sophie's story (as is)

1. You never get what you want.
You’re walking down the hallway when he comes round the corner. Don’t look down, you think. Besides, if you look down what will you see? Chubby Sophie. You’ve eaten too much pizza this week. Again. What was it that the publisher said? After dating you for a couple of weeks, when he mentioned going to the gym twice in one conversation and said “I hope you didn’t order pizza again last weekend. Because, after all, it is the fastest way to gain 90 pounds.” What happened then? The next time you visited him at his apartment on the Upper East Side and he didn’t even pretend at sitting on his couch, watching the movie you had chosen. Straight to the bedroom. And all you could think of, as you stood naked in front of him, his hands on your goose-pimpled skin, his lips traveling up your thigh, was “how can he stand to touch me when he thinks I’m such a cow?” But after a few weeks, it fizzled out anyway. He stopped calling and you found that you didn’t mind. When your mother asks after him, you shrug it off, saying, “I never heard from him. It’s okay, though,” and hang up, wondering if the years of being secluded, growing up in isolation, Fat, Ginger Sophie, led to you the point where being alone is better. You wonder if the only time you’re really yourself is when you’re alone in your flat or chatting up distant, faceless online friends.
Here, in this hallway, the writer is walking toward you, his long hair tucked behind his ear, his baseball cap on backward, a patchy beard making him take your breath away even more than usual. You know that he doesn’t see you. At least not the way you wish he would. But then hasn’t it always been that way? All through school, throughout your embarrassingly brief tour of university, you’ve always wanted the ones who are oblivious to your existence. In fact, it seemed that no one even saw you. Not until you came to America, until you made the glorious discovery that what was considered “fat” back in London was just a bit overweight in the States. (Outside of Los Angeles and vile Miami.) They started to see you then, at least a bit. Never the ones you’d have chosen, but you still gave them a chance, thinking, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Why? Because even now, the rare few who want you are never the ones you’d want. But this one, tall and shy, charmingly awkward; The one who writes secretly in his cubicle (poetry? A novel? Angry political tirades?), who nods your way whenever you pass him smoking on the steps outside the building, of course he’s the one that you’d want. Stupid girl. Look up. Don’t hide behind your hair.
Your flaming red hair, the hair that the musician loved so much he could never stop talking about it, never get over your red hair or your freckled nose. He held your hand in the elevator and said you were beautiful. “Beautiful.” No one had ever told you that before, not for 34 years, and there, in an elevator, with his hand holding yours despite the inevitably sweaty palms that is your life-long curse (one of), this married musician was assuring you that you are beautiful. Of course, you know that you aren’t, but it was lovely to hear and he was certainly the most handsome man to ever be interested in you. Only there was nothing to talk about except for music, “what sort of music did you listen to in England? I love that band, you too?” And not only that, but also the wife, the wife who owned the flat in the fashionable part of Brooklyn, who paid the bills so that he could concentrate on his music, who had been his wife for more than a decade. And “he loved her, but he wasn’t in love with her anymore.” Still, is this who you are? Well? Don’t you deserve someone of your own at long last? Only, what if no one ever calls you beautiful again? What if no one else ever sees what the musician saw in you? A woman your age. Beggars and choosers, sweetie.
Do you want the writer because you know it’s impossible? (And it is impossible, you silly girl. Just because he is a living, breathing checklist of all the things you’d ask for in a man- tall, brown eyes, artist, drug-free, refreshingly not arrogant- a rarity in this bloody city- does not mean, contrary to what you may wish to believe, that he was created and sent to Earth just for you.) Is it because you know that being alone is better, so focusing on someone so beautiful, so unattainable, is another, safer, way of being alone? You can watch him from a distance, swoon over his talent, his kindness, his beauty, appreciate all of the coffee station gossip about his literary ambitions, his eight admirable years of sobriety, and yes, his romantic adventures. He will never see you and therefore, never be able to break your heart. You will break your own simply by believing that the one who was meant for you was the one you could never have.
And he passes you in the hallway, on his way in to work. And you say, “hey.”
And he looks up.


