He woke up in the morning and looked at his phone. Rhonda texted him while he was sleeping. He couldn’t believe it. They began to flirt last year and it started to get hot and heavy before she inexplicably pulled the plug. Five days into it, the day after she admitted to him that she was going to go into the shower to masturbate, she texted him:
“Full disclosure: I have never dated anyone who didn’t drink and I’m really not sure what that would look like.”
He was confused, but pretty certain that Rhonda was saying that she was pumping the brakes, so he responded:
“Is this your way of saying that you’re calling it off?”
To which she responded:
“Calling what off? We’ve been texting for a few days. You’re making it sound like we have a registry at Target.”
And then he texted back:
“Whatever. Good luck in all your future endeavors.”
And she responded:
“Goodness! I really don’t know what you’re getting so heated about.”
Goodness, he thought. Here’s a bitch who closes the bar most nights, has a reputation for taking home the desperate guy and now she’s feeding me this “goodness” crap. Who the fuck does she think she is? Annette Funicello? Goodness. She’s so full of shit.
But like I said, that was last year. Now he was waking up and there was a text on his phone that said:
“Long time, no see. How are you?”
It seemed promising. He was willing to let bygones be bygones. Especially if it meant that he had the opportunity to get laid–something he hadn’t experienced in well over six months. They made a date for the following Wednesday and he used his final sick day, so he didn’t wind up with a weak paycheck.
They decided to meet at Cheeseheads over in the next town. It was an esoteric cafe that sold nothing but Mediterranean dishes and rare cheeses from Western Europe. He knew the owner from a house painting job he did ten years ago. The guy was a pain in the ass from Albania, but he imagined that he was taking advantage of all of his overseas connections to procure a lot of his inventory. He and Rhonda sat and had coffee and talked for over an hour.
He was pleasantly surprised. Her pictures on Instagram and Facebook caused him to develop an idea that she was a harsh feminist that wasn’t going to be fun to be around, but finally seeing her in person changed all of that for him. She was wearing a denim jacket, her skinny little wrists accentuated by the denim, and she was about five foot tall and a hundred pounds. They decided to take a walk on the rail trail and at one point, her hand brushed up against his and he felt a jolt of excitement charge through his body.
He stopped her on the river bridge and held both of her shoulders in his hands. It began to drizzle on them, just like in one of those cliche rom coms. Rhonda put her head down because she felt slightly embarrassed. She wanted him to kiss her, but she didn’t want to give the impression that she did. He wasn’t fooled. He went in for the kiss and she responded with enthusiasm.
It was a nice kiss. It was the sort of kiss that let you know you were only steps away from a hot time. This realization made him feel tingly all over and after they went to Lemon Sorbet for dinner, they went back to her house and made love. He had the all-encompassing feeling that he wasn’t the first guy she slept with on the first date, but he was also honest enough with himself to know that, given the opportunity, he, too, would’ve gotten naked at the end of every first date he ever went on. Even in those cases where he couldn’t stand the woman or when he wasn’t even slightly attracted to them. So he wasn’t going to judge her.
At one point, Rhonda admitted to him that it really wasn’t the fact that he was in recovery that put the kibosh on their budding romance the year before. It was her friend and co-worker, Elena. He knew Elena. He and Elena were friends for ten years at one point, but they had a horrific falling out because, as he put it, he called her out on her fake bullshit. She struck back by accusing him of being a misogynist and he tried to reassure her that he loved her gender, he just couldn’t stand her. Either way, in feminist circles, it was the kiss of death to be known as a misogynist and it was likely why Elena used that name to call him. She made it her personal mission to end as many of his relationships as she could, preferably before they even started.
One thing he felt was very telling about Elena was the time, when they were still close friends, and she told him she was pregnant.
“I can’t even go near a penis without getting knocked up,” she joked.
A couple years later, when he and his ex-wife were still married and trying to start a family, Elena offered to lend them her Advanced Ovulation Tracking Kit. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that she likely roped some fool into knocking her up and paying child support for the next twenty years of his life. “Whoopsie, I’m pregnant.” So full of shit.
Be that as it may, he was now a dog having his day. He and Rhonda were laying there naked, post-coital, and Rhonda breezily moved from the topic of Elena to stories of her work in a Hasidic Hospital in Monsey, but he was only half listening. He was wondering if she finally brushed off all that misogynist stuff because she needed to get laid or because she began to see through Elena’s functional insanity. Or both, perhaps.
