How to Race to Nowhere
Aaaaaaaand I just got asked to work interviews tomorrow night. I’m so sorry!!! This is the literally the busiest I think I’ve ever been in this job. I feel terrible for like the fourth time in a row…
Honestly I have not been doing much of anything lately. Since I last saw you I haven’t really seen anyone — I’ve just been going to work/home/bed and working like 13 hours a day :/ I’m sorry about all of this!
I’m not sure how to respond, and I am not sure how to explain, so I just hand Brooke my phone. We’re walking back to my car from brunch and she pauses to read it. I turn around, watching her expression over my sunglasses. I need reassurance that the words that come out of her mouth match exactly what she’s thinking. That she’s not altering them to accommodate my feelings.
“Hmmm.” Brooke looks up at me, clear and steady. “Yeah that’s not okay.”
“I know! How do you keep cancelling without even rescheduling?” I walk to the pay machine, pull the parking stub out of my wallet, and the machine swallows it whole. “Like I just don’t get it. If you like me, why do you keep cancelling. If you don’t like me, why do you keep texting me and making plans?”
I try to put my card into the machine and it falls to the ground. I pick it up and try again, only to have it slip through my fingers. I stare at the card, despairing, almost as if it could animate itself and leap into the card reader. I am not sure if Brooke notices. She’s still talking behind me.
“He has been super busy, you know. I heard that he missed their, like, roommate check-in call they have every Sunday.”
I finally manage to get the card in properly and it spits out my validated ticket. My distraction complete, it was time to deal with the text. “Yeah, I know how production is. I’m still annoyed. I want him to call me.”
“So tell him to call you,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
It was good to have somebody else make that decision. Good to know that I am not overreacting. I quickly type out Hi! I would really like to figure this out over the phone. Call me when you have a chance =)
We walk to my car, and I throw my phone into the cupholder and start flipping through music. “Hold on, let me figure out my schedule.” We drive out of the parking lot, and only then I realize how late it’s become. “I am dropping you off in Downtown, okay, then I have stop by KTown to visit Tiffany — oh I wish you could meet her! — then I am heading back to the Valley for my cousin’s birthday, and I need to be there by 7 PM which means I need to leave Ktown by 6…so I should tell Tiffany that I’ll get to her by 3…3:30?”
I look over at Brooke and then check my phone. I have a text message from him but I don’t bother to read it, figuring he’s putting off the call until later. I shoot Tiff a message, telling her when to expect me, and the stoplight allows me to go. Brooke says, “Wait, you don’t have to drop me off then! I can take the train, it’s no big deal.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. It’s not that far, I drive this — “
I stop talking as his name appears over my car’s display. He’s calling me. He actually took that moment to call me. He’s calling me as I am waiting to get onto the 10 and Brooke is in the car and I am not ready to talk to him yet.
I glance at Brooke, and then back to the road. We’re going 50, 60. I speed up to hit 75 and put the car on cruise control. Practically autopilot. “I think I’m going to take this,” I say, and without bothering to wait for Brooke’s response I click accept on the call. Suddenly, I’m hyper aware that my heart is beating as if as if I’ve been drinking coffee for hours and it’s only starting to get to me. I move my hands so they’re steady, 10 and 2, and the moment itself hesitates.
“Hello?”
“Hi! Wasn’t expecting you to call so quickly.” My voice is high and syrupy. It doesn’t sound like my voice at all.
Brooke, bless her heart, doesn’t say a word. She looks uncomfortable though, but I have decided that it’s now or never.
His voice comes over the line. I smile as I hear it, but he sounds exhausted. “Yeah, well. I felt really bad about the whole situation and I’m free for like the next 30 minutes so I figured it was the best time to call.”
I nod, not remembering that he can’t see me. He pauses and continues, “Listen, you have no idea how busy I have been. I haven’t had a free day in two weeks. We were supposed to be free on Monday which is why I thought we could grab dinner but I just got called in for then too.
“Like I have been barely doing anything, like literally onsite like all day. I just go home to sleep and then come back to work. When I met you I hadn’t been in production for so long, I thought we would have more time to spend together. And then, it’s just such bad timing, we started and it’s just been so busy. I am really sorry! I wish we could still go get dinner.”
He keeps explaining his schedule and my mind begins to freeze and then free up, cycling through different stages of panic. I am over-analyzing every line. But, it does sound as if he has actually been busy, and not simply ignoring me. I realize he’s stopped talking and it’s my turn to say something.
“I just… I just don’t know how I feel about waiting two days for a text back only to get cancelled on?… For the fourth time? Like, am I supposed to take a hint?” I pause, but he doesn’t say anything. “Like, I’m not usually free either. I’m out here making time, and it’s… upsetting… when you can’t make time too.”
