The Anchor

by Carly Thompson

Ethan saw her lips move and heard words but his attention drifted every five seconds back to the night stand, where his phone sat. How bad would it be to reach over and grab it? 

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Hanna asked.
“I don’t really have anything else to say. I told you how I’m feeling, it’s just not working.” 

This brought forth a fresh wave of sobs. He could feel her devastation seeping into his skin, itching. Ethan couldn’t move, couldn’t twitch, couldn’t breathe without her head bobbing along with him. He studied the back of his phone case. Black, standard, protective. Worn at the edges from all the times the phone had bounced on concrete. Ethan heard Hanna say his name followed by “lacking” followed by “emotional intelligence.” The air conditioning unit in his window wheezed pathetically, dripping with condensation.

“Let me grab you some tissues.”

He stood up from where they were sitting on the end of his bed. He grabbed the box of tissues on his nightstand and slipped his phone into his pocket in the same motion. He returned to his spot and plunked the box in her lap. Hanna grabbed a few in a tight fist and blew heartily. Ethan thought of the day they met three months earlier, before he found out she was eighteen, before her ardent adoration turned sour. She’d had silky golden hair, now thrown into a matted bun, and long, toned legs that now invaded his favorite pair of sweatpants.  

“I don’t understand. I thought things were going so well,” she whined.

And they had been. Well, the sex was enthusiastic. But she didn’t want to do calisthenics with him. And Ethan didn’t want to drink beer and go mudding in Lutz with her friends. Twenty-seven and he still had a music career to get off the ground. He wanted to turn to her and yell, “You think you have so much time but you don’t!” He felt it bubbling just under the surface. Stomach acid in the back of his throat.

“What if I swear you won’t have to hang out with Neil and Chastity again? I know you think they’re annoying. I’ve just been friends with them for forever …”

She kept talking but with her head glued against his right shoulder, Ethan was able to slide his phone out of his pocket and unlock it behind her back. He pulled up Isabel’s contact and started crafting a message.

Headed back to Chicago?

Ethan hit send. He was sure Isabel would be in town. It was the holidays after all. She would be in Tampa to see her family or at least to see her best friend. The two of them were probably out in downtown right now, not too far away. Maybe she would be a little drunk. Drunk enough to text him back. 

“Are you even listening to me?” 

Ethan didn’t realize Hanna had lifted her head and was now staring at him, her lower lip jutting out.

“Sorry, I’m listening. I am. I’m just so tired, you know, I was working on boats all day in the sun. And I think I pulled my shoulder.”

Hanna cooed like he was an injured puppy and started rubbing his neck. Ethan was a mausoleum. She started kissing the skin behind his ear, her hand drifting to the crotch of his pants. Ethan dug around for any inkling of arousal and instead found blank impatience. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pried her hand off. 

“I appreciate the gesture but this isn’t that kind of break-up.” 

Hanna stood up, now oddly silent, and started gathering her things. Ethan held back a sigh of relief. He could let the sweatpants go. He could let it all go if it meant he got his time back. She started heading for the door, then seemed to think better of it and turned back to him. 

“Delete all the nudes I sent you. Now.” 

Ethan jolted. He looked at Hanna’s face, maybe for the first time all night. She looked, well, old. Stoic and worn out like a pelican with plastic wrapped around its beak. He opened his camera roll. He felt Hanna move to stand behind him, felt the heat of her peering over his neck. He scrolled slowly, making sure she saw him select every risque photo of her he had collected over the last few months. There were more than he remembered. 

“That should be all of them. See, we’re up to August. Before I met you.”

He pressed delete and then went into his “recently deleted” and erased them again. Thank god Isabel had never made him do this. Hers were in a coveted hidden folder, to be referenced in perpetuity. Hanna stood up and waited for him by the door. She had her work hat in one hand and the retro bobblehead of Evan Longoria she’d bought him for Christmas in the other. Damn, he hadn’t seen her grab that from his desk. Could he ask to keep it?

“You know, you could’ve told me sooner. That this was nothing serious for you.”
“I didn’t know this was serious for you. I thought we were on the same page.”
“I introduced you to my parents, I decorated your apartment for Christmas. What page did you think we were on?” 

This part was always the same. No matter how they began, each girl reached a point where they weren’t happy, he wasn’t doing enough and somehow even though he never agreed to be a boyfriend, he was the asshole for not being a good one. He didn’t get it. He was attractive, he knew that, but he hadn’t made anything of himself. The only thing he could be proud of was the work he’d put into his body. He finally had that perfectly lean and muscled look. But other than that? It took him two months to read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and he wasn’t sure he’d learned anything.

“I hope you get some help, Ethan. You know, for your serious commitment issues.” 
“I’m sorry, Hanna. And you’re probably right. You deserve better.” 
“Don’t say that bullshit. And go fuck yourself.”

