Act 4: You Look Like You Need It

I spend my last night in SF with a friend and take a cab out to the airport the next morning. As I wait for my flight, I start going through my Facebook message history with Zoe, trying to make sense of the last 7 months. I try to see things from her point of view, to reconcile things that were said with things that were done. Eventually it becomes too much to scroll through, and I organize a bit and dedicate a new tab to each date range. I roll my eyes at my own bad pun — I am literally keeping tabs on our relationship. I spend some time writing down thoughts and timestamps, hoping to get things to make sense again. It becomes too much, and I set it aside and wait for boarding call.

I ask the flight attendant for a whiskey — he gives me two and says “I only charged you for one, you look like you need it.”

Shit. I got the same comment from a homeless person the night before — after he gave me a cigarette.

I try to spend the flight home thinking of other things — I go straight to a friend’s house after touching down in Boston. This friend had insisted I stay with him during the panic attack week and aftermath — making sure I ate and slept, quick to provide distraction if ever I seemed in need of it. Back then, he spent a lot of time reassuring me I was being stupid to worry — that no one could possibly be so shitty of a person as to purposefully set up these situations.

Now, three months later, I’m setting my duffel bag down outside his house again. He opens the door, gives me a hug and says only “sorry for doubting you.” As if having been there for me put him at fault.

We spend the next hour smoking cigarettes on his porch, and as I fill him in, we begin to laugh; harder and harder as the story gets worse. He asks me if he can write her a very sternly worded letter, and I tell him it wouldn’t make me feel any better.

He says it’s very much not on my behalf.

I ask him to at least wait until I figure out if she deserves one.