”

When I didn’t hear him anymore, I froze against the wall. I waited and listened for his footsteps. I knew I should turn around if I didn’t want to risk becoming the subject of a Dateline special, but I couldn’t convince my limbs to move.

“Are you gay?”

My head shot up. I faced him, assuming that he was joking, but his jaw was clenched and his eyes were cold as they searched me.

“No!” Heat crept to the back of my neck. “Why would you even ask that?”

“Sean said—”

“Sean? Seriously? You believe—”

“Well, why else wouldn’t you be interested in me? We have fun together, we both like Harry Potter—”

“Get out,” I ordered.

He stared at me, his mouth shut. I considered pushing his lanky form out the door, but I didn’t want to be any meaner than I had to be. He finally left after I threatened to call the cops.

I fell onto my bed. The sheets smelled of him, a mix of Axe and Tic-Tacs that made me sneeze. His furious face burned into my memory. My chest hurt. I had to assure myself that I had made the right decision.

I opened the top drawer of my nightstand and retrieved Todo Sobre Mi Madre. From the bottom drawer, I took out the spray and rag I used to clean my glasses. I held the movie up to the light. Tanner had left several fingerprints and one long, smudged thumbprint on the clear film protecting the illustration. I sprayed cleaner on the case and removed all traces of him.

“We went on dates,” I said as the rag glided over the woman’s lips. “We weren’t dating.”