What Do You Write In Your Notebook? (Short Story)

What do you write in your notebook?

“What do you write in your notebook?”

He studied her, weighing what he would say, what he could say.

“Why can’t you tell me?” She said, smiling, as if trying to illuminate the darkness that had just come over his face.

He removed his hand from her inner thigh and without warning a distance began growing between them, until she realized he was leaning against the passenger window.

“Do you write about me?” She knew the answer before the words left her.

He closed his eyes and opened them. “I only write fiction. I used to write about myself, but I don’t anymore.”

She realized he was no longer looking at her but starring at the rain as it collected on the windshield, blurring the reds and golds of the night. Instinctively she pulled her skirt down. “I used to keep a journal, before high school, before…” Her voice trailed off, then she said, suddenly with a flare of impulse, “I’ve never gone back and read anything that I wrote. Its still sitting in my closet. I see it every time I can’t find the right outfit. I pull out everything in a giant yard sale and there it is.”

A white light breached the drizzling darkness of the rain. Just a few minutes more and he would be gone again.

“Why don’t you?” He was so obviously disinterested that it was painful.

“What?” She said, knowing perfectly well.

“Why don’t you read it? Are you afraid?”

“Afraid?” She scoffed, “Why would I be afraid?”

“Because your not the same person.”

“How would you know? We’ve only been a thing for like three months.” She said, her voice changing as she spoke, taking on its normal characteristic, the front that had to be presented whenever the conversation became too serious.

“Thing.” He whispered. “Thing.”

The white light in the distance grew closer, illuminating the dock and wharf that the lonely car inhabited. 

“I like our thing.” He said. At first it sounded real to her, romantic even, but as his words echoed in the silent patter of rain she came to feel that they were forced. He had just forced himself to say it.

He stared at the white light as it loomed toward them, counting down the seconds.

“I like our thing too.” She said. It didn’t sound right, but she couldn’t bare to say this, to admit it to the open air.

The sound of a fog horn breached the fogless night as she watched his hand brush a lock of her hair from her face. “Two more weeks.” His lips brushed hers, and both kept their eyes open as they always did, as if it were some special aspect of their relationship that was too special to be acknowledged. She used to giggle when they did it. She did not giggle about it now. He was getting ready to go now, that was why he had kissed her, like it was some standard procedure.

She was the girl who could talk for hours about relationships, who reveled in the questions and quagmires of her girlfriends, who came up with a diagnosis or explanation every time the boy in question didn’t text back or said something inexplicable. She was all of these things and she did not have a single piece of advise for herself at this moment, nor had she for the past three months.

She looked at him, not knowing what she wanted, only knowing that if she didn’t say it now there wouldn’t be another chance. “You said one week.”

The rain pattered as if to muffle the softness of her voice, “Thats what you said when you left; that it would only be one week.” He held her gaze hoping she would look away, that she wouldn’t say it, then she did. “It was supposed to be one week, and now its stretched into four and your leaving for two more.”

“Well, its not like I was planning on staying this long.” He sucked in his breath. “Look its got nothing to do with you. I just can’ be distracted when I’m writing.”

“So I’m just a distraction for you?” It was a silly thing to say, all the same it was how she felt. 

“No,” He said, stalling for time as the white light drew closer. “Its just that I don’t get anything done when your around. Nothing gets written because all I’m thinking about is-” He shot a glance at her knee where the smooth skin met the yellow blue pattern of her skirt. “All I’m thinking about is when I’m gonna see you next and what we did the last time I saw you.”

“I just don’t understand.” She felt her eyes water.

“Its not like this is some massive change in the dynamic of our… ‘thing’.”

“I just don’t understand.” A tear formed, teetering at the corner of her eye like some tight rope walker who realized too late that he was no tight rope walker.

“We only ever see each other two or three times a week anyway.”

For a moment she thought the tear was under her control, then the moment passed as it painted a line of glistening skin down her cheek. “I just don’t understand what you want me to do.” She sobbed in silence, watching his body go rigid and cold, not from the fact that she was crying, but from the knowledge that he was the cause. “Who do you want me to be?”

He didn’t answer, he didn’t look away, he just sat there frozen.

It seemed that all the life had left him, all of it except the light of his eyes. It was obvious that he was thinking, was conjuring up the image of the girl, no, the woman of his desires. Real or fictional it made no matter, for this woman existed in his mind, and the products of his mind were always more real than what he could touch or see.

