Catch and Release | Melissa Flores Anderson
He treats me like a pot he’s slowly simmering on the stovetop for weeks before turning up the heat. And as it’s about to boil over, he picks it up and sets it in the sink, then walks away.
He does this without warning, without notice. The compliments, the flirty emojis, the late-night messages come to an abrupt halt.
I know Eric has blocked me again. I’m not stupid. Like the tittering, 20-something girls he usually dates. Like I probably was 10 years ago when we met. We’re not dating. That’s part of our agreement. Like how I can’t be upset if he disappears for a while. I’m the one in the committed relationship with someone else.
I run the dirt trail along the creek behind his old house and soothe myself with a playlist of songs about being ghosted. The dappled shade of oak trees cools my flushed skin and I try not to think of our one night together a few blocks away; the first iteration of his never-ending game of catch and release.
He caught me in a weak moment at a party under a canopy laced with twinkling lights that blocked the stars. I started the afternoon feeling glamorous in a white dress with my hair in beachy curls around my face. But that feeling dispersed when I saw a guy nod in my direction and overheard him say, “She’s a little cute, but she needs to join a gym or something.”
Then Eric appeared and said, “You look lovely in that dress.”
He handed me a glass of sangria in a solo cup. I followed him around to the front of the house where we sat down on a wicker bench. From there we could see the stars above and we took turns pointing out constellations.
I’d never noticed Eric before. He was ordinary, average height, average build in clothes of neutral tones. But that night I saw something extraordinary under the soft porchlight in his dark eyes, a storm of need and hunger directed at me.
He stopped looking at the stars and touched the back of his hand to my face.
“I’ve always wanted you,” he said, his eyes locked on me as his whiskered face rubbed against mine for our first kiss. “I’ve always liked you.”
I melted into him.
“You are stunning,” he said. “You’re so gorgeous.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Of course,” he said, and took my hand to lead me to his bed.
The glow of his desire turned me into a wanted, beautiful thing. He marveled at the body I wanted to shrink into something smaller.
In the morning, he curled against me, his hand cradling my right breast. My over-active imagination spun together future dates and nights spent in that drafty, old house.
But it didn’t last. He had a job offer in Austin.
“I don’t know if I’ll be back. I can’t ask you to wait.”
Seven years later and seven cities for him, I am still in the same place. Waiting for him to come back online.
Three months without a word and he reappears.
Sorry I’ve been MIA. I’ve been sick for a while. I deleted all my apps. I could barely concentrate on work.
He says he had a weird illness, Ramsay Hunt Disease. He sends a picture of a kitchen counter with dozens of pill bottles from CVS and Walgreens with his name in bold black as proof. An illness so rare he had to go to more than one pharmacy to gather treatment.
Sorry you’ve been feeling so awful. Must have been hard to go through that alone.
That is a dig at him. I want to remind him that I am not alone. That I have someone who loves me, the thinner version of me that I am now. While he’s dreaming of me in sad motel rooms and the guest bedrooms of friends.
He has no home at the moment. He gave up his last apartment under the pretense of adventure. He sends pictures of his journey, dry desert scenes of New Mexico and Arizona.
Wish you were here.
I dole out one-sentence replies slowly, once or twice a week.
#NomadSummer. Sounds like fun, I write, though really, I think maybe he’s just on the move again because he couldn’t make his rent.
I resist letting him back in, but I’m like Pavlov’s dog when I hear the particular buzz of that app we use.
I post a pic of date night with the man who loves me, my hair done up and smoky eyes, and I hear the buzz before the main course arrives. It’s like an eyelash irritating my cornea, drawing all my attention. I can’t see anything else until I look at it.
You look so beautiful, like the night we were together.
The simmer starts again.
At least you have stability and someone who cares about you. No one has ever made me feel important. No one loves me, he complains.
I almost did, once. Twice. Three times.
My exes always seem to want me back, he writes one night.
I’m not an ex, I type.
Didn’t count you. You were something...more.
Really, I am an old one-night stand, but I indulge him after midnight, like a Cinderella in reverse. We tell each other love is one thing and want is something else entirely. So all these conversations are okay.
Eric turns up the heat from a thousand miles away. He recalls intimate details of our one night together, like he’s been playing it over in his head all this time. Like I have played it over in my own head. If he asked, I’d join in on the road.
But instead, he plays his constant game of catch and release.
Eric blocks me every time I am moments away from typing I love you.
Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx Californian and an award-winning journalist. Her creative work has been published by Vois Stories, the Placing Poems project, sPARKLE&bLINK, Rigorous Magazine, Pile Press and Moss Puppy Magazine. Her work “Not a Gardener” was featured in City Lights Theater Company’s The Next Stage and Play on Words San Jose. She has read pieces in the Flash Fiction Forum and Quiet Lightning reading series. Follow her on Twitter @melissacuisine or IG @theirishmonths