2. I’m damned to feel the way I do. What have I done to fall so hard for you?

So why then? Why have all of your thoughts begun to revolve around the writer? Why is he always at the edge of your mind, always subtly there like the constant bass line of your pulse? You had noticed him as soon as you started the job four years ago. Before the publisher, before the musician and the man before that and the one before. Of course you had seen him. How could anyone not, much to his apparent chagrin. Four years working in the same building. Four years occasionally getting up the nerve to say "hey." So why now suddenly is he the one person you hope to see every day? Every ding that precedes the opening of the elevator doors causes you to look for his face to appear. Turning every corner you hope you'll see him. You wonder if it's because of the publisher and the musician. Why be disappointed in other people when you can wish for the impossible- expect nothing and you can't very well be disappointed, can you? No. It's the wanting that fills you with ache. The wanting makes you absolutely bloody miserable. And what you're discovering is that after a while you hate yourself. For wanting what you can't get and even more for setting yourself up for the downfall.

Idiot.

That's the bitch of it all. You're absolutely aware that you're being a fool. But. But still you look for him, even if it's out of the corner of your eye. Even more, you want to know about him, everything there is to know. What made him want to write? What books does he read? Where did he come from, how did he grow up? Did the other kids make fun of the way he walked, all elbows and long legs if he's in a hurry, and of course utterly charming as far as you are concerned. Who are his parents and what do they do? And it's all so completely ridiculous, really, because none of it matters. Not really. He may as well be a character in a movie. You might as well be pining over Heathcliff or (please God don't become that girl), Mr. Darcy. You wish that you had something to spark his interest. Isn't there anything interesting about you? But you know that in the end, you're just another girl who's moved to New York hoping for something big. A girl working at a publishing house where young hopeful girls are a dime a dozen. You write, too. Of course. As does he and the person at the next cubicle and your boss and her boss. Everyone you've met in this city is a writer. Furthermore, you're just one more moon-eyed girl swooning every time he glances in your direction. Only you've got the thrilling distinction of being the fat one, haven't you?

Oh, Sophie. Just be alone.

You sometimes ask yourself what's wrong with you? Your wise friend Rhonda, Queens born and bred, says, "late blooms last the longest." She also once remarked that "high school is never over." A horrifying thought, to be sure, but in your experience as an adult, disappointingly true. The daily humiliations, both self-inflicted and not, the cliques formed from office to office, the gossip (sometimes so sophomorically vicious) and competition for affections- all of it is so discomfortingly familiar.

Sometimes you imagine yourself becoming the one among the flock who actually gets published. Now that would be a way to get his attention, wouldn't it? Only you really aren't a very good writer. You put on your headphones and picture yourself on stage. He's in the audience, falling in love with you just because of your song.

"I hope you feel the way I do/ I hope you give yourself up, too/ I'm damned to feel the way I do/ What have I done to fall so hard for you?

What you love and why you listen to pop music: How one day you can hear a song by chance that echoes the very thoughts you had the day before, crying in the ladies room stall that seems to bear witness to your every defeated moment. "Why do I like him so much? Why should I? What is it that allows myself to continue this train of thought or feeling when it isn't even a remote possibility?" What have I done to fall so hard for you?

song lyrics by Anna Ternheim

?
The writer has a name. His name is Jeffrey. Jeff. You rarely ever deal with him at the office. Once in a blue moon he’ll pop his head over the side of your cubicle to ask a question. You swoon at the very sight of him. After a while you got used to seeing him. You’d wave. He’d reply with the nod of his head. A salute. Once a sort of goofy rock star point in your direction that made you a bit dizzy, made you think, “sex god.” Good lord, you’re ridiculous. You’re a sixteen-year old girl in the body of a thirty-five year old. Make that twelve.

Some days, in the food court most of your fellow workers visit for lunch, or in the corridors of the office, you see him moving towards you. You’ve developed a kind of sonar by now. You can sort of sense when he’s around, about to appear. Some days he passes you by. He doesn’t acknowledge you or even notice you. You feel a fool standing on the sidelines waving at some guy who may as well not know that you exist. Sure, he could have had other things on his mind. And you know that, really, you haven’t made much of an impression on him. Just another girl from the office. But there are times when it’s as if – how do you explain it? It’s more than him not seeing you, or making you feel like he could not recognize you outside of your cubicle. More like he has an identical twin that you’ve mistaken for him. But there’s something even more than this. Like he’s vacant. Like he’s not there at all.

Surely this is all in your head. Chalk it up to your imagination, to thinking about it too much, reading more than you ought to in every little thing he does.

You just wish he would see you.

Jesus, Sophie. You’re becoming quite dull. A broken record.

