The Radiator Hisses Steam and Drips Uncontrollable Scalding Droplets

Campari, repeat. Sweet vermouth, repeat. Swirl and twirl while smiling and nodding. Adriano arrived five minutes ago and I already feel warm between my legs. It’s as if the past two years are erased, along with the memory of the last time we slept together.

We discuss work woes. We whine about the miserable February weather. We commiserate with each other about our colleagues’ innate ability to balance work and social lives as if by magic spell. All I want to know, the question I need to ask, is if he’s still sleeping with his ex.

I force the itching quandary out of my mind and pour the clear liquid into the pint glass. Watching it trickle over the ice turns into a meditative practice. A distraction. A holy rite I’ve decided to take up to keep my thoughts from spilling out of my mouth.

The movie montage of the last time we slept together dances. My phone buzzes. I turn it over on the counter, willing it to stop.

“So, a conference?”

“Yup,” he replies, his voice rising at the end of the sound as if asking for validation. Chipper yet tinged with something else. I hope it’s an unspoken need for me. But the hope only lasts a second. Then the hope turns into a bitter elixir, and I hope I can be strong. I can’t let myself get sucked in. I need to find a good guy. Someone like my dad. Someone who always shows his hand. My parents’ relationship evokes both nausea and jealousy. Perfectly matched, professorial academics. Matching wits and similar salaries. Wanting the same things at the same time. Like me. They wanted me later in life so they could enjoy their youth and then the better part of middle age. And they did enjoy it. The dream.

Bless this breakfast bar for separating us. He leans against the quartz-topped barrier, the veins in his forearm pulsating. The rhythm of his body tempts my eyes away from my hands and the task of mixology. From the opposite corner of the living room we can hear the steam heat percolating. It hisses softly, getting ready to release more warmth.

“I’m giving a lecture tomorrow on the new cancer cocktail we’ve been working on. Dahlia, can you believe it? Two years of research and now it’s finally almost ready for testing.”

In a world of people who simply tolerate their jobs, Adriano is a passionate outlier. A nuclear pharmacist with an obsessive habit of clapping maniacally when he’s figured something out, thinning hair, and perfectly symmetrical lips that taste like fresh oysters.

At least, that’s how I remember them tasting.

Walking around the kitchen peninsula, he comes to stand beside me in the kitchen. He reaches for the drink. His arm brushes along me. My muscles tense, a reflex, a defense mechanism.

“Not yet, be patient,” I say, unclenching and blocking his outstretched arm. I seize the peeler and the orange, and gently flay the fruit. I didn’t offer to let him stay the night when he told me about the conference. But I did practice how to make the perfect orange peel for a Negroni. I can’t have him sleeping in my apartment again, the back and forth of pretending to set up the couch when we both know he’d end up in my bed. I’d learned my lesson years ago at the most honest brunch I’ve ever eaten. I remember the omelet tasting bland and disappointing. But our words had a bitter bite to them, sharpened with the truth.

They echo in my ears with the finality of it all. We can’t let that happen again. It complicates our friendship. We’re better off as friends. And friends we remained.

I ceremoniously hand him his glass topped with a curled strip of zest. My phone rattles again on the counter. I don’t bother flipping it back over to see who’s on the other line. This is the third time my mother has called today. Yee ala amri, I think in the fragments of Arabic she tried to teach me. The short phrase a plea of “oh my god.” An eye roll spoken with heavy emphasis on the yee, dragged out across two syllables.

“Tada!” I raise my glass in his direction. “Now drink up, I know you have an early morning.”

We clink our glasses, then remain silent, locked in a game of chicken. Who will finish their sip first? Which one of us will be the first to speak next? He gives me a small wink and mindlessly licks his bottom lip.

“Not too early,” he says. “I’m on stage at noon.” He loses both unspoken contests. A small victory for me.