Ethan’s hair blew back from the force of Hanna slamming the door behind her. It stirred his buried arousal. For a second, she became again the girl who’d approached him at a rave wearing nothing but pasties. He almost went after her but the simpering, snot-covered version was still too fresh. Hanna did deserve better. She deserved somebody who cared enough to accept that version of her. And that person was not Ethan. He returned to where his phone lay face down on the covers. There, waiting for him, was a text and possibly his salvation. 

i fly back tomorrow. why?
Can I see you? Tonight or tomorrow. I’ll meet you wherever.  

Ethan hit send and then stared at himself in the small mirror stuck to the back of his door. He ripped off his damp T-shirt and threw it on the floor. He backed up and flexed his tricep in the mirror, ran a hand through the dark mess on top of his head. He needed a haircut. It was the end of December and he still had a deep tan. Evaluating his appearance in this way always calmed him. Ethan rummaged through his closet until he came up with the sweatshirt Isabel gave him for his birthday two years ago. Slate gray with a dying rose insignia stitched on the front. His phone buzzed in his hand.

won’t your 18 year old gf care? 

He sat down, suddenly nauseous. How did she know? It wasn’t a secret but he hadn’t necessarily been advertising it. He was sure now that Isabel had already made up her mind. She had this stubborn sense of what she thought was right and wrong and she stuck to it. They used to walk up and down the beach and argue about politics, her voice getting more and more shrill. She had an answer for everything and he would look down at the striped sheepshead kissing his ankles like they could help him. Ethan actually was quite liberal despite his pro-life leanings.  

How did you know about that? 
people talk. quarter life crisis?
Something like that. We broke up.

She would be standing in a crowded bar, lips pursed, deciding the most cutting way to respond. She probably thought he broke up with Hanna so he could see her. Maybe he had. All he knew was that he needed to see her. 

i’m coming over

Ethan stood up. He wasn’t sure what else to do. He ran to the bathroom and grabbed his toothbrush. He still had Hanna’s in there. He ran to the window and tossed it into the bushes. This was his chance. He could convince her they were meant to be together and show her why she should move back to Tampa. If he had her, truly had her in a way he never did before, maybe everything else would fall into place. The clouds had parted. Thank fucking god.

Ethan tried his best to clean up his apartment while he waited. He plucked dirty clothes off the floor and tossed them into his closet. He stuffed trash into the plastic bag hanging off his doorknob. He re-affixed the navy sheets that came loose every night. Dusted and placed his guitar back on its stand. He even optimistically lit a candle. He wondered if she’d changed her hair. He wondered if her ass was the same. A dampness built beneath his sweatshirt, humid like the air around him. He looked at his phone. It had been ten minutes. Isabel’s contact picture lit up the screen with an incoming call. It was a screenshot of them on FaceTime. She’d answered that day with a green skincare mask of some kind on her face. She looked like Shrek. He remembered how she’d teased him and asked if he would fuck her looking like that. He’d told her pretty much nothing would stop him from fucking her.

“Hi.”
“Hi, come open the door.”
“Ok, be there in a sec.” 

She didn’t sound drunk. He propped his door open and walked to the front of his building. He could see her through the large front windows, but she hadn’t seen him yet. Her hair was longer and wild in the sticky weather. She wore a red velvet tube top and a long black skirt and some kind of chain belt he immediately wanted to yank down. Her arms were crossed and she looked annoyed. Always so impatient. She looked up and saw him staring. Even through the glass, the eye contact nearly sent him to his knees. The corner of her mouth curved up. He was in. Ethan opened the door and stepped aside to let her through. She sauntered in and scanned the lobby, arms still crossed. 

“They’ve really spruced the place up.” 
“Yeah. Definitely so they can charge more in rent.” 

She nodded and turned back to him. He saw her notice the sweatshirt. She cocked her head to the side and pursed her round lips.

“Aren’t you going to hug me?”

His hands unclasped from behind his back and swept around her. He pressed his face into her neck and lifted her feet off the ground. She let out a giggle. He felt it against the side of his face and finally he was back, back in a red kayak splashing Isabel with clear, cold water three years younger and in love even though he hadn’t known it.  

Once inside his studio, Isabel performed the same perfunctory audit that she had of him and the lobby. Same black rug, same tiny cluttered kitchen. She paused at his desk and fingered the new microphone he was paying off in monthly installments. He could see her eyes searching for the signs of what they both knew was true: They each had parts now that had grown in the other’s absence. He saw it in the dragonfly tattoo that marked her right shoulder and in the way she tugged on the longest piece of hair that hung down her back. Isabel stood fixated on one corner and as Ethan followed her gaze, he winced. One crucial detail could unravel the entire illusion. A small Christmas tree decorated with cheap ornaments sat innocently under the window.