“I just want you to be you.” He lied. “But I think we both know that your not altogether sure of who you are.”

He leaned in, not to kiss, not to end the moment, but to make it so that all they could see was each other. “I think you used to know who you were, and at some point you stopped, stopped writing in your journal. You stopped writing about yourself when you stopped liking yourself.”

“You just said you don’t write about yourself.” She sobbed. “You always say that your not writing anything real, just swords and spaceships and airlocks with ticking time bombs attached.”

“Thats a relatively recent phenomenon.”

“Since when?”

“Since three months ago.” This time it was no lie.

And then she understood. “Because of me.”

He didn’t bother to deny it.

“You stopped liking yourself when we started.”

“No look, it has nothing to do with you.” But his eyes were no longer on hers but on the white light, which now loomed large in front of them, and it was a lie; it had everything to do with her.

“Its got nothing to do with you, its just that I’m-” But his words were lost in the patter of rain.

“You don’t like yourself when your with me. Its obvious. You don’t like yourself when your with me.”

“Its nothing wrong with you. I’m just like this.”

“Well clearly there is something wrong with me because you can’t bare to be around me. You have to go off to the island, and I have to drive an hour just to meet you half way, which I don’t mind doing, and then all we do is…”

“Exactly,” He said, exasperated, his voice rising to overcome the ever present beat of the rain. “All we do is sit in your car and make-out and have sex. Because thats all we ever do, thats all we’ve ever done.”

The tears were flowing now, taking over her field of vision. “Are you breaking up with me?” She sobbed. “Because this time I’ll go.” Then in one bursting sob she managed: “I just don’t know.”

“And then you do that.” He accused. “Every time I try to bring it up you break down and assume that I’m gonna leave you.”

“Then what are you doing? Trying to make me feel terrible about myself?”

“No.” He was almost yelling now. “I’m trying to figure out what it is thats wrong between us and every time I try it hurts your feelings and I stop the moment I see your tears.”

“I’m trying. Your just not telling me what it is.”

“Thats because i’m trying to figure out what it is.” He stopped himself, as if realizing how angry he sounded. “Its like-,” He sighed. “Its like I’m using you for sex.”

“Are you?” She said expectantly.

“Like we’re using each other.” He continued. “And sometimes I get the feeling that thats secretly what you want, to be used and cast aside.”

She didn’t answer.

“Every time I think about it I remember what you told me.” His face was in his hands now. “The day I lost my virginity. That I would be the same person afterward, that its meaningless and only feels special later on.” It would have been comical to hear such a gruff voice say these things, but there was nothing comical about him. “You were right about the first part. I am the same person. And you were wrong about the second part. It doesn’t feel more special, if anything it feels less special.”

The words echoed soundlessly on her lips. “Less special.”

“And you remember what else you told me?”

“What?” She whispered.

“Before we had sex for that first time. My first time. You wanted to on our first date, and I made you wait. I made you wait a whole month because I was sure that by then I would be sure if I wanted to or not. Well the truth is I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t make a decision. I decided not to decide. And then you know what came into my head? You remember that thing you told me?”

She knew what he would say somehow before he even said it.

“I thought to myself: Why not?”

She sucked in her breath as the pit of her stomach fell.

“The story you told me the day we first met, off hand like it was nothing. Some boy in your class pulled you aside on that field trip to New Hampshire, asked if you wanted to follow him into the woods, and I asked you why… and you said ‘why not? Those were the same words that went through my head just a few seconds before I had sex for the first time.” He paused to let it sink in, “Why not?”

Her mouth went dry. She was staring at her navel without knowing when she started. She tried to swallow. “I feel terrible.”

“I’m not angry at you. I make my own decisions. I decided not to decide. Nothing about it is your fault. Its not some tragedy. It just… happened. I lied remember. I lied about being a virgin because i wanted to lose my virginity. I lie every time you ask for reassurance about our relationship, because the truth is I’m not sure, —-

“Well I’m just horrible is that what you want me to say? I just wanna be used and not discuss anything and hook up with random guys and why don’t you just get on your ferry now and go back to your island because its all your thinking about.”

