“What...what’s…wrong…?” Kattar stammers, squinting at me like he’s trying to study something miles away or bring his eyes into focus.

I could just start ranting, again.

I could explode, and go off like a little sociopathic firecracker the same way I have five hundred other times.

But maybe I’m getting old.

Or I’m just tired.

I feel more like salt water than sparks or fire, and it pours out more like tears than anything else as I just try my best, hopelessly, fragile-y to explain the way I’m feeling like I’ve forgotten how to be a woman or something.

Maybe I’m just becoming the definition of sanity. Crazy as that sounds. Trial and error has proved time and time again that he’s not - nobody’s going to get it - put two and two together - understand or make sense of me if I don’t at least start saying something.

Not even me.

The longer I keep it in my head, the more convoluted this emotional gobbledygook becomes, and I’m…

Tired.

 Tired of brooding - tired of crying in the dark, alone, because I refuse to admit that I prefer to cry with someone.

I’ve done that for more than a decade.

I just need- want to be held - really really want to be held. Even if I’m grown. Even if I don’t really ‘need it.’ Even if it’s just sentimental nonsense.

It’s been at the forefront of my agony for as long as I can remember. At least since Junior High.

We used to be affectionate all the time when I was little. Hugs and kisses until my hair and face didn’t have a single square inch my mother and father's adoration hadn’t anointed. And then like that it was just gone.

Everything.

But I’m not, and sometimes I wish I w…

I wish I was be-

It’s just been a bad day. It’s just been a bad day.

I wish I was better at figuring out how to live. It seems like everybody else is so much better at it than me.

I don’t even know how to speak. Mouthing words babyishly without any noise coming from between these quivering lips.

My voice sounds like it’s coming from a creature buried in the earth - or miles deep - trying to be heard by a saving grace oceans away.

There’s a line like that.

“I’m just…”

Done.

I barely hear myself,  my voice a whisper, my thoughts almost as faint. All feeling, all emotion, gives way to a hush almost as deathly silent as the grave as I force myself to keep forcing the words, however senseless, from between lips that are more inclined to stay sealed.

For what reason?

Like he’ll tell me I’m overreacting?

He’d never do that, I know. But it still feels harder than it should just to admit…

I guess I’m a hypocrite.

Though that should be no surprise at this point.

It’s terrifying to wear anything as fragile as a heart on your sleeve.

Licita…

Breathe.

“I’ve had a really terrible day…,” it sounds weak and whimpery, but it might as well.

What more do I have to draw from at this point?

“...and then you just…addressed me at the door…like you don’t even want to see me…and I can’t…”

The irritability is melting out of his face and being replaced by that expression I know a little better. Quiet, defensive, worry. As his eyes get a little rounder, and he reaches out a hesitating hand to wipe the tears from my face-

“-What happened today?”

“I r-” 

My voice breaks itself off before I can let the statement fall out of my mouth.

I can’t tell him about running into Shannon’s little sister. 

It’s stupid for me to be making a big deal out of it in the first place when there are a dozen and one real problems - actual tangible problems - not just irrational forms of panic that live in my devastated head to be dealt with. Those come spilling out first. And so violently and suddenly it’s more like vomiting sobs than talking or breathing.

I had said I wasn’t going to…

Have another meltdown.

I’m tir…

Tired. Tired. 

Kattar is looking at me with an expression I hate every time I see it, even though I know I should be grateful for sympathy, at the very least. Sympathy without empathy. Because he’s never going to understand - God - with everything in me I hope he’ll never understand - what it means to be as messed up and disgusting as me-

And he almost seems like he’s afraid of it.

It. Me. My emotions. My flaws. My life. My past. To even be around or to try to touch the chaos called the woman he calls his own.

Or doesn’t call…

I force myself to stop crying out of my last scrapings of pride, or dignity, alone, and just shake my head as the words come out in something like a gasp and a whisper.

“I’m tired of this, Kat. Everything…”

And that look-

Washes out the first, with an all-new kind of fear that seems to permeate his entire being.

One of his hands raises rapidly nearly to his face with something like alarm but lowers again at a wary, abstracted pace.

I don’t think he’s thinking the same things I am.

But if I mean that much to him, I wish he would just…

Prove…

“Ti…tired of what?” He asks quickly, trying to keep his voice steady, trying to keep his eyes on me and not on me at the same time - looking like some sort of beautiful hurricane as his pale face fades from shades of subtle pink to a white so white it’s almost gray.