“She’s a Christmas girl, huh?”

Isabel turned, slow and predatory. He knew what she was thinking. They’d never done anything holiday-y together. How did he explain that this tree meant nothing to him?

“Yeah, she brought it over one day and insisted we decorate it together. I mostly watched.” 
“That sounds right. The real Ethan would never waste his time, let alone money, on something like that.” 
“You know I wouldn’t.” 

He watched as she pulled back her leg and gave the tree a quick, hard kick, sending ornaments and glitter to the floor. She did it again and watched for his reaction. The tattoo and the hair and a destructive streak that hadn’t been there before. 

“Why’d you do that?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did it mean something to you?”

Ethan walked over to the tree and kicked it too. It fell on its side. He shrugged. 

“Christmas is over, anyways.”

Her eyes lost their competitive edge. She took off her shoes and sat on his bed, legs tucked beneath her. Despite her outfit, the tattoo, and the time apart stretching between them, Isabel completed the portrait of his small world. 

“So, tell me why you and the 18-year-old broke up. Start from the beginning.”

Reliving the last few hours of his life, and further the last few months, was not ideal. Mostly because it meant sitting next to Isabel and not kissing her. But he knew they couldn’t move on with this between them, so he told her everything. She listened and grimaced. When he was done, he placed a hand on her thigh to see if she would swat it away. She didn’t move. 

“Well, it seems you learned your lesson about dating a teenager. Or really anyone who can’t rent a car. I mean, what did you think was going to happen? She’s so young, of course she’s not equipped for an adult relationship.” 

She rolled her eyes and it scratched a line of irritation down his back. Even if she was right, he couldn’t let her look at him like that. Like she was picturing telling all her city friends about this and he was the punchline. As long as she thought she was better than him, she’d never come back. 

“It wasn’t like that. We wanted different things. Honestly, I think I was probably the problem more than she was.”

“Oh, yeah? Why do you say that?”
“She wanted me to be her boyfriend. I couldn’t do that.”
“Because she was eighteen?”
“Almost nineteen. But no. Because…” 

He trailed off. Should he just say it? I’m still in love with you! No, no. It was too soon. She just got here. He needed to remind her that she loved him, first. He needed her to melt when he finally said it. Isabel sighed and picked at a loose thread on his comforter. 

“Whatever, I don’t really care. I don’t want to talk about her anymore. ”

That worked for Ethan, but he still had questions.

“Are you seeing anyone?”

Her shoulders collapsed slightly, as if she was subconsciously pushing her heart closer to her spine. He tried to find her eyes but they were planted on the far wall. 

“I was for a little bit. It didn’t work out.”
“How come?”
“We wanted different things.” 
“Like you wanted a relationship and he didn’t?”
“Like he wanted me to exist on a nocturnal schedule, like he wanted to be able to do whatever he wanted and have me waiting for him. Like he wanted me to ask nothing of him and look pretty while he played his guitar.”

She finally swung her head around and her lips were stretched into a bitter smile. 

“I’m sorry.”
“I told him I’d been there, done that.”
“Hey, I would never make you listen to me play guitar.”
“Right, just give you feedback on every song you’ve ever recorded. At least you respected my opinion. And laughed at my jokes. Somehow, he was actually worse than you. I moved to Chicago and wasted six months on a worse version of you.” 

Isabel pinched her eyes shut and when she opened them again they seemed deflated. That’s what had been so different about her when he saw her in the lobby. The resolve that had always kept her spine straight and her eyes electric had dimmed. It was like going to a beach you hadn’t been to in a while and realizing the shoreline was smaller. Grayer. Ethan hated that. He wanted it back. He wanted the Isabel he remembered. 

“C’mon, I dated an eighteen-year-old. That’s worse.”

She laughed. Isabel fell back onto the bed, her hair spread around her like a gleaming jellyfish. Ethan laid next to her. She turned on her side to face him, so he did the same. 

“Why did you text me?” Isabel asked. 

She reached up and threaded her fingers through his hair. The contact shot straight down to the base of his spine.

“I wanted to see you.”
“Why?”

Ethan looked away. No matter how hard he swam for the surface, the world of air and light was always slightly out of his reach. He still wanted her. Or at least the Isabel he dreamed about. But right now he wasn’t sure the girl in front of him was her. 

“I don’t know, I just did. Didn’t you want to see me?”
“I think so. But I don’t think I would have texted you if you hadn’t first.”

Isabel pushed onto her elbow. Ethan grabbed her waist and rolled her over, shifting until he was perched above her and she stared up at him. He bent his head and pressed his lips to her forehead, then her cheek, then her chest. Ethan heard her breath catch in her throat. This was Isabel. This felt right. This would make everything better. Before he could continue his journey south, Isabel forced him onto his back. She crawled over him and straddled his waist. She leaned down and stopped right before their noses touched. 