I wish he’d cut his long hair by now. It’s more fitting for a righteous surfer than a scientist. With his fast-receding hairline, it would make sense to try a new style, but it’s as long now as half a decade ago. The brown waves kiss the sides of his jaw, and he tucks a strand behind his ear. So cute. So innocent. My fingers remember grasping onto his hair and sinking into his scalp as he sank deeper into me.

A crack of thunder breaks through from beyond my window. The sound seems to come from my own insides, from the dark place where my regrets and desires live. He’s watching me.

I gesture to the living room and lead us both to the couch. The layout of my apartment resembles a drunken trapezoid, leering toward a nearly acute angle at the front door. It feels like the walls are closing in on me, urging me out the door to work as quickly as possible so I can numb the deafening isolation in the one-bedroom apartment. A musty smell of clogged air filtration lingers in the corners of each room. It hovers in unwelcome clouds above the invisible thresholds separating furniture and my few objects d’art, all hand-me-downs from my family. The walls in the living room just beyond the breakfast bar need a fresh coat of paint and the ceiling above the radiator yellows with the embarrassing hue of unwanted wetness. The upstairs neighbor didn’t change their pan again. Bastards.

I lead the way to the living room cluttered with cheap furniture designed to look expensive. He follows me, his gray-green eyes tracing my movements.

I remember everything my mother taught me about hospitality at home. Everything she said about being brilliant and excellent at work not being an excuse for less than meticulous hostessing.

Tip number one: be gracious.

Tip number two: create a sense of warm hospitality.

Tip number three: don’t buy any of the same charcuterie we had during his last visit.  I added this last tip two years ago. Don’t set a romantic mood. Stop thinking about the sweaty tangle of limbs, the culmination of the years-long anticipation we’d felt working side by side in chem lab.

We sink into the couch at a safe distance, separated by two velvet throw pillows and an entire cushion’s-width of air.

“Was it raining when you walked over from the hotel?”

“Pouring,” he replies, reclining back on the couch and leaning ever so slightly toward me. I hadn’t noticed an umbrella or any moisture on his jacket or shoes. “That fat, wet snow rain.”

It’s mid-February in the damp North End where my apartment hides tucked away on a side street, and there is nothing to remark on the weather other than the all-around shittiness of it every damn day. Cold and constantly damp, this neighborhood transforms into an icy maze every winter. Pedestrians struggle to avoid piles of dirty plowed snow. I’ve accidentally strayed into a slushy puddle that threatens frostbite more than once. Yet I manage to survive the shocking cold and unbearable, soaking wetness of it all.

Cold I can bear. The endless tug of war with Adriano, not so much. He’s the mahogany beauty mark on my chest I refuse to have checked. Strangely shaped, beautiful, mostly benign. But maybe worthy of a second opinion. Without the cloying familiarity of his friendship would I even know who I am? Why I am the way I am?

Six years I’ve loved him. Six years I’ve watched as he dated her on and off and on again. Six years I’ve whiled away my present for a fickle future vision of what could be.

“Winter in Boston, what can you do,” he says, his teeth barely showing. There it is. That side smile, with the right side of his mouth curled up just enough to show his right incisor jutting over its neighbor ever so slightly.

“Tell me what’s new with you? We haven’t talked in what, a week? Feels like forever.” I nudge him in the ribs with my elbow, which encourages him to shift closer to me. Scooting away as imperceptibly as possible, I feign interest in the rosemary and sea salt crackers flanking the tangy slices of soppressata. I avoid eye contact with Adriano and the reflection of his watch glints refracted light into my eyes. The light kicks off the only framed photo, showing a quiet trio of laboratory professionals taking a respite from their respective fields in research, academia, and medicine. In the picture they stand on the lush lawns of my undergraduate university. How proud they were of me. How very proud. So proud in fact, the silver of the frame shines brighter, seeming to twinkle under the soft light of the made-to-look antique sconces on my wall. I wonder if they would be proud seeing me now, letting my self-control slip for my oldest friend, my cryptic confidante.