“My job - trying to work these projects and interviews and magazines - and my agent,” I list definitively, trying to be as crystal clear as possible without looking his white-lipped anxiety in the face. It comes out as a slow sigh - miserably high-pitched - a ghostly sweep of breath fleeing me to live - somewhere prettier, maybe.

I can see him trying not to look relieved, but he becomes serious again quickly, shaking his head with a stolid gravity I appreciate.

“What did your agent do?”

“The same thing she’s always doing,” I press my knuckles to my forehead like that could force out the hours of my life that I waste being frustrated by her. “It feels like she’s always looking for something to consider wrong with me, Kitty Kat. Every little detail, every single mistake I make, she’s talking down to me, fussing about my fidgeting and stumbling over my words. Like I can help…”

Kattar is starting to go into protective mode, I know. 

And I shouldn’t latch onto that, but…

What if I’m just being honest?

Is that playing dirty too?

I take a deep breath before I let my sigh escape, and try to keep the misery out of my voice as I mumble, almost inaudibly, “Today was the worst it’s ever been yet since she just decided out of the blue that she wanted to make a jab at me for the fact that I’m still not married, at my age.”

If Kattar hadn't just swallowed, I think he would have choked.

His eyebrows jump uncomfortably high up onto the middle of his forehead, and his eyes round out like full moons for what feels like a microsecond before he glances away quickly, shifting in his seat with a sort of aggressive cough. 

Like he thinks he can drown out my statement after it’s already fallen, for better or for worse from these lips.

His smile is less nonchalant than it could be as he shakes his head quickly and laughs, a red-faced, breathless sound, like I just asked him a ridiculous question, “A very large portion of the world waits until their 30s to get married, Lise...”

I wasn’t even the one who started this ball rolling in the first place, but now, for some reason, I feel the need to argue Emelia’s point, somehow more irritated by him now than I was by her.

“That might be true of other people, but it’s not true of ours, Kat. We’re Latinos. Even your mother was 28 when she had you. Mine was 18. In my relatives’ books, I should have been married with like 16 kids 6 years ago!”

“Aheh,” he laughs again, this sound a little higher-pitched, like the first laugh didn’t manage to dislodge our conversation. Acute discomfort shows in every feature of his face, rapidly deepening in color, and his eyebrows are still way up on his forehead as he glances around the room, opening his mouth like he wants to talk about anything else.

“‘Kayyyy. So about getting dinner...”

No.

I’m not about to tug-of-war this thing.

“I’m nearly thirty years old, Kattar Moon.”

Let’s be honest for once.

“That’s late. Really really late. Maybe it doesn’t feel that way for you but wh-.”

Maybe only half honest.

Honestly, he’s already uncomfortable enough now. I feel myself sighing again, as I try to calm down, and put my feelings in a box, straining out the ones that seem safest and packing the rest away for later.

“When Tia Maria mentions it, I don’t let it get to me because I know it’s just the way she is. She just wants me to be happy, and settle down. But when Mrs. Howard…”

The way he’s looking at me with something like fear in his expression could anger me or it could scare me too. But I choose to be bitter. A disgusting in-between.

“Ugh! I just can’t stand her,” I growl but the sound feels hollow. “She just picks on me day in and day out. And I don’t even know how to argue with her anymore because she’s right. Nothing is changing. Nothing has really changed at all, and I’m tired. Years tired - probably decades - of nobody ever ever taking me seriously! What am I but a plaything or an interesting commodity?!”

I think.

It’s been too long.

I didn’t mean to…

I should have just said it a long time ago when the thoughts first started bleeding through like stains instead of waiting for it to blow up in our faces so…colorfully…like a confetti bomb.

The only saving grace is that I didn’t say ‘to you.’

Even though I know it’s what we’re both thinking…

Something like shocked dread washes over Kattar’s face as aggressively as if I’d just drawn a knife, and almost as quickly his expression becomes white-faced horror.

I’ve NEVER seen him look at me like that…

I messed up. Even if I just said what I was thinking…

…Some things hurt a little less when they’re kept under wraps, glazed over, kept inside our heads rather than spoken out loud - when honesty suddenly becomes a spell making the emotions become real-

Are they ever real or just our imaginations? An idea.

That’s an endless spiral. 

What is ‘real?’ Relationships? Feelings? Love? They’re all just words we try to use to express something that lives on our insides and we can’t ever prove it.

It’s the horror in his eyes like he’s sick to his stomach.

I’m sorry.

I’m trying to believe that you love me.

But I’ve got nothing to go on but these little hypotheses and our madness starts to feel like textbook chemistry.

I’m bad at believing in the things I don’t understand. And your love, if this is love, is a different color than mine.

It seems the only thing our mixing makes is shades of gray.