3. How to disappear completely?
You sat at home one night and came to the realization that if you actually did the math, you’d probably find that you spend at least 80% of your life wishing yourself out of existence. You took a breath and grew quite alarmed. Is that possible? Well, there’s sleep, when you’re most at peace with yourself. But it’s rarely even a full 8 hours anymore, is it? Then there’s work. 8 hours of utterly praying that you’d never been born. The hours you commute, usually another 2 for the negative side. Best not to think about it too much, you say, as you move on to find the next distraction.

You called the publisher last week. Paul. He didn’t answer. Thank God. You know that you called him because you want the writer and cannot have him. It was just serendipitous that it happened to be the publisher’s birthday. “Just spotted it on my calendar,” you told his voicemail. A lie. You had to look it up. Yes, you had been thinking of him ever since finally reading the book he gave you last spring. But you know. You can spot the makings of a pattern.

Spring: Things with the musician don’t work out. You agree to a date with Paul. It’s nice for a while, but like so many things, it goes nowhere. However, you don’t ache for the musician anymore. Now it’s winter. Heartbroken and at a complete loss over the writer, despite being able to speak in complete sentences around him, you find a reason to call Paul again. Do you think that sleeping with Paul a few times will help you?

Why is he not calling back? And seriously, what would you do if he did?

4. All in All Another Fall Won’t Even Make a Dent

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
Maybe the Xanax is serenity. Maybe you should have listened to Doctor Lessing when she tried to prescribe it instead of bristling at the suggestion. Too many people, too many of your friends walk around with a temporary calm; Anxious or upset, “I’m going to take another pill.” “I took two.”
You woke up thinking that if you punched your arm out the window you could drag it back in over the jagged glass. Not a day goes by, not a single solitary day, that you don’t imagine yourself standing in front of that bathroom mirror with red cuts up and down your arms like a road map.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
You ask yourself if maybe life is like that graphic novel you read once. Maybe you already killed yourself. Ten years ago. That’s how long it’s been since you were a happy person, since you have truly enjoyed being alive. In the book, suicides spent hell working in retail, but you look around at the people you know and think that you wouldn’t be surprised it that were true. Not at all.
You sometimes reach the top of the escalator and think, “I could stretch out my arms and fall back right now. It would be so easy.” Walking down the dark stairs of your building, you see yourself tumbling down them.
God grant me serenity.
You don’t even want to see him anymore. Which of course means that you start to run into him more than ever before. As if life is taunting you with more that you can’t, will never have. He’s just one more thing that punctuates how sad it all is. Keep your eyes down and bite your lips. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t see you.
Grant me the courage to change the things I can.

5. It’s not going to stop ‘til you wise up.
You remember when you first arrived to America, working at the small bookstore where you met and fell so hard for Matthew. Tall, so tall and utterly brimming with charm and humor. It’s been just over ten years, which seems remarkable. He had become your friend. As usual you were simply his confidante, nothing more than a platonic girl Friday. He shared with you his problems, his confusion as he went back and forth from his longtime girlfriend to the new girl at the shop, the girl who then befriended you and shared confidences. How maddening it was, loving him and having to hear the stories, all of their romantic drama, when all you wanted him to do was to just see you. See you the way he saw them.

One day at work, heartbroken and distraught, another co-worker, Clay, caught you drying your eyes in the stock room. He was the age you are now, newly married. He put his hand on your shoulder and kindly said, “It gets better.” How many times over the last decade have you remembered that? Not just because Clay said it, but because every novel, every film, every stupid beautiful pop song tells you that in the end things work out. There’s always a happy ending. Happy endings for everyone! Because All You Need Is Love! No. Not really. It’s not that Clay was lying. It gets better for some.

The biggest lie you’ve ever heard is that there’s someone out there for everyone. There’s not. Furthermore, you know, you’ve truly come to understand that once you can accept this, you’ll be a thousand times happier. How many times have you told yourself, “Sophie, just be alone?” Besides, if everyone’s dreams could come true, who’d be waiting on tables or checking out groceries? You wouldn’t be a girl in a publishing office, but the author you wanted to be. But the truth is that someone’s got to stay in the middle, be average. Someone has to do the dirty work. Look around you. Everyone you know has other plans. They want to make films, to play music, to write, to write, to write. Even that unassuming accountant takes improv classes. Maybe one of them will make it. It’s more likely, you have to know, that the accountant is always going to be an accountant. Your beloved writer will probably always be writing away in his little cubicle. You will probably always be an office girl. Yes, you’ll go home and clickety-clack on your computer. People rarely stop dreaming, that’s not the point. It’s simply that dreams don’t come true, as a rule. You don’t have to give up the fantasies, though. Put on your headphones and listen to music, dreamily thinking of the writer as you write page after page of thinly veiled autobiography. But honestly, Sophie; what are the chances that you are the lucky one? What are the chances that yours is the dream that will come true?