There was a week or so where Elena tried to make Rhonda’s life hell at work because “she didn’t know if she could still be friends with a womyn that would fuck a guy who clearly couldn’t stand women,” but when he showed Rhonda a few old texts and emails that proved Elena “associated” with him for nearly a decade, it took the sting right out of her empty words.
He and Rhonda lived less than a mile away from each other, so their first couple of months together consisted of blissfully quick dates, night after night, of dinner and sex. He mentioned to her that he wasn’t ready for sleeping over yet and she was understanding. He was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease as a teenager, and although he lived with quite a few women up until that point, there was something blocking his desire to do all of that again.
This is, of course, what he thought it was. It might’ve been something deeper and more hidden, but if it was, he was not conscious of it. One day, in a text, Rhonda asked him if they were ever going to be anything besides friends with benefits. This annoyed him because he felt sure that they had an emotional component to their relationship. There was an agreement to be loyal and monogamous. But he knew that she was trying to say that she felt slighted because she was expected to get up and go home after they had sex. Or he would go home if he was there.
Leave it to this woman to start picking apart something good, he thought.
One night, not too long after the “friends with benefits” text, she was at his apartment crying inconsolably. She had had a full fledged breakdown involving her children and her parents at Passover Seder. It all became a big mess and she felt as if nothing she ever did was right.
“Can you just fucking hug me?” she wailed.
The funny thing was, he couldn’t. He felt completely paralyzed as he watched her, tears mixing with snot and running down her face. He stood there feeling like he was about to burst into flames. He knew that all he needed to do to fix everything was to walk over and hold her and his feet turned to clay. He simply could not do it.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she cried.
He knew that this was probably the worst time for this to happen, but he couldn’t be with her anymore. Everything they had up until that point was lost and finished. He tried on “maybe we just need a little break” in his head and it fit like a child trying on their father’s shirt. He wanted badly to believe that’s all it was, but he knew it wasn’t.
She stormed angrily out of his apartment and he locked the door. He laid there in bed staring up at the ceiling. He had an awful feeling in his stomach and he knew the only thing that would make him feel any good would be to extricate himself entirely from the situation. He woke up four hours later in his clothes and boots, feeling even worse. He got undressed, shut off all the lights and went back to sleep again until morning.
The next day at work, Rhonda sent him a text where she apologized for the night before and he said that it was okay. He knew it wasn’t though. Nothing was okay. There never seemed to be a good time to break up with someone, but if there ever was the worst time to break up with someone this might qualify.
When he got home from work, Rhonda said she really wanted him to come over, but that was the last thing he wanted to do. He made several excuses why he couldn’t and she finally texted him that if he ever wanted to be with her again, he’d come over. The thing was, of course, that he didn’t want to be with her again so that settled it, he thought.
His phone rang. It was her. He thought he had better pick it up or there’d be a scene at his apartment complex and he wanted that even less.
“Hello?”
“I really need you to come over here,” she said.
“I was supposed to go to Ikea and pick up a new dresser.”
“Fuck your dresser. I need you to come over now.”
So he got in his car and drove over. He couldn’t help feeling that walking past her teenage sons and daughters to head over to her room was the most awkward thing he could ever imagine. He opened her bedroom door and she was lying in bed with the lights off and the air conditioner on. The room smelled weird and was far too cold. She was crying in a low guttural tone and it reminded him of his mother when he was a child. He didn’t like it at all and all he wanted to do was run away.
“Will you just fucking hug me?” she moaned.
Again, he felt paralyzed but this time she aggressively grabbed him and held him as tight as she could. Something inside of him was feeling violated. She could feel a definite lack of warmth or reciprocation coming from him as she held onto him for dear life. He knew he had to tell her it was over, but he couldn’t find the words.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked, as she pulled back.
Do it, he thought to himself. Just tell her it’s over. But no words came. Just guess it, he thought. I could manage to shake my head if she asks me if it’s over, I just can’t say it.
“Why are you so cold?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I feel emotionally paralyzed.”
She looked at him with disgust. She looked at him for an uncomfortable fifteen seconds.
“Just get the fuck out of here!” she screamed.
He turned around to open the door and she screamed his name again. He was not going to respond to that. She said to leave and he was leaving. The children all busied themselves with video games and social media, pretending that they didn’t notice the total shit show that was taking place. He walked past them feeling very self-conscious.
He got into his car and started it up. He put it in drive and began to head back to his apartment. For the first time in what seemed like years, he felt free. He felt like a weight was removed from his chest and he could finally breathe.
Rhonda, you're not getting the hug. Lol
So good!! I resonated with both characters. Great read 💛