Maybe this was too harsh. After all, we had only been on a couple of dates. It was my fault. I really liked him. It’s so rare for me to actually like someone. I was definitely infatuated, and I was concerned that he wasn’t infatuated back.
“Yeah, I know, and I’m sorry. I am sorry about the texts. It’s so bad, I have so many unread ones on my phone,” he says.
“So what happens?” We’ve passed the 405 and traffic disappears. I slip into the left lane and speed up. My heart decides to keep pace and I am so nervous as I say, “Is the next time I see you in December, after production is over?”
“No, don’t say that! That’s too sad to think about!” Beat. “I definitely want to see you before then.”
Me too, I think, but instead I say, “Well, I’m going to be working in Santa Monica tomorrow, so if you get off early or something, hit me up. I might be around.” I offer this with a sigh and heavy heart. I wonder if I am making myself too available, if I am playing this game all wrong.
“Santa Monica? Where in Santa Monica?”
“Brooke and I will be working out of Bodega Wine Bar, if you want to join. You can bring your laptop too. It’s pretty cool, they have coffee and stuff and everyone brings laptops during the day to work.”
“Okay, yeah, that could work! My first meeting isn’t until 2 pm, I can join you guys in the morning!”
The tempest has passed and I am smiling again. Brooke has been following along, her face changing with every turn of the conversation, and now she’s silently laughing. I mouth “sorry” to her, and then zone in again to the call. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then?”
“Yes, I’ll confirm my meeting and let you know!” he says. I get ready to say bye and hang up but he starts again, “Also, by the way, I should let you know, I’ve just been like meaning to tell you.
“My life is super up in the air right now. I have so much going on with life and work. My friend just told me about this job opening up in New York, so I might be going to New York in December. I just don’t really think I should be dating anyone right now. We can still hang out and go to concerts and stuff, but yeah. I think it’s better if we’re just friends.”
I am absolutely stunned. Astonished. Forget not knowing how to react, I suddenly didn’t know where I was. I’m still driving. Going around traffic without thinking. Switching from the 10 to the 110 purely from muscle memory.
“I mean… okay… sure.”
I don’t remember what I said, I don’t even remember saying bye. I just know at some point we had hung up with his promises to be a better texter, and then I realized: I had driven to USC.
I turn to Brooke and say “I am so sorry.” My eyes are wide. I feel as if I am hearing myself speak without actually saying any words. My own voice comes to me from a distance. “I got distracted and didn’t realize we missed your exit. I accidentally drove to campus.”
“That’s okay.” Brooke tilts her head and searches for a response. “I get it, you were distracted.”
I stay quiet for a second too long, and she follows up with “How do you feel about what just happened?’
“I don’t know yet. I need to think about it.” I make a mildly illegal U-turn and head towards her apartment. We drive not talking, music back on, for maybe a minute. I hear myself sigh. “I’ve decided I’m upset.”
“That’s perfectly valid. You’re allowed to feel upset. You liked him and he just said that he only wants to be friends,” Brooke says.
“I feel as if I can’t be upset, though? It was only a couple of dates. I’m the one who over-thought it.” I pull up to the sidewalk and look at my phone. He had texted: 110% !! I will try to call in a sec!!
Damn, that was my sign. But there was more after that.
Thank you for talking through things on the phone, and I’m sorry for all the radio silence from my end. I do have a bunch of work stuff in the AM, so I’m excited we can meet up and work on stuff together!
And I will definitely try to be a better friend by texting back ASAP from now on. I have so many unread at the moment and it’s a bad and uncool habit!!
I decide that doesn’t require a response but show it to Brooke anyway. She frowns as she read it. “Hey, call me if you want to talk, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m going to go see Tiff now.”
“Okay, well, thanks for the ride!”
I speed off, still trying to process. I turn the music up. It’s not loud enough. I roll down the windows, letting some heartbroken rapper bleed out onto the streets. I somehow find parking in KTown. Not ready to talk to strangers, I sneak past the doorman to Tiffany’s apartment. By the time Tiffany opens the door, I am almost crying.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” She knows this face too well. “Hey, I just talked to you an hour ago, what happened?”
The second someone asks what’s wrong, I can’t hold back tears anymore. I start crying. It’s slow, at first, and I take deep breaths to try to get the story out, but in a minute I am lying down on her bed and bawling.
“Ice cream. We need to get you ice cream,” Tiffany says. Which helps. And after Bodega, I don’t actually see him until December, which was almost enough time to talk through the story to the point that my heart didn’t race the next time I saw him.