“Work, that’s really it. I haven’t had time to think about anything else, much less do anything else.” He says it in a flurry, rushing to the end of the sentence as if trying to bury some hidden meaning in the middle of his words. It’s easy enough to decipher. She’s back in the picture. If not her, someone. He always exaggerates about work when there’s a woman. I don’t take the bait.

A blast of rain knocks against the living room windows. The sound of it crashes like a distant wave and meets the slow exhalation of heat from the radiator. Its paint, reminiscent of the color of old cream left out to coddle in the sun, seems to flake with every new burst of water pressure.

“It’s getting nasty out there,” he says.

No shit, genius. My memory lapses. I forgot. His IQ makes him an actual genius. That and the fact he makes medicinal potions to help ease the suffering and pain of terminal cancer patients. A genial, generous genius.

A staccato alarm cuts through the air and we both reach for our phones, vibrating together in a single rhythm on the coffee table. The warning flashes across our screens: NOR’EASTER IN EFFECT.

“Should you head back to your hotel?” I blurt out, reaching for a Castelvetrano olive, slick with a bright marinade of blood orange and olive oil.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he says, mirroring my motions and snagging a pitted kalamata. His arm brushes against my thigh and my bottom half goes numb. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

I forget why we’re still friends for a brief second, then recount to myself he showed up that day. I needed him there and he did the hardest part, show up.

The heat of a stifling summer added a choking sadness to that day. Two years and three months ago the remnants of my extended family and a smattering of high school, college, and grad school friends piled into the quiet memorial hall. Adriano arrived alone, handsome and relaxed in a suit with no tie. I remember how he left two buttons undone on his crisp white shirt. He never felt comfortable in formalwear. I spotted him as soon as he closed his car door. I didn’t bother to wipe away my tears or smooth the bunched-up chiffon of my skirt. He beelined for me, taking me in both arms and bringing me in close to his chest.

I’d been living with my mother since my father died and avoiding her presence and sullen gaze and sharp swigs of malbec. Back in Adriano’s arms, I was home again. I freed more tears onto his shoulder and let my own shoulders roll back with the release. In front of my family and our friends and strangers he’d never seen before and never would again, he kissed me softly on the temple and then my forehead. That night after the funeral I asked him to take me to his hotel for a drink. My shoulders began hunching over from bearing the weight of mother’s sadness. It was only the third time we slept together and all I remember of it is waking up with his arms around my waist, protecting me from the world. Or keeping me trapped in the surrounding down comforter.

When he finally allowed a sliver of space between us, he took my hand in both of his. Adriano pressed a warm Xanax into my palm and brushed my lips with his in silent condolence. That day he showed up for me and stayed with me for three nights straight. When it comes down to the important things, the big moments, we’ve shown up for each other day after day, year after year. Even while living states apart.

With him securely working away at his Princeton lab deep in the bowls of New Jersey, friendship comes easily. Inches away from me on my couch, a minute after an unexpected storm warning, well, this situation presents a whole labyrinth of buried hurt I don’t want to dig through. Not now, not ever.

“I’m not trying to get rid of you at all,” I lie. That’s exactly what I want to do. Despite his presence as a permanent fixture in my emotional life, I know he can’t give me a commitment. He can’t give me fidelity. He can’t say I’m the only one. “I know how much the lecture means to you and how you have to rack up public speaking engagements each year. For the grant.”

“Look at you all worried about me,” he says, his fingertips finding my knee for a quick tap.

The patter of rain on the fire escape sounds tinny and far away but the glass shakes at the mercy of the raging winds. Breaking off a cracker for something to do with my hands, I take a too-big bite and choke. My drink does double duty as nerve elixir and obstruction clearer. I swallow. Sip. Sip again.

Our phones pierce the silence with another alert: MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR’S OFFICE ISSUING MANDATORY SHELTER IN PLACE ORDER. POLICE WILL BE ENFORCING LOCKDOWN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

“Maybe you were right,” Adriano tells me, settling into the couch as if he’s ready to ride out the storm with me no matter how many hours, days, or weeks it might take.