They were eye to eye but their beams of connection slid right past each other. Isabel peeled each piece of clothing off his body methodically, her own following. She pressed his shoulders into the bed, fingernails digging through skin, and mounted him. Ethan tried to pull her down, to hold her as she rode him but her movements were becoming faster and more erratic. Her eyes were squeezed so tight it looked painful. All he could do was watch, enraptured.

Once spent and panting, Isabel lifted herself off him and laid down. Her face was turned away, the back of her body bared to the ceiling. That ass, it was as good as he remembered. Ethan wrapped a hand around himself and started pumping. He placed his other hand on her shelf and squeezed. He thought of how he used to drag her to the edge of the bed and work her slowly until they both came. Isabel turned her head to look at him. Her mask had slipped. Her eyelids fluttered as a single tear rolled into the hair by her ear. He stopped pumping. Without really meaning to, he’d gone limp. She mouthed “I miss you,” but it didn’t feel like she was talking to him. And his stomach was strangely empty and loud. They slept with their backs to each other. Still, they reached across the empty space throughout the night. A hand resting on a hip. A kiss to the back of a shoulder. Apologies and promises that would never see the sunrise. 

Ethan woke up to Isabel dressed and sitting on the edge of his bed. He needed a minute to gather his thoughts so he looked around the apartment. His desk was neater somehow, everything in a particular spot instead of strewn across the unstained wood. And the dishes that had been soaking in the sink were drying on a towel. Even with his hasty clean up before she’d arrived, his efforts still weren’t up to her standards. 

“Leaving already?” 
“Mara’s on her way to pick me up. I still need to pack and stuff.” 
“Headed back to Chicago, where you belong.”
“Yes.”

She finally turned to look at him and she was smiling. A real one, with the sun baked in. Ethan couldn’t remember the last time he ate. And he was hard again. He felt inside his body in an unpleasant, chafing way. 

“Don’t go back to Chicago. Stay here. Move back. I’m ready now. We can be together the way you always wanted.”

Ethan crawled across the bed to her, resting his head on her thigh. Isabel looked down at him and traced his eyebrow with her finger tip. It was a motion she used to do when they had fought and just made up.

“Why did you come over? Why text me back?”

Isabel’s knuckle moved over his eyebrow again and again, tugging at the hairs, making them sore. 

“Do you ever run your finger over a scab just to make sure it’s healed? I guess I just wanted to see if I’d healed.” 

She pulled her hand away and he could see the boulder had moved. She was out of the cave and he was locked inside. As he watched her leave, Ethan felt a tug and then nothing. He didn’t want to think and so he moved his body instead. He ran through downtown, past skyscrapers and restaurants. He ran to the water and along the coast. He stopped and sat on a bench he secretly thought of as his. He looked out at the gentle waves and prayed for dolphins. He waited until he saw a brief glimpse of a dorsal fin, proof that some part of the universe was still on his side and then he got up to walk home. 

Ethan let his consciousness trickle back in and catalogued the events of the weekend. Isabel had changed. She had a life completely divorced from him that she was excited to return to. She’d spent the year they’d been apart moving on, and he’d spent it waiting for a moment that had already passed. And he was so empty. His own negligence gnawing at the lining. All Ethan had was his absolute autonomy and he’d finally realized that wasn’t enough.  

He walked past a strip of bars, his sweat-soaked tank top draped over bare shoulders and didn’t notice the group of girls drinking mimosas at an outdoor table. Didn’t respond when a blonde in a shiny headband yelled “hey” at him. He didn’t look up at all until he felt a tap on his shoulder. Ethan turned, saw her stringy hair, her eyes banked with vague desire and appreciated her pretty, albeit generic, face.

“Hi, I, like, never do this, but you’re cute and they dared me to ask for your number. So can I have your number? We should go out sometime.”

Ethan could see their whole relationship in montage. Hot and heavy from the jump, they’d spend a lot of time together and have a lot of sex and he wouldn’t think about Isabel at all. But the questions would come, they always did. She’d ask for less than Isabel or Hanna and somehow still be unhappy with what he had to offer. Because Ethan was still where he had always been, dragging along the ocean floor. Still, as he looked at the girl standing in front of him, dropped into his lap through no course of his own, Ethan couldn’t help but feel intrigued. In her eyes, open and eager, he was again a person who could be believed in.

Carly Thompson is a New York City-based fiction and poetry writer. Her work has been featured in fiftysevenpercent literary journal, on the One Poem Only podcast, in Aphrodite Press and is forthcoming in Avangeline Review and Kads Corner Lit Mag. Find her on Substack @comehither and Instagram @carlythompson12.