All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders Page 0,70
wedge bobbing up to the lip of the bottle and tasted the pulp mixed with beer, she remembered how Kevin wouldn’t even look her in the eye when everybody else was accusing her of being a toxic loner.
“We should talk about what this is, right? You and me. What we’re doing,” she started to say, trying to make herself heard over the DJ without shouting. “I feel like we tried too hard not to label our relationship, and that became a label in itself.”
“I have something I have to tell you,” Kevin said, his eyes bigger and sadder than usual.
“I am ready to open up about my feelings. I feel…” Patricia searched for the right words. “I feel good, about us. I care about you, a lot, and I am open to—”
“I met someone else,” Kevin blurted. “Her name is Mara. She’s also a webcomics artist of some renown. She lives in the East Bay. We met only in the past fortnight, but this already shows signs of becoming serious. I was not even looking, but my Caddy pinged me with twenty-nine points of convergence between Mara and myself.” He gazed into his Pimm’s. “You and I never said we were exclusive, or even that we were dating.”
“Umm.” Patricia chewed her thumb, a habit she’d quit years ago. “I’m happy, happy. For you. I’m happy for you.”
“Patricia.” Kevin took both her hands. “You are utterly mad, but delightful. I feel so overjoyed to have gotten to know you. But I have been a fool too many times already. And I tried, I really did, to talk to you about our relationship, on five separate occasions. In the park when we were roller-skating, and also at that pizza bar…”
As Kevin listed these moments, she could see them with perfect clarity: all the missed cues and deflections, all the abortive moments of intimacy. All this time, she had been thinking of him as the one with commitment issues. Somewhere along the line, she had become an asshole.
“Thank you for being honest with me,” Patricia said. She sat and finished her drink, until it was just lime rind and bitter pulp.
Patricia wound up in Dolores Park at midnight. The heat still felt as intense as direct sunlight, and her mouth was dry. She couldn’t go home and face Deedee and Racheline. For some reason, Patricia found herself calling her sister, Roberta, whom she hadn’t talked to in months (although she’d had a couple conversations about Roberta with her parents).
“Hey, Bert.”
“Hi, Trish. How is everything going?”
“I’m okay.” Patricia took a breath, which came out staccato. She stared at the playground rocket ship and the Victorian houses with their pregnant windows. “I’m sort of okay. I just … Do you ever feel like you’re just throwing away the people in your life? Like, being so self-centered that people just fall away?”
Roberta laughed. “I have the opposite problem: I have a hard time disposing of the bodies. Ha ha. Trish, listen to me for once in your life. I know we never got along and I was partway responsible for you running away from home. But one thing I know about you is, you’re a generous person. You’re a big bleeding heart. People have fucked with you, including me—especially me—so you have a lot of defense mechanisms. But you always put yourself on the line for other people. You don’t push people away—you try to do everything for people, and then they don’t get to do anything for you. Please don’t let any idiots tell you otherwise, okay?”
Patricia was bawling, even worse than before, right there in the park. She felt it pour down her face, and she was full of a sense that everything was broken and full of sweetness. She had never realized her sister thought that way about her.
“If anybody tries to tell you that you’re selfish,” Roberta said, “send them to me and I’ll snap their necks for you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Patricia stammered. They talked a bit more—about Roberta’s musical-theater disasters, and her latest attempt to go straight-edge—and then at last, Patricia felt ready to go home and face her roommates, who were on the couch like always. They slid over, without comment, to let Patricia watch TV with them.
* * *
PATRICIA HAD ANOTHER one of her dreams about being lost in the woods, this time running with a pack of deer, a barbarian yell in her throat and the scent of tree sap in her nostrils. She ran with her elbows and