I stand up and feel the liquids jostling inside of me. The gin and vermouth and Campari rush around my veins and synapses. I head up to the breakfast bar to grab a bottle of mineral water I forgot to put on the coffee table earlier with the rest of the spread. “If you leave right now I’m sure you can be back in the hotel and safe in less than fifteen minutes.” I place the bottle on the table and reluctantly resume my position on the couch. I take a big sip of my bitter, bright drink and take my time swallowing. “I’m thinking of you.”

I’m not. I’m thinking of myself and what it’ll do to my resolve if he stays here tonight. Not only my resolve, my heart.

“You want to send me out into the storm? Come on, Dahlia. Have a heart.”

That’s the problem. My heart has always been accessible to him. I’ve always had a heart, a stupid, exhausting heart, and it beats for this frustrating man I can’t have.

The phone buzzes impatiently. Faraway from this couch and this city, the rest of the world chugs on. Four, I count. She’s called four times. Avoidance fails me. I have to pick up.

“Sorry, Adri, I have to get my phone.”

“Oh, is that what that sound is?” he says. “Go for it.”

The buzzing stops when I reach the counter. Three more missed calls from the saved contact North Shore Golden Valley. My count climbs to seven. I press the phone to my ear and catch Adriano’s eyes. I point toward the bedroom and head there in a half-jog.

“This is Dahlia Delgado. Can you please have someone connect me to Lana Mubarak’s room?”

“Ms. Delgado, thank god, we’ve been waiting for you to call back,” the fast-talking receptionist says. “Hold on and we’ll head over there with the cordless.” After all these years and all the thousands I pay North Shore, they couldn’t spring for a better system? Intercoms? Something?

“Is everything okay?” My voice comes out in a cracked whisper. I make out the sound of the receptionist’s soft sneakers squeaking on the vinyl hallway floor. A hallway I’ve walked down too many times to count in the last five years.

“She’s all right now, stable. But earlier this afternoon she had a bit of a chest episode.”

“Is it serious? Is everything okay?”

“The doctor has ruled out anything major. We were worried it was another mini stroke.”

I wish I didn’t have to make time for this. For her. It’s her own fault for having me so late in life. They both decided to keep pushing off the notion of a family until they’d established themselves and traveled to all their favorite spots “one last time.” And they weren’t satisfied with their academic accolades and travel escapades until they were about forty-five and forty-two respectively. And then came me. And then we were three. Until we were two. And now, most of the time, it feels like I’m the only one bearing the Delgado name.

I walk over to my recently made bed, climb up, and sit cross-legged. I can hear her tapping gently at the door. She must be pressing the cordless to her chest, because I can barely make out the sound of the words “phone” and “daughter” being said through the wooden portal.

“Dahlia? Habibti?”

The word for sweetheart sends a shiver of guilt through me.

“Aywa, ya Mama. How are you doing?” I hear the beep of machinery in the background.

“Malish, malish,” she reassures me. As if suffering two strokes and remaining shackled to a bed permanently could amount to an “all right” situation.

Adriano calls out to me from the living room. Just my name, in a soft singsong. I creak open my bedroom door and stage whisper a “just need a couple of minutes.”

“They’re worried about you,” I whisper into the phone, shutting the door. I keep my voice low, but the cracking, that I can’t help. I force back the feelings of guilt mixed with annoyance, blocking their way out of my throat. “Shoo sar?” I say in my broken Levantine dialect. They were too busy in the lab to teach me the proper grammar in both their languages, so I picked up what little Lebanese Arabic and Argentinian Spanish I could. A hodgepodge of culture and tongues and first-generation guilt.

“Ma hasal shee, ya habibti,” she says. I can hear a nurse, maybe the receptionist herself, fiddling with something. Perhaps she’s making a cup of tea for my feeble-bodied and addle-minded mother. At least they care at North Shore.

“It’s not nothing, Mama. They’ve been calling me all day but I’ve been busy.”

“Don’t make the same mistakes I did, ya ahlbi,” she says. Here we go. Even in her half-awake brain, the past can never leave me alone.