He pulled his eyes from the white lights of the ferry, which had now arrived in front of them. He turned to her: “I don’t care about what you did before us. I don’t like it when you talk about it because you always mention it nonchalantly, as if it means nothing, as if its perfectly natural to just get pulled into the woods or find yourself drunk in some guy’s car. I’m not saying that your an immoral person, I’m saying you treat it like its nothing. It hurts me because all I can think about is you hating yourself afterward and not knowing why, and numbing the pain by doing it all over again.”

She no longer looked sad or shaken, nor was her face wet with tears. She looked limp. “And what about what you did? Sleeping with that girl.”

“I didn’t sleep with her. The only girl I ever slept with is you.”

“Slept in the same bed.” The words came out not as part of a list of argumentation, but as a sign of defeat. “And then you try to break up with me because you can’t stand that you did it to me and then expect me not to be worried that your gonna break up with me without warning like you did that night.”

“Would you rather that I flittered about pretending that everything was okay? Would you rather I pretend that girl never existed?”

“No,” She said, her voice rising. “But I’d like it if you didn’t treat our relationship as an experiment, as something to be written about.”

“Sure.” Was all he managed to say.

“Do you remember what you told me the night you tried to break up with me? That sometimes you do things just to see what will happen?”

“Yah.” He whispered in recognition.

“You keep telling me that sex is meaningful, or that it can be, that I should feel guilty about having so much sex before us,”

“I never said you should feel guilty.”

“And you treat me with respect unlike all the other guys I’ve been with, but the thing is you also treat me, this relationship, like its an experiment, like your just trying to get material to write about. But the thing is I’m a real person. This is real. You sent me that mean text when my application got rejected and on halloween you told me you were worried you were only with me because I’m beautiful.”

“I wanted to see what you would say. It was on my mind and I wanted to see what you would say regardless of your feelings.”

“Regardless of my feelings? What does that even mean.”

“It means that the truth matters more than your feelings.”

“What does matter to you? If you didn’t constantly say otherwise I’d think that nothing does.” She glanced at the time, then at the white light. “Your ferry is here.” She didn’t want him to go. She didn’t want him to stay. And she realized that he was equally indecisive.

If he got on the ferry they could postpone the conflict for another two weeks. Maybe he would come home like he promised and she would be able to visit him after school as they had done before, or perhaps he would stay for another few weeks and they would have to meet halfway again. 

A minute passed in sullen silence.

“And what do you mean the sex has gotten less special? What does that even mean?” She said, as if angry.

“It means that it still feels like ‘why not?’ It never feels like how I thought it would feel.”

“Okay well you can get out of my car now.”

“You don’t get to do that.”

“Yah I do its my car. Get out.”

“Not this time.”

“Your going to miss your ferry.”

“Look I don’t expect you to just know what it is you feel inside, but if you won’t spend time thinking about it and analyzing it then it leaves me over here not knowing what to say, or what to ask.”

“What do you want from me? I mean seriously, what is it that you expect me to give that I haven’t already? You know normal relationships aren’t like this.”

“Is that a real thing? A normal relationship. Would you want one of those? Because thats something I can’t give you. Even if I could, even if it would make you happy I still wouldn’t.”

Somehow the air didn’t feel so cold. The emotions of the past weeks flooded up to the brim of her consciousness, and then spilled over and she let loose the one accusation that had been at the tip of her tongue for months. “Do you deny it then?”

“Deny what?” He said, knowing perfectly well what.

“Do you deny that you were thinking about breaking up with me all those times? The day before you left for Haiti, Halloween, and the last time I met you halfway.”

There it was.

He screwed up his face in concentration. “I don’t know what I’m thinking about in those moments. Its like I’m lost, and I know that I can end it and not have to worry about it anymore. If we broke up I could just move on with my life.”

“Why don’t you then,” She said, her tears returning. “Why don’t you just get on with your life.”

“The fact that you propose it like that is proof that your equally lost. You don’t know what to do, what it is you want, but theres this easy out. Thats what your looking at every time we have one of these moments, when you stare off into space, your imagining what your future will be like without me, how you’ll cope, how things will be simpler, how it will or won’t suck. I imagine the exact same thing. You think it would be a relief, and it probably would be.”

“A relief,” Her lips whispered, “A relief.” Then she said, “Why don’t you.”

“I think we both know thats not a question. Thats a proposition.”

“You think I’m asking you to break up with me?”

“Thats exactly what your doing. If you had any idea what went through my head on Halloween when you said that to me.”

“What went through your head?”

“A lot of things. Everything.”