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Rachel studied me. “What would you have to change?”
“Other women—they just have this language they speak that I don’t have. Like they were born to be girlfriends and wives, and I’m just a bro.”
Rachel snorted. “There’s not a box you have to fit into. ‘Girlfriend’ is just a word.”
“I know. But I feel like I’m boxed in either way. Like everyone assumes I don’t want kids just because I don’t want to get married.” My voice cracked. “I love kids.”
“That’s obvious, Isa. You’ve dedicated a lot of time and energy to helping kids. Who’s everyone?”
Hasan.
“Will just needs something clean,” I said, ignoring her question. “I’m so messy.”
Rachel was quiet for a long beat. Then she said, gently, “Isa, no one is clean.”
“Will is clean as fuck."
“Maybe,” she said. “But I bet there’s a dirty boy in there, too. And maybe he’s thinking about how much he’d like a bro with a hot ass right now. ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.’”
“Are you Whitmanning me right now, bitch?”
“I think you’re thinking of yourself as fixed, and none of us are. ‘You too are not a bit tamed, you too are untranslatable,’” she said.
“Are you high?”
“Little bit.” She giggled. “Do you have any food in here?”
I laughed and handed her the box of cookies Will had opened last night. “I don’t know how to change who I am,” I said.
Rachel didn’t hesitate. “I doubt anyone is asking you to.”
I frowned, and she took a bite of a cookie.
“Imagine you tried a flavor you’d never had before, and you liked it so much that you only bought that kind.”
She was definitely high.
“You wouldn’t consider that changing who you are, right?” she added.
“Of course not.”
She shrugged. “Right, it’s just a choice you made with new information, because it made you happy.”
Something in my chest shifted. Not relief or clarity. Just space.
I lay there for a moment longer, staring up at the ceiling, at the soft sag of the tent, the evidence of heat and breath and bodies that had been there and weren’t anymore.
“What if I want different cookies depending on my mood?”
“Do you?” Rachel asked. “And are you just having other cookies in your life or are you fucking them?”
“I don’t know.”
“I feel like my metaphor is breaking down.” She rolled over to get out.
I exhaled slowly. “Okay.”
Rachel stood and held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s get you some water. You’ve been marinating in your own thoughts, and you have a lot of work to do.”
