Nearly 27,000 words

“We’re already in a relationship,” Bill says. “You realize that, don’t you?”

I’m holding my cordless phone, the one that starts to falter after a half hour and die twenty-five minutes later. I’m balancing on one foot on the battered, stained carpet in my living room. The other foot is tracing a pattern on the coffee table, a spiral, in and then out, the repetition a source of strength. I’m swinging a shoelace at my cat. He bats and hisses, then slinks off to lick himself and glare happily.

“I didn’t get the memo,” I say.

“You think this is a joke, don’t you?” I picture him in his own home, surrounded by the detritus that gives him inspiration for his art. He works in metals and moldings, throwing in fire for the random danger of it all. “I jacked off thinking of you today. You think that’s not love?”

My stomach is sour, my brain flattered. The intersection is a familiar place. It’s a bottomless black pit, a sucking hole of emotion and need.