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nothing casual comes naturally to barry, least of all casual sex. he’s built too goal oriented to fully wrap his mind around the fact that physical intimacy doesn’t always beget emotional intimacy. he thinks he’s a person who can separate the two, but he’s fooling himself. even in this, deciding whether or not to leave, he needs direction. 

he twists on his side to look at elliot, but the eye contact drifts out of focus as soon as it begins.  nerves? yeah, nerves. elliot, with the first word, has the air of being put together. barry feels like he must be imploding by comparison. 

     ‘ not really. i have smoked, i’ve done it before, i just don’t do it regularly. i think i’m like, one of those people who’d get really addicted if i did. there’s antidepressant drugs in them right? ’

i don’t know what he means by that and i’m not sure i want to ask. there are drugs in cigarettes, sure, but if they’re antidepressants then they’re definitely not working. it almost makes him smile, a hard little curve that wicks away after a second.

barry isn’t really looking at him, but that doesn’t bother him much. he pinches a cigarette between his teeth to light it. the conspicuous lack of the blinking red light on the ceiling that signifies a smoke alarm is, if he were feeling particularly self-critical, an indictment of his instability. he’s usually feeling pretty self-critical, but right now he can pass it off by saying that he doesn’t sleep when it’s on, that he doesn’t even cook that much anyway, so there’s no real chance that he’ll leave something burning and wake up with the entire building on fire.

“yeah. i dunno if you can get like – really addicted.” this from an addict. i can’t tell if narcotics anonymous would kick me out or be happy to have me. is it motivational to hear that your addiction is no worse or better than anyone else’s? that it’s all the same, synapses and signals, ineedthisineedthis? i don’t know if i need cigarettes so much as i just want them. “like, either you are addicted or you aren’t, right? there’s no, like, sliding scale.”

It really does sound like there’s no recognition there, and there’s something off to his voice, it’s too clear, like Snafu has been stricken with whatever the opposite of a cold might be. ‘I like to think you can.’ Sledge had been sitting in enough of a slump to play footsie under the table, now he sits up and tries to peer over the laptop.

‘You just tryin’ to surprise me?’

elliot hitches the laptop right to his edge of the table on a maybe embarrassingly strong impulse, feeling like he’s put his foot in it the same way you feel when you’re fucking around playing solitaire at work and you tab back to excel a half-second too slow as your boss approaches. he makes eye contact for a second and drops his gaze almost immediately. who the fuck is this guy? why is he talking like he knows me?

“no.” if there’s one thing elliot does not do, it’s surprise people.

am i forgetting again? i should be honest.

.meme_response{ source: the-mist;status: accepting; }

elliot likes nadia. it’s the kind of thought he doesn’t have often. it’s not that he doesn’t like people, at all, ever. it’s just that liking them is hard when you know more about people than they tell you, know their scars before they’ve healed enough to show. he knows more about her than she’d be happy for him to know. maybe it doesn’t matter that he knows what her discover weekly on spotify looks like right now. all the same, he shouldn’t know. he scratched the itch and now he misses it. she has facebook but doesn’t post there, but she scrolls like everyone else. i know this and there are other people who know it too. people complain, sometimes, they make statements, but at the root of it nobody cares, not enough to change anything. the success of any protest is dependent on how long you can stomach before you have to start tweeting about it.

— but i like nadia. she has a presence. it’s not hostile, not in the way that some people can be hostile. elliot wants to talk to her, and he couldn’t – wouldn’t – say that about everyone.

“i will.” the tail end of fall is maybe not the best time to visit coney island – it’s brisk and chilly and the wind is whippet-sharp, cutting like flint, like glass – but elliot doesn’t mind. is that a smile? maybe. he digs his hands deeper into the pocket of his hoodie. “thanks, nadia.” there’s a space on the bench between them. he makes it smaller. (she posts art on her instagram. i could have read her text messages, but i didn’t.) “do you want these?” on the boardwalk he’d been accosted by someone from a candy store and had a small paper bag of fudge stamped with the store’s name pressed into his reluctant grip. he’s been fidgeting with it in his hoodie pocket ever since; he offers it to her now, slightly more crumpled than it had been when it went in there. “don’t really have - uh, a sweet tooth.” if i was a different person, maybe i’d say, you look like you do. or maybe i wouldn’t. is it flattering to be told you look like you like candy? is it flirting? presumptuous? rude?

.meme_response{ source: the-mist;status: accepting; }

is it that obvious?

faith is blind, or at least it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? it’s the kind of thing you can walk into with your eyes shut. there’s that story in the bible about the disciple who didn’t believe jesus was back from the dead, and had to touch the lacerations in his skin to know it was him. you’re supposed to learn from that, something about how you don’t need proof to believe. the first time i heard it, i wanted to ask for proof too.

faith’s a neutral word, anyway. it means just about anything in a world where people care more about what’s happening on twitter than what the government is doing with the data collected from their tweets. people will always fall back on that, groupthink, breathing at the same time under the ticking of the same metronome. it doesn’t matter who started it swinging.

maybe i do have faith in humanity. not the way mickey’s asking.

.meme_response{ source: the-mist;status: accepting; }

she says it with a tone of sarcasm that’s so familiar it’s bordering on sense memory. she makes sense to him the way few other things – people – do. if she was anyone else, being this way would grate at him. even when he forgot, being around her meant being safe, having someone who knew him, who understood. understands. kind of. not everything.

barry has better places to be than here, now it’s all been said and done. maybe he wants to leave already. it’s hard to tell, only looking at the back of his head. if he wanted to go he would probably go, but maybe he’s being polite. it’s a long way to the door when someone is staring.

i think about saying something. do you wanna go? you can go. if you want. if you want to go you can go. you don’t have to stay. do you wanna stay? will you stay? do i want him to stay? i don’t know if i want him to stay. if he stays does it mean something? does it mean anything, or is it just staying? do you know?

i like this place. it’s easier to think when the only distraction is the sound of a coffee percolator fuzzing and spitting nearby, and the wifi is faster on properties that host eduroam. there’s an easy backdoor to get in. all the system is looking for is an austin.utexas.edu domain name. it’s like they want me to leech. he’s not leeching. leeching makes it sound bad. he’s only been here a half hour and he bought coffee. halfway into that timescale a college-aged girl came by and filled up his cup, like he’s sitting in some roadside diner at 3am. he wonders how long he could sit here, him drinking their coffee, her giving him more, before someone asked him to leave. it’s not like i’m being a nuisance.

over the top of his laptop he sees a flash of blue plaid go by. he doesn’t register it until there’s someone stopping, turning back, pulling out the opposite chair and sitting down. there are other tables free. elliot eyes his new tablemate with a low level of curiosity that borders on indignation. he’s being smiled at. rather than close his laptop he keeps it up, a barrier between the two of them. his chin is hidden behind it. he slouches lower in his seat and everything up to his nose goes too.