“I’m not. I love my work. Just like you did. Just like Papa did.”

More garbled words and rosy sentiments. Reassurance, reassurance, reassurance. The North Shore receptionist, nurse, whoever she may be, takes the phone. “Your mother’s fallen asleep, I’m afraid.”

I lay down on my bed and let gravity pull me into the velvet comforter. It does little to comfort me.

“But her vitals are stable. Her face lit up to hear your voice. Thank you so much for calling us back.”

Us. As if the us in this situation were this faceless woman and my mother. Breathing deeply isn’t doing anything spectacularly helpful for me. I keep inhaling and exhaling purposefully, but my mind is behind the door. Back to my reality. My unsatisfying, draining reality sitting twenty feet away in this crumbling apartment. He’s the only love interest I’ve truly been interested in for the better part of the last decade.

“Hey, sorry about that.” I walk back into the living room with my head floating high on my shoulders, and my heart slinking down into the cradle of my pelvis.

“Everything okay?” Adriano asks me, looking up with wet eyes, rounding like a beautiful cartoon. His eyes always get glassy when he drinks, as if the liquid fills him up with emotion that has one escape route.

“Oh yeah, you know, it was my mom.”

“How is she?”

“She’s fine. You know how it is, she’s always fine.” I reach for my drink and drain the glass. I carefully shift my focus away from the pinprickle on my heart and instead on the coy game we’re playing. The years of toying with the notion of friendship and the physical temptation of more serve as a sensual distraction. One I can’t help but welcome. “This weather sucks.”

“I guess I’m stuck here. But don’t worry, D, I’ll sleep on the couch. Like I always do.” The joke is meant to lighten the mood, but rips my insides instead. Some dormant creature that lives in my head thrashes wildly against my skull. A warning sign is begging to be heard inside my head. It’s shouting danger, danger, danger Dahlia Delgado.

The smell of his Acqua Di Gio cologne seeps into my skin and coats my throat with a growing sense of need. It’s a saltwater and lemony combination, masculine and wistful with an undertone of something heady. He’s been wearing it since I met him on my first day of Organic Chem. I turn my body to him. I know confrontation is the only trick to get him up, out the door, and out of my line of vision and range of smell.

I don’t want him to get hurt, or arrested, or swept away by the storm. But he can’t stay here. If we sleep together again, I’ll never stop drowning.

The sound of a heavy splash crashes against the window and I seize up in surprise. “I guess we have no choice,” I say. I shift my weight and try to regain a calm posture, but I can’t find a comfortable position no matter how I cross and uncross my legs. I cross them again. Wind howls around the buildings on my street, creating a tunnel of deafening blows. I shiver, my skin unsure if it’s experiencing a phantom chill from the outside world or shuddering under the balmy warmth inside. He slides toward me until we can’t get any closer without touching.

“There’s always a choice,” he replies, leaning into me. His arm finds its way around my shoulders, and when I turn to protest, his face pauses an inch from mine.

“Are you still seeing her?”

We sit in a strange embrace. My fingers crawl their way up his leg and settle somewhere on his muscular thigh. One touch won’t kill me. His leg is warm and familiar, like the sensation of drinking hot mulled cider, spicy and strong after a day of making snow angels.

“What does it matter? She’s not here. She’s just a distraction.” He’s trying to be charming, flippant, easygoing. But he doesn’t realize he’s making light of us. Of me.

“And I guess I’m a distraction whenever you come up to Boston?”

“Don’t be like that, D. You’re anything but a distraction. You’re a compulsion. My compulsion.”

I know what’s going to happen next. What I always let happen. His soft hands find my face, framing my mouth. He traces the outline of my nose, my cheeks, and finally my lips. He waits. We split the lead. He knows he’s done enough now. My lips search for his and I lean toward him.