?
Sometimes you let yourself indulge in fantasies about him. About how, one day, years from now… You never let yourself wonder how you got there, because you know that wondering will murder the dream. One, or both of you has been published. Or you’ve gotten a better paying job. All the debts have been paid off, taken care of. You write. You’re in a flat with an old and giant tree outside your window. He lies across the bed, his brown hair a bit longer, still a mess, a smile on his face. He’s reading Richard Brautigan to you. You had seen a copy of Trout Fishing in America on his desk once and checked it out. You gave up after a bit. But there he is, reading out loud, trying to get you to like it. Your head is resting on his stomach, feeling the warmth of him from under the material of the K Records t-shirt you saw him wear once. You’re laughing, your hand in his own.

Or you’re riding shotgun in a rented car. He’s driving and shaking his head in time while you sing along to the song on the radio. Belly. “Feed the tree.”

While standing in your kitchen with only the bubbling sound of pasta boiling, you stir tomato sauce and season it. The most appealing fantasy of all: Riding home from work with him. Bringing him here, to your flat. Cooking a nice spaghetti dinner for him. Is he a vegetarian? You think you heard him say that he had been, once, in college. Even just that would be enough, you think, as you spoon enough leftover food for three nights by yourself into a Tupperware dish. You seal it and sigh.

6. Excuse me while I break my own heart tonight.
You wish that just once, someone would be chasing after your heart instead of the other way around. Why is it that you are always the one who is wanting, never the one who is wanted? And left wanting, you grow more and more heartbroken. You are a sad woman of 35. A hundred years ago you’d officially be an old maid. It would be even more tragic.

Jeff seems tragic lately. There’s an air of sadness about him. You realize that you know next to nothing about him, but he seems to be so lonely. Are you projecting your own loneliness? Are you creating some kind of fantasy about him, about how he’s in a deep sorrow, with no one to comfort him and how you could be the one to listen, the one to understand, to make him feel cared for? As if that would make a difference, Sophie. But the fact is that once you’ve opened your heart to someone, your heart remains wide open. So you want to feed him, listen to him, show him some care, even though you know it won’t make him love you. And you’ll once again settle into the role of a friend, the friend who inwardly pines and wishes for more. And you’ll shatter a little more of your already fractured heart. But what else is there anymore, except for the comfort of friends? As Geraldine Chaplin said in a movie once, “Company. What else is there?”

7. These foolish things.
One day you just talked to him. Partly because you felt, well, what was there to lose? He just seemed so sad. Could he be lonely? You made a joke, something silly, a throwaway comment. Stupid things. Once he was walking towards your desk as you were leaning back with your hands to your temples, fighting off an oncoming headache. He made a funny face and you mimicked telepathy.

Little things. There was the time you rode up together in the elevator. He had held the door open for you. Once inside, just you and him, he asked how things were. You’d been weeping the night before and damning yourself for thinking so much about him, feeling so pathetic. You immediately shut your mouth after saying “I’m feeling a bit lost, actually.” You say too much, idiot girl. He looks quickly down at the elevator buttons before once again looking at you. As soon as you feel his eyes on you, you turn towards him to apologize or to take it back. But he says, “I know how that feels.”

And then, quite unexpectedly, there was one big thing. You’d been walking down the corridor to the dimly lit and frankly creepy supply room, in search of a box of pens. He’d been refilling his water bottle in the dull green kitchen and stopped you. You’d bonded over the latest album by a band you both loved. He was asking if you’d heard anything about an upcoming tour and walked along with you. Of course, all you were thinking was whether or not he was going to ask you out. As you approached the room, you thought you’d heard the softest moan, something like the opposite of a sigh, a cry caught in a throat. You recognized it as the sound of your heart breaking, the noise you make during those cold nights at home when you know it’s all too much and want to cry or better yet scream at the top of your lungs, a primal scream shouting out to the universe all of your pain and sorrow. A whimper. You heard it. It was louder this time, so much so that Jeff stopped talking and furrowed his eyebrows. You consider turning back, imagining one of your co-workers sitting in a corner crying over their own sadness. You think of how mortifying it’s been when people from work have found you crying in the corner. How some days your only hope for the day is that you won’t spend any of it crying in public. But you know this is something worse. You approach the doorway just one step after he does.

