“I got the job.”
His expression dropped, as if every pore on his face had been holding its breath, only to simultaneously exhale in frustrated exhaustion. She knew this was all part of the package, and she was going to handle the situation as mechanically and detachedly as she knew how.
They had been dating for the past 5 years, a time through which they had both grown immensely and symbiotically. They’d fed off each other’s encouragements and had shared faults like the last piece of pie. Though Amy could never deny the impact Jacob had had on her life, and she on his, they both knew they were at a juncture with the onset of this news. A juncture never quite reached in the cheesy yet enthralling ‘Boy Meets World’ episodes they used to watch well beyond the appropriate age of viewership. She remembered them sneering at the screen when the retro 90’s credits would conclude yet another quintessential moment in growing up. A part of them had always wanted this exhilarating and newfound love for each other to last open-endedly, like the infinite DVD loop of episode replays they’d memorized by ear while making out on the couch. Puppy love is real to a puppy.
Her words still seemed to echo the kitchen walls, though she had surely voiced them more than a minute ago. Despite all that they implied, it almost felt good to say. It was as if she had just perfected a difficult phrase that had taken weeks to practice in another language. Jacob stared at the table; his eyes seemed to be speaking to it.
She fought back a smile at the thought to a time long ago when she had seen this look of defeat in him. It was just like her, she thought, to always find humor in the most sensitive of times.
At 16, she had been feverishly sifting through the mail in search of her SAT scores, as she did every day for three weeks after taking the test. Jacob sat at the kitchen table, intently focused on his calculus homework. Being a brilliant student, Jacob didn’t share the same hysterical interest that Amy did in knowing where chances stood with colleges — he’d go where he wanted.
She systematically tossed erroneous bills and coupons onto the table where Jacob worked, noticing him flinch at the slapping sound from latest Victoria’s Secret catalog, which landed next to his equations like an answer. At the bottom of the mail stack there was a letter from Dexter University; she knew there was nothing of interest in the letter but she shredded it open with the ferocity of a fiend needing something, anything to keep the college pursuit fueled. After reading a few professor testimonials and glancing at the surely synthetic array of ethnically diverse student body photos, she folded up the brochure and slapped it on top of the rest of the mail.
“I just want to fucking know. I don’t even care if I bombed it, I just want to know.”
She sat down to her scattered pile, flustered and burdened with thought.
It wasn’t until she looked up at Jacob moments later that she noticed his face contorted with a brutish curiosity, not unlike the expression she had likely just portrayed while flinging the mail around. He was flipping through the Victoria’s Secret catalog at a rate that reminded her of how cartoon characters read books.
She watched him. She was interested and cautious of his reaction to this newly introduced element of sex. She knew from Jacob’s strict upbringing that rare moments like these had been strategically diverted with years of parental urges to focus on school, lacrosse, and piano recitals.
Jacob was soaking in everything he could as quickly as possible — surely, Amy thought, a haste brought about from all the times he’d been caught. He was fast approaching the halfway spread of the catalog, equivalent to the last page for any viewer who saw the models as products; the catalog’s second half typically had a much more modest line of sleep attire and bath towels.
Upon reaching the stapled center of the catalog, he froze suddenly.
It was as if the crescendo of the models’ bountiful breasts and scandalously youthful faces had built him up to a breaking point that he wasn’t prepared to face. His sudden realization upon viewing the pajama section from which his mother inevitably browsed, that this was in some way an oedipal violation, shocked him into confliction. He silently closed the catalog and gently returned it to the pile of mail.
His eyes, still wild from what had just happened, stared through the table. She couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed, he just looked tired.
When he later asked her if he could have the catalog, she feigned disinterest and shrugged. Later that night she lay in bed, unable to sleep. She refused to wear her Victoria’s Secret pajamas, as the day’s events made her want nothing to do with the second half of the catalog, and everything to do with the first. She was infuriated that she had helped perpetuate in Jacob’s mind an image of what a woman of desire should look like. She knew, in that moment, that she wanted desperately for him to see her that way.
In the conversationally stale air she still found herself in, she still felt it now perhaps more than ever. She suddenly wanted nothing more than for him to take her. She wanted it more than the job that would distance them geographically and indefinitely. She wanted it more than she could ever express to him without sounding like an ungrounded bitch. She wanted him to force her into getting his way — she had never been happy unless he was. If he needed her here, that’s where she needed herself.
“I’m sorry. I’m being selfish. This is exactly what you need, Amy. Congrats on landing it…” His voice quivered.
“We both agreed on what we’d do about…us…if you got this job, and I’m not here to talk you out of it. You’ll be great.”
Though he had spoken in the predictable tone of someone who was unwilling to follow life’s script, Jacob’s demeanor seemed shaky and edgy as he rose from the kitchen chair and walked briskly, intentionally out of the house. Had she known this would be the last time she’d see him for years, she might’ve tried to console him or even try to stop his departure. Instead, her eyes spoke to the table.