Finding their way into my hair, his hands discover me as if this is our first kiss. In actuality our first kiss surprised us both. Years ago, in my car after an exceptionally long study session in the library, our goodbyes lingered. That night we drew closer to each other as if wading through pomegranate molasses. The blanket of night acted as a viscous force of sexual energy and created a ferocious hunger in me. It was only a kiss. But I knew I wanted more then. I wanted everything.

This time we’re faced with that urgency. That impatient hunger. Does he want to find out if my body has changed as much as I want to feel myself shake under his touch?

He pulls away for a second, grazing his lips across mine and up to my nose. He gives my chin a quick peck. “You taste the same.” He continues to kiss my neck and I remind him that kissing was never our problem.

The wind beats against the brick, reverberating. I sink into the couch, sink deeper beneath the weight of Adriano’s sinewy form. The darkness envelops us, and I realize our bodies are choreographing the graceful shadows writhing in a slow happiness. He laces his fingers into mine and draws my arm up above my head. I bring my other arm up to meet our hands. I relinquish control. It’s the only way I’ll feel him the way I want to. By giving up.

I press my hips into his. He gathers my dress up at the most excruciating pace. Because he’s moving so slowly, the silky fabric tickles my thighs, my stomach, my breasts and I shiver. This time won’t be like the last time. This time, I won’t overthink it.

When we’re both naked I change course and take charge. I’m going to get exactly what I want from him, from his body, from tonight. A momentary flicker of distraction comes over me. Can he see my thighs have expanded ever so slightly, the result of hours in the lab and a lack of time for the gym? I open his mouth with my tongue to make myself forget I need more than his body, and push out the thoughts I worry will seep into him through our touching skin.

He’s as turned on as I am, and within a minute, I guide him into me. The smell of his cologne envelops us in a sticky, beachy breeze.

Searching for the digital clock next to the television, I realize we’ve slept through the entire night in the living room. The morning sun peeks through the storm and creates a small patch of light on my dark green carpet. We lay facing each other on the couch. Fingers interlocked, our palms kissing, he brushes his lips across my forehead in gratitude. I wonder how long he’s been awake.

Our bodies find each other at the different touch points we know best. A toe caressing his shin as he paints intricate shapes into my lower back with his fingers.

“Why don’t you stop seeing her?” I can’t bring myself to say her name. As pretty and soft as it sounds, it cuts through me like a heavy, rusted knife. Bethany. The thought of her rattles like an unwelcome bell rung out in perpetuity.

Instead of pulling away at the mention of her, he wraps me in his arms tighter. I search his face for a flicker of something more, and realize I’m holding my breath. When I release the stale air, he says, “nothing’s changed. I still live there. You live here.”

I roll over, turning away from him. “Thanks for the geography lesson, Adriano. Can you take this seriously?” I stretch for my dress and quickly slip it over my head. My mother’s anxious dissection of every word spoken, every emotion felt, every choice made is an invisible veil over my every thought, influencing every move I make, every choice I so consciously take. Her refrain “life is serious, only silly people with unfulfilled dreams treat the gift of life cavalierly,” plays and stops and starts again in my mind. The record is always trudging on, but this morning it’s skipping.

“What do I need to take seriously? You know what this is.”

Do I know? It never felt like I understood the chemistry between us. More than friendship, less than love. For me, never less than everything. Over the years he stayed clamped shut, cut off from me in so many ways. And all this despite our endless talks and the way he encouraged my dreams in and out of the lab. The lab was never really my dream. It was easier to chase a major picking up the work of my father. As if some innate tingling sensation drove my choice. An involuntary guiding hand foretelling his demise and my boring acquiescence.

I walk to the kitchen and hear him call out my name. A low sizzle of steam from the cast iron accordion in the corner follows. I fill a glass with tap water and chug it quickly to stifle the words bubbling to the surface. Slamming the glass down, I look up and he’s hovering above me. Tousled hair, his trousers on and zipped but unbuttoned. The familiarity of his haphazard state makes me long for something we’ve only had in spurts over the years. Something I worry about is mostly in my imagination. But what happened last night cements the reality of our physical relationship. I wanted him. And now, I want him more than anything. But I can’t tell him that.

I eke out a thin-sounding, “I don’t know what you want.” The truth, I fear, is that maybe I don’t know exactly what I want. This, with Adriano, has always been easier. So much easier than defining the exact characteristics I want in a partner. Or, if I even want the hassle of someone at all. Always kowtowing and compromising to another’s whims and preferences. It’s too demanding a chore to contend with on a daily basis. The unscientific, exhausting posturing of it all. Dating and mating, loving and pretending. Messy. Too messy and unpredictable for my data-based sensibilities. Scientific order is in my blood.

Adriano on the other hand seems to have some idea of what he wants as he continues the conversation I can’t help but try to abandon. “I want you,” he says. “Our friendship keeps me whole.” It’s the most honest thing he’s ever spoken out loud to me.

“But you know how I feel, you must know. You have…” I start, but he takes my hands and lifts them above my head, distracting me in a silly moment of dancing.

“You know I love you.” I release my hands. There it is, said in the plainest way. My voice cracks once again.

I refill my water and head back to the couch, leaving him alone with the weight of my words. My cramped half-kitchen is perfectly sized for one person. The makings of a quiet life alone. A mini dishwasher, slender garbage can, one-cup coffeemaker. A home for one, a fate sealed without my ever acknowledging it. Trying to be casual and cute, I settle back into the couch, resting my feet beneath me. The sweat of the back of my thigh threatens to slide me right off the couch. I quickly stretch my legs out, avoiding the reminder of how amazing last night felt. How could it have been so different than last time? It’s the storm. The storm and the irresistible rhythm of a sizzling radiator.

“Dahlia, come on,” he says, taking a few steps into the living room to keep a safe distance between us. “You don’t love me like that. Not in any romantic way. We’re friends. Great friends. You, you’re,” he falters. “You’re the friend of my life and I want to keep it that way.” His words are matter-of-fact.

“You fuck all your friends like that? It’s amazing you don’t have more of them.” Bile rises in my throat. I let my face hide behind my palms. They smell like a beach at sunset, thick with the scent of an artificial tropical breeze synonymous with sunscreen. It’s his cologne, threatening to poison me.

Whatever electricity has existed between us over the years has been a third party in every room we’ve ever occupied together. Our minds find meaning in each other, a counterpoint in a confusing and disappointing world. Every kiss we’ve chalked off as a mistake, a hunger to make our bodies want more of each other than what we have. But it’s too much to bear alone.

“Dammit, Dahlia, why do you have to complicate this?”

“You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” I feign interest in the cheese board that we didn’t bother to clean up. I lift up an olive, and drop it. Then a brittle breadstick. I poke the hunk of cheese melting along with the waves of steam heat from the radiator opposite the table. The thought of my mother’s disdain at this unsightly, stinking mess makes me choke back a laugh. A hostess never lets her guard down. A hostess should never serve the entree before clearing appetizers.

“Cake? You mean camembert?” His thin chuckle kicks off the walls and smacks me right in the chest. How can he be so fucking flippant at a time like this?

“Whatever.” It’s the only thing I can think to utter out loud that doesn’t make me sound shrill, or needy, or both.

“Huh. I guess that’s my problem. I want what I want but nothing more. Because we just can’t,” he says.

Making quick work of the remaining space between us, he reaches down to me and picks me up by my hands. He kisses me hard without saying a word. The words struggle in his mouth and try to shout through his lips. But it isn’t working. I need to know. Needing to hear it with his voice. Letting myself relish in the velvet abyss of the kiss, I wait. I sink. It’s time.

I push him away and break free, stepping back a few paces. Finding a hold of the plush upholstery of one of my barstools, I hop up and sit in the swivel chair letting my feet dangle.

“Say it.”

He won’t. But I have to ask. My eyes scan the room for a burst of encouragement. I spot a drop of condensation as it slips from the radiator. I can hear the plink of it when it meets the aluminum tray hidden beneath, catching the stray drips.