8.
You stand next to him, still shaking, still red with sticky blood. It’s all over. It’s on your skirt at the knees. It’s covering your arm up to the elbow, practically. It’s under your fingernails and your hands won’t stop quaking. There are police everywhere. Jeff is talking to another one, cradling himself. He gave you his shirt, revealing a tattoo on his arm. He’s trembling too. Not because he’s only wearing a vest. You can hear the shake in his voice as he tells the police officer for the fifth time how you pushed the half-closed door open and found him there. Benjamin. On the floor and everything was red and wet. You rushed to his side. You dropped to your knees. On the ground near his cut up right arm, you spotted the box cutter he had used. “Jeffrey, call 911!” Benjamin tried to push you away, but he was so weak. His life was literally pooling around him. “Oh, Benjamin. What have you done?”

“It never gets any better.” That’s all he said to you. And all you said was his name again, because you believed that to be true and couldn’t even think of a promising lie to comfort him with.

“They’re on the way,” Jeff said, stripping off his shirt. “Here.” You grabbed it and pressed against Benjamin’s arm. Almost instantly, the blue linen turned red. The two cream-coloured buttons of its sleeve drowned in blood. You looked back up at Benjamin’s face. His eyes stared at you in a way you later thought of as accusatory. As if they had been asking, “What are you doing? Don’t you see it’s hopeless?” You looked away and saw his left arm, noticed what seemed to be several scratches or tiny cuts. “Benjamin.” But he was gone.

Now, standing next to Jeff, you feel close to breaking down, falling apart. Collapsing. It’s too much. It’s too much sorrow.

9.
“And how did that make you feel?” is, of course, Doctor Lessing’s favourite thing to ask you. Only right now it seems like a ridiculous question. How did you feel? After walking in to find a co-worker having cut his wrists? After having him bleed all over you and watching him, literally watching him die? Are you over-dramatising things or do you actually remember this, the moment when you looked into his eyes and saw him vanish?

“We used to call him The Ferris Wheel. Because his last name was Ferris… and his moods were so mercurial. Not that I’m one to talk. When I first met him, all he ever did was ask me about England. I don’t even remember being introduced to him, speaking to him, before he began asking these random questions. What school had been like in England. Whether I thought people here were any worse than people back home.

“Something about him was quite jarring. His manner. He always seemed to be – put upon; Or at odds with the world. I suppose it was just whatever his inner battle was emanating from him? Initially I disliked him. He gave me the willies. Do you say that here?”

Lessing smiles at you and raises her eyebrows, “Sometimes. He gave you the creeps.”

“The creeps. Exactly. The way he paid attention to me felt so unnerving. Until I realized that he was the same with everyone. Soon I felt tremendous sadness for him. He knew everyone’s names, he asked so many questions, but he was still very alone. Frankly, there were times when I’ve thought that I was just three friends away from actually becoming Benjamin myself. So I always made a point to be extra kind to him. No matter what sort of day I was having or how sullen and bitchy I was to anyone else. It felt like he needed some kindness.

“After it happened. That night, Jeff took me home in a cab.”

You were stone silent the entire ride to your flat. You asked him up. The thought of being alone with all of this was too much. You suppose he felt the same because he let out a deep breath and seemed to relax. You obviously weren’t even thinking in terms of: Oh God, Sophie, the writer is at your flat!

“We took turns showering. I could barely focus on anything except for Benjamin’s blood under my fingernails. I - I had a sweater that he could fit in and well, we can talk about how that made me feel some other time…”

The hot shower had warmed you, settled you somewhat. He was still trembling. You sat across from each other in silence for a bit. You had to say something, rather than just sitting there reliving it all. And you had to know. So, you asked, “Was there anything else I could have done?” He rubbed his eyes with his long, graceful fingers. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. No. We did all we could.” You began to cry again. He reached over, tentatively, and put your hand in between his. “Sophie…” he whispered. “Sophie, I worked in the same office as Benjamin for years. I’ve never known another person who was so completely alone. But you rushed to his side. You were there for him. Maybe he died feeling a little less alone. That’s all you could do.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

