I wake up with a bee in my ear.

The buzzing is incessant: shrill and annoying, the last thing I want when my eyes are glued shut and my head thumping in a way that tells me I drank plenty of wine last night.  I reach up, deftly smack the side of my head to kill it, and then throw my arm over my eyes to block out the sunlight that was streaming through the window, waking me up to a beautiful New York day.

“What are you doing?”

My eyes snap open in shock. There, to my side, is Freddie; bleary-eyed and rubbing his face at the brightness of the sun, looking as displeased to be awake as I was.  His brown hair is dishevelled and tousled, the gelled style of last night a distant memory; his eyes are squinted at the light in disdain; his chin is no longer smooth but dotted with black morning stubble.  And his body is naked, very, very naked.

Images of last night begin to flash in my mind incoherently, so quickly that I can’t tell the order in which they came.  Freddie kissing me in the street against the sign for a cheap Chinese restaurant; Freddie kissing me in the corner of the elevator of his building; Freddie kissing me all over my body as our clothes lay in a forgotten trail from the front door to his bed.  

And then suddenly it was all me: I had pulled his hair, bit his shoulder, scratched his back with emotion so strong I almost seemed angry.  My hands had tore at his clothing, covered my gasps and held him to me.  There had been none of the intimacy or familiarity that I was so used to but a carnal lust that ripped through us the moment I had accepted his invitation to spend the night with him.  We took each other with a violence of passion that you can only really experience with someone you don’t know that well and have no inhibitions with.

“I was...” I begin, horribly aware that the sheet I was clutching to my chest didn’t quite cover both breasts, resulting in some areola action.  “I was trying to get at the bee.”

Freddie raises an eyebrow dryly.  “Well, forget the bee for now and answer your cell.”

 My senses, so starkly awakened with the realisation of last night’s events, make a fool of me when I realise the buzzing is not a bee but my phone, vibrating in circles in the corner of the foreign bedroom.  Before even beginning to wonder how it got there, I pull the sheet from the bed and wrap it around myself properly, suddenly self-conscious as Freddie’s eyes bore into the back of me.

“Hello?”

“Cat, where the fuck are you?”

I smile, feeling some apprehension ease away at the familiar voice.  “Ed, I’m fine, I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

“But where the fuck are you?”

I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and take a shy glance behind me at Freddie, who unashamedly rises from the bed and stretches with a yawn.  If I knew him better, I’d tell him to put some clothes on and then ask him if he is circumcised, because something doesn’t look quite right.

“I’m at...Freddie’s,” my voice falters with embarrassment as I scan the room for my clothes that interweave with Freddie’s on the wooden floor.  Where on earth is my bra?

“Well, next time, could you let me know?  I just came back from Carolyn’s fifteen minutes ago and didn’t know what to think when you weren’t here.”

“Yeah, I’m really sorry,” I repeat, seeing my bra hanging off a vase on the bedside table, like a black hangman’s noose.  “Did you have to stay at Carolyn’s then?

Ed sighs with affectionate annoyance.  “Sure did.  I thought with my being gay and all I’d never have to be subjected to drunk and emotionally volatile women, but apparently they’re an unavoidable species altogether.”

I laugh and watch Freddie through the open door as he pads from one room to the other, looking confused and scratching his head.  It’s strange to see another man naked after so long of staring at the same slender, chiselled body; it’s even stranger to witness his refusal to be shy in front of a woman he’s only known for twelve hours.  As my eyes scan his body, I can’t help but notice the ever so slightly chubby roundness to his hