Finally there’s Craig, who at first comes in for lunch once a week. Then twice. Then three times, until finally he is there every day and somehow, they are sharing a table and laughing about... Well, whatever he says to make her laugh. And it becomes this thing Stella refuses to name. This...friendship. Because that’s all it is, she tells herself every day when she wakes up thinking about him, and every night when his face is what she thinks of when she closes her eyes and pretends to sleep. It’s a friendship. If Craig didn’t have a penis, this wouldn’t even be an issue.
It’s been so long since Stella laughed, really laughed. Before she knows it, she’s looking up every time the bell over the door jingles. When the hands on her watch creep toward noon, her palms start to sweat and her heart to pound. Every day she assumes it’s the last time he’ll come in. Sometimes he’s late and everything inside her goes dark. A weight lifts off her every time Craig comes through the door.
He only has an hour for lunch, and soon that’s not enough. Stella believes Connex is the devil, but Craig loves it and “friends” her anyway. She doesn’t have much on her profile and hasn’t updated in close to a year, though she tries to check in once a week or so to make sure Tristan’s not getting into trouble there. Craig has a lot of pictures, an active wall. Stella stalks his profile, checking out the photos of him at the beach, skiing, dressed for a holiday party. She looks at the pictures of him and his family. Two daughters. A wife, now ex, and a dog. Craig was part of a family, and this somehow comforts her. He can understand the challenges of a spouse and kids.
She tells Jeff nothing, and why should she? She doesn’t tell him anything about her girlfriends, or the other people at the coffee shop. Actually, she doesn’t tell Jeff much of anything anymore. He doesn’t ask.
Stella finds work, finally, which means no more coffee shop. She’d taken a basic college course on photo-editing programs on a whim, and the job at the Memory Factory is perfect. Retouching pictures taken for church bulletins isn’t what she’d ever imagined herself doing, but with a school-age child and a husband who works sixty hours a week and travels too, she can’t go back to being a flight attendant. The hours and money make up for the slightly condescending way Jeff talks about it as a throwaway job.
She also has unlimited access to the internet, all day long, and an instant-message program. So does Craig. This is even better than their single, daily hour. They talk all day long, and even when they’re not actively chatting, looking at her contact window and seeing his screen name there is like a touchstone. He’s there if she needs him.
And, oh, Stella needs him.
She needs the jolt he gives her with every flirty comment and the small, secret jokes they’ve created that would mean nothing to anyone else. She needs his perspective on the world because it’s different than hers, and even though they disagree on politics and religion, they never argue. He makes her think. He makes her feel, and it’s been so long since she’s had anything but agony or numbness that at first she doesn’t recognize what it is that Craig gives her.
Joy.
He doesn’t know her, so there are no reminders of the past she needs to forget. No stilted conversations steeped in pity. All Craig gives her is joy, and that’s what she needs the most.
Stella knows this...thing...is wrong. But Craig makes her feel as if everything will be all right. As if she hasn’t been through what she has. He makes her feel smart and funny. And sexy, yes. There’s that. The giddy, floaty, heated rush of knowing someone finds her attractive. She needs that too.
Everything about them together is dishonest, but it’s the only thing in her life that feels like the truth.
“Can I call you?” he asks. “I miss talking to you in person. Hearing your voice.”
Craig lives alone. Shared custody means he has daddy duty only a few days of the week. The rest of his time is his own. Stella doesn’t have that luxury. She has to think about when she can sneak in a late-night phone call. When she can fit him in around the rest of her life.
There’s something special about the phone that makes it different than typing instant messages or even texts. Somehow talking on the phone is both more anonymous and intimate than even meeting in person in the coffee shop, in public, where they watch their words and are always so very, very careful not to touch.
“Why do you keep talking to me?” Stella asks him late one night when, feigning an upset stomach, she’s sought the dark and quiet of the couch in the basement rec room. She stretches on the chilly leather, reaching for a blanket to warm her.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I tell myself I shouldn’t.”
But he does. Over and over again, he comes back to her, and there is never any reason why they shouldn’t continue this friendship other than that both of them know it’s becoming more than that. It was already more than that before they ever spoke on the phone. They very specifically do not meet in person. They very carefully do not talk about why.
He complains about his ex-wife, but Stella is carefully, neutrally quiet about her husband. There are things she could complain about, if she wanted, but if she did that, other truths would come out. Things she doesn’t want to talk about, not even to Craig. Perhaps especially not to him, because once he knows the truth, there will be no unknowing it. Sometimes things slip out, though. You can’t talk to someone almost every day for hours at a time without them learning the most important bits and pieces of you, especially in the darkest parts of the night when it’s so easy to feel alone.
“I miss you,” Craig says abruptly when the silence has stretched on too long. “I miss seeing you.”
“I miss seeing you too.” She closes her eyes against the sudden relief of a fear she hadn’t wanted to admit she had.
“Maybe we could have lunch sometime.”
She should say no, but what comes out is “Yes. I’d like that.”
* * *
“It was great seeing you. Catching up.” Craig’s gaze lingered on hers, and Stella let it.
They’d spent the hour she would’ve spent shopping lingering over their coffees and a couple very good blueberry scones he’d bought without asking her if she wanted one. He’d just remembered how much she liked them. His knee had nudged hers occasionally under the table, and once when handing her a napkin his fingers had brushed hers.
There was a time she’d wanted him so much it had been like fire inside her, consuming every thought. And now... Now, Stella thought as they stood sort of awkwardly by her car, each of them hesitating about a final hug...now, she didn’t want him anymore. That made her sadder than anything else. Once she’d been put to her knees because of the man in front of her, and it had been a place she’d willingly gone, but in the end it had broken her, just the same. She had wanted him, and now she did not.
When he pulled her close, she let him, startled but not resisting. When his mouth found her cheek, Stella closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. The warmth of his skin on hers was familiar. The weight of his hands on her. When he let her go, she swayed, unsteady for a few seconds before she could open her eyes.
“It was so good seeing you,” Craig said in a low voice. “I’ve really missed you.”
Stella had not missed him. Not for a long time. But she smiled and reached to squeeze his arm. “Me too.”
“Maybe I could call you?”
“Sure. Absolutely.” She nodded, smiling, a little taken aback by how this all had gone. He could call her. She would answer. It might get awkward, depending on what he said or asked of her, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him no.
On