“What exactly do you want me to say?” His measured tone slaps me. After he stoked the fire in my body, I wish he had the decency to admit his feelings. If only to himself.

He finds his way over to me, another game of ping pong with our small movements serving volleys. The self-preservation routine we both know so well. I wish he’d miss and finally admit defeat. He unfurls my fingers softly. Planting a soft kiss on each fingertip, one by one, his lips speak into my palm a language all human beings know fluently. The words I need to hear are so close.

“Tell me you love me.”

“Why?” he replies. The noisy clatter of a fresh burst of water pressure interrupts him and he turns over his shoulder sharply as if to tell the radiator to mind its own damn business.

“Why? Because I need to know. I know you feel it. Why can’t you say it?” A slow exhalation of hissing releases. The pressure is peaking. It’s already balmy and the air threatens to precipitate inside the house, fat with humidity.

Adriano drops my hand and moves across the room, leaving me alone at the barrier between my kitchen and living room. The barstool swivels along with him and I’m facing the vast emptiness of my unadorned wall. Righting myself to face him, I see him make his way into the kitchen.

“Adri, please.”

He stops. He turns. His mouth opening and closing, as if the words lost their way along the path from his brain to his mouth.

“Dammit Dahlia. Of course I love you,” he says. “I love you as a friend, as so much more, so much more I can barely concentrate on my life.” He’s shouting now, but there’s no anger in any of his words. His voice stays even. Grabbing onto the back of one of the chairs at my small bistro table, he picks it up and slams it down onto the floor. And again. My neighbors must be riveted.

“Dahlia, if we lived in the same place I’d have to give it a chance. Give us a real chance. But we don’t. So I can’t.”

I want to tear his eyes out. But I don’t. I can’t. It’d be like destroying my own darkest wishes for some semblance of that itching, volatile, nagging need to feel love. I’d be tearing out my own eyes, the recognition of my soul in his warped being.

The anger dissolves from my clenched fists. The triviality of this entire situation washes over me. This apartment is only big enough for one person. I’ve molded my life of long lab hours and distant relatives to keep my heart protected on an inaccessible island. A walking, talking, breathing, fucking island of indecisiveness.

He walks over to the refrigerator and takes out eggs and bacon and butter. The sound of the rain hasn’t dissipated much over the last twelve hours. The day brightens but the wallop of wintry mix hasn’t completely passed. Yet.

“Breakfast?” he asks me, moving around the kitchen with the confidence of someone who cooks the same thing, in the same place, every day. He peers over the counter, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to answer. The familiar sound of aluminum on wood fills my ears. I wonder where I put my phone. I make my way to the coffee table. It’s her.

I nod toward Adriano and mutter the word I hate most in modern language. “Sure.” It’s the most indecisive of responses. But my mind is made up and the final decision is mine. I won’t give him the validation of depth or pleading.

I pick up the phone. My mother needs me. I listen to her ask when I can come visit.

“Today. I’ll be there in a little while.”

Smoky scents of bacon fill the entire house with the smell of comfort food. Its sizzling sound demands my attention, competing with another burst of steam from the living room for fastest rhythm on this languid morning. I walk into the bedroom and ready my purse. Phone, keys, wallet, photo identification for registering at the front desk.

This will be the last time. It has to be. After today, Adriano is no longer welcome in my house or my body or my thoughts.

His fingers clasp the edge of the breakfast bar. He’s still waiting. One eyebrow lifts in anticipation before he relinquishes his gaze and turns back to cooking. My decision lingers on my tongue, final. But for now, he can make me breakfast. Even though it’s wasteful, I know I won’t be eating it.

“Is scrambled okay?” he asks without looking over his shoulder. He’s busy working on our breakfast at the stove.

I see my coat hanging on the hook next to the front door. I walk over and put it on, then call back to him, “scrambled is fine.” I won’t make it back in time for breakfast. And he’ll have to leave for the lecture. This time is the last time.

The door closes behind me. All around my body, the gray hallway reverberates with the satisfying sound of silence. And freedom.