four
A few hours later, Alice found herself standing in her underwear in front of the full-length mirror she kept hidden at the back of her closet. For as long as she could remember, she’d been plagued by the slow-burning shame of not having been able to live up to anyone’s expectations for her. While everyone else had seemed to fixate on the whole gay thing (which had, to be fair, sparked its own private firestorm of anxiety within her in the years leading up to the big reveal), the source of Alice’s greatest disappointment with herself was her own uncooperative body.
It wasn’t so much that she’d thought of herself as unattractive really. It was just that she was so painfully average that most of the time it was just easier not to think of herself as having a body at all. Catherine had never been particularly impressed. In fact, she’d even once remarked that Alice had a body “only a feminist could love,” a comment Alice chose not to even try to decipher. And Jess had never seemed to give a damn about any of it, though Alice had never really known how to take that either.
There’d been remarks, over the years, about her eyes, or the softness of her skin. But the truth was, physically speaking, she knew she just wasn’t the kind of girl worth noticing, at least, not until the whole thing had happened with Nicole and the photographs…
Her face reddened at the thought of it, still.
The phone rang, and she answered without thinking.
“I’m getting dressed now; are you happy?” she said, assuming it was Sam checking up on her.
“Is that a trick question?” the voice on the other end asked.
Alice’s knees buckled, and the blush in her cheeks exploded across her chest and down the backs of her legs. She sat down on the edge of her bed and clenched her eyes shut. It wasn’t fair that after all that time Jess’s voice could still have that kind of effect on her.
“Can you talk?” Jess asked. But Alice, despite her best efforts, could not. “I don’t want to get you in trouble with…anyone.”
“Nobody’s here,” Alice said finally, unwilling to concede that there wasn’t anyone to be in trouble with in the first place. She knew, by then, that it was almost impossible to gauge Jess’s intentions or what effect a significant other might have on them, but she wasn’t ready to give anything away just yet either.
Opening her eyes, she began reaching for her clothes and pulling them on frantically, the conversation feeling somehow even more indecent given her state of undress.
“Any big plans tonight?”
It’d been too long since they’d played this game, and Alice’s head throbbed as she tried to anticipate all the places Jess’s questions could be leading.
“Sam thinks I should go out, but I don’t really know if I feel up to it. He’s out of town for the night.” Alice tried to keep it noncommittal, but figured it couldn’t hurt to let Jess know she had the house to herself, just in case.
“You should go. I’m sure you’ll have a good time if you just try a little,” Jess said, and Alice couldn’t be sure, but she thought it sounded encouraging.
There was a long pause then, during which they each awaited the other’s next move. Ever since that last time Jess had walked out on her, Alice had fantasized about this moment, about what she’d do differently this time to keep it all from slipping away. But now that it had actually arrived, she just felt exhausted by the whole thing.
“Is there something you want from me?” she asked, sounding more agitated than she had intended to let on.
“No, I guess not,” Jess replied with a sigh.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
And then she was gone. Again.
Alice’s ears were ringing, adrenaline stinging her nerve endings, as if she’d just narrowly avoided some fatal collision. She didn’t feel at all the way she’d thought she would, tentative relief bubbling to the surface when she’d been counting on heartbreak and devastation.
Suddenly, she had to get out of the house, away from her thoughts and the Joni Mitchell record and the boxes of photographs calling for her from the hall closet. Reaching for her keys, she fled, without even so much as a last glance back at herself in the mirror.