10.
You don’t sleep a full night for the next few weeks. You wake up after strange and vague dreams, really only remembering an overwhelming sense of dread. And red. Dr. Lessing prescribes something to help you sleep. It’s winter, the wind wails outside the window, the pipes make a dreadful clanking noise and you’re reminded of how ornery the heater in your bedroom can be. Some nights are fine. But some, like tonight, you feel as cold as you did outside. Waiting for the microwave to warm up your dinner, you stare at your hands. Fingernails trimmed quite short. Shudder. Freezing to the touch, knuckles red and so dry that every line is chalk white. Is this what they mean when they call something weathered? For some reason they remind you of an old paperback book – the sort with the print that came off on your fingers and yellowed pages. It depresses you. But frankly, what doesn’t? Three weeks since Benjamin died. Despite Jeff and Dr. Lessing’s protestations, you still wonder how you could have made things happen differently. But you weren’t the only one left wondering: You wouldn’t say that the mood at work was sombre, exactly. More like subdued. There were some who seemed somewhat admonished, even. Perhaps if we had given him more of a chance, talked less behind his back, been a little more accepting of his quirks, more understanding of his faults, maybe he wouldn’t have been so hopeless. You hear the worst of them protesting, “Oh, I always liked him. I really felt for him.” In the ladies room, sitting in a stall, you hear someone say, “Well, he certainly didn’t make things easier for himself. Friendship is a two-way street, you know.” You cringe. Good Lord, what do these people say about you when you’re not around?

11.
The first time it happened was just a couple of days after Benjamin. That night after several cups of tea and sharing some leftover Chinese delivery, he had finally stood up to go. The tremble in his voice was gone and he just looked quite tired. He made sure that you were all right before promising to return your sweater and quietly leaving you alone. When you shut the door behind him, you felt suddenly how exhausted, how utterly spent you were.

“All cried out?” you remember your mother asking when you were very young and acting like a spoiled brat. Her solution was simply to send you to your room and let your tantrums subside. Often you would cry for so long and so hard that you’d end up lying still in your bed, or in your more spectacularly dramatic days, the bedroom floor, without the energy left to even stand back up. That’s the way you felt after Jeff went home last night. All cried out.

Neither of you went into the office for the rest of the week. You carried on as usual, if a bit shaken. When he saw you on Monday morning, he immediately approached you, asking how you were. From then on, you’d stop and talk, even if just to say “hey” or “how are you doing?” But then, Thursday afternoon, coming back from your lunch break, you saw him walking towards you in the main lobby of the building. He saw you. You thought he did. You had looked him in the eye when you said, “Hey, Jeff.” But it was as though he was looking through you. He walked right past, without a word or any sort of acknowledgement. You coloured instantly and walked to the elevator bank in a daze, embarrassed and wondering what had just taken place.


?
“You’ve bewitched my cat,” he says.
You couldn’t sleep. You were restless. You didn’t want to wake him, so you curled up in a chair in between the bed and his bookcase. Your fingers lightly touched the spines as you smiled at your favorite books and noted the titles of some you’d never read. The cat stirred from his sleep and crept to the edge of the bed. He tentatively leaned over the space between bed and chair. You rearranged your legs and he hopped over to your lap. You petted him and scratched behind his ears. Soon, purring, he settled himself upon your chest, his serene face just under yours. He raised his head and butted it against your chin. You smiled and kissed him between the ears. You looked over to see Jeff awake, up to his neck under blankets. He was watching you in a way he never has before. “You’ve bewitched my cat.”

Seeing him in bed, hair even more of a tangle than usual, eyes still sleepy and a lazy smile upon his face takes your breath away. You smile and say nothing. He rolls over onto his side, moving the blanket further down. He stretches his arm out and closes his eyes again. You watch him and want to take it all in. He’s lovely. His chest rises and falls. There is only a bit of hair on his chest, round his nipples, and, enticingly, from the delicious beginnings of a belly, leading downward. Tufts of hair under his armpit along that curved line you find so beguiling that leads from pectoral to bicep, the skin there so soft and pale. His shoulders are dappled with freckles and you want to kiss each one individually. There is the tiniest mole on his neck, that neck you’ve wanted to reach out and touch for the last four years. The cat snaps you out of this hypnotic reverie when he suddenly jumps from your lap back onto the bed, positioning himself at his master’s feet. Part of one leg sticks out of the blanket, long and downy and white, except for the knee, which has the most spectacular bruise in the most gorgeous shade of violet. You’ve never seen a foot so big. You reach over and caress his ankle. He lets out a soft sigh.

You don’t want this moment to go away. This is serenity, fortune. This is beauty. This is joy.