By impulse, I text Eve about Ayu — about how I am sure that I really love her lovely smile and slanted eyes; how I probably want to outline her handlines and map the column of her head for the rest of my life. She replies, dude, you’ve only known her for two weeks. I reply back, yeah, and romeo and juliet knew each other for a day.
They were crazy, she comments. Like super crazy fictional teenagers.
It still happens somewhere in the world, I add, because it’s true. There are obnoxious YouTube channels explain these kind of absurd facts, shared within websites and television shows.
God, you’re really fucked, she comments, confirming my desires even further. Three seconds later there is an address and a picture of the swell of her breasts. And I wanna be fucked. Literally. Come here. Now.
Yes, I’m fucked. Three more steps and Ayu will pass by my desk with her sweet laugh and her deep dimple on her right cheek that sometimes she hides with her hand, and I’m not gonna be fucked again. Instead, Ayu folds her arms on the partition that separates my desk with the pathway and smiles to me.
Yep.
Still fucked.
“Hey, Adam, wanna grab some coffee?” she asks and I can only stare at her hair adorning her oval face with grace. I want to reach out and slip some strands, to feel if they were soft or kind of oily, behind her ear. But, alas, I keep my hands above keyboard.
“Uh, sorry. Gonna pass on that,” I say, glancing at the computer screen for a second. The monitor blinks judgingly. “Project, you know.”
“Oh, come on! You don’t need to drown yourself with work.” She pouts, and Lord, how she makes me feel like a teenager again, lovestruck everytime her mouth opens flowery words and her eyes blink blinding dust.
I shake my head. “Sorry. Again. Blame the deadlines and super evil boss, please?”
“Well, then, be the hero and beat the boss,” says Ayu, grinning, white teeth flashing before turning on her heels.
Across my booth, I catch Eve watching me watching Ayu disappearing, and she whispers without no sound. But, I’m her friend with benefits, and during sex, she is not loud. She is voiceless, desires ebbed away her ability to speak, to let out sounds, so sometimes, I can recognize the shape of her mouth moaning, demanding. Faster. Harder. Sometimes begging. After that, I kinda gain lip-reading skills, even if that sounds absolutely ridiculous.
And Eve whispers, God, you suck at this.
I throw a paper plane at her head. Somehow it’s stuck in the tangles of her hair, and she wears it until the office closes.
When the questions are asked, she answers, “Someone is throwing Disney shit at me. Isn’t that cool?”
Eve never kiss anyone she fucks on the lips. She states the fact over a burnt cigarette and come-stained sheets, her hair loose and green eyes sleepy. She never says why. I am not good at reassuring someone that they’re going to be okay. Instead, I kissed her cheekbone. If she thinks that kiss is a sign of pity, she does not say it.
“David gossiped that you’re seeing someone,” says Ayu over a Saturday brunch. Ayu insisted the day before, and I had to look at Eve to have her permission. She waved her hand at me, gesturing I should go and not be lame this time. So I’m here, dressed up in wrinkle-free blue shirt, buttoned up and suffocating. “He said he saw you entering this hotel a few times.”
I grimaced. The small bite of sausage becomes a lump in my throat. “Does he?”
Ayu nods and I notice how excited she is. Must be the kind to ponder about love lives. Maybe she likes to listen to other people’s heartaches. I can imagine myself laying beside her on a grassy hill, underneath freckles of stars, listening to her telling me the fairytales of city people. “Is she pretty? Or, um, he? I don’t know. Is your lover a he or a she? Or, uh, they? I must admit I’m still confused about gender identity issue.”
“She,” I confirm. Her eyes are full of twinkling stars and I try not to be heartbroken over this fact. “And actually not a lover.”
“Oh, so, you guys are fuck buddies? That’s, um, unexpected,” she says with owl-ish blinks. “I kinda expected that you’re a hopeless romantic guy.”
I am a hopeless romantic for Ayu. But, how would you say that, hey, even though Eve and I are fuck buddies, I actually have loved you probably since you acknowledged my favorite tie without laughing?
Awkwardness is the last thing I want to happen between us. I still want our fateful encounters in our office elevator happen without misunderstandings.
“I was just helping her coming to her own terms,” I tell her, because that is partly true. Eve came to me, soaked from head to shoes after running through the rain, running away from her awful blind date. I gave her my towel, lend her my shower and clothes. Oversized and it looked clunky in her body. Then she commented oh is this what teenagers that’s pretty obsessed with boyfriend shirt feels like? Her synapses must had snapped. Otherwise I had no idea what was the reason why she kissed me then, cigarette-and-nachos-flavored, and let everything spiraled down in bed.
“And sex is the recompense,” says Ayu, head full of thought. “Are you sure you’re not taking advantage of her?”
“No,” I say hurriedly. I give a momentary pause, sipping my tea to calm my thudding heart that threatens to break my ribs with its loud drumming beat. “I say she’s the one that’s taking advantage of me.”
I must have given her a certain expression. Maybe I grimaced or scowled. Otherwise, Ayu would still keep the fuck buddy topic pushed back and forth over our blue-and-white china cups. But her mouth curls, her dimple appears in the most beautiful way I’ve ever thought, and asks me about the most ridiculous new year’s card I’ve ever received.
God, how I love her.
We have sex on Sunday morning in my apartment. Then we have a tower of pancakes and coffees to start our day off properly (that is not involved with oral sex, whatsoever), and when I turn on the television to check the latest news of the current disastrous election, Eve plops down next to me, rests her head on my shoulder and let her messy hair tickle down my neck, and says, “Maybe we have to stop this.”
I don’t know why she said that. Perhaps she just meet her love at first sight. Perhaps she’s tired of my body that is not muscular enough for her. Perhaps she’s just exhausted over everything. I don’t want to speculate much because it is not my business. I let her have her way to me, to my body, so she can feel better. And perhaps, she does feel better over time, when the sun hangs low to kiss the sea and the moon shies away in her little hideout.
“Are you sure?” I ask, even though it sounds half-asking half-confirming.
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure,” she replies.
“Okay, then.”
“Will you miss me, though?”
I keep my mouth shut. I don’t know if I would miss her. I actually enjoyed every second of our meetings, even if it was secretive, because Eve honestly feels like my best friend from another world. I liked her when her back shaped into crescent as she lighted up a cigarette and breathed the smoke out of her throat. I liked her when she offered to read me some ridiculous BuzzFeed articles as some kind of pillow talk, with dramatic tone and fingers overflowed with hyperbole. I liked her when she decided to be silent and looked at me thoroughly from head to toe, then hooking her fingers into my hair.
“Yeah,” I say, finally. “I think I’m gonna miss you.”
“Cool,” she cracks, before she kisses my shoulder, over a hickey that’s going to be the last of hickeys she left me. “Chase after Ayu, okay?”
In the elevator, Ayu beams at my favorite tie for the third time.
“You must have really loved that tie,” she coos. She cradles her files as if it was the last lifeline she can hang onto and I think about her cradling a baby like that. Delicate fingers, but strong arms. “It suits you.”
“I do love this tie,” I confessed. And because I promised someone to chase after her, so I say this where I fell in love to whom I fall in love with. “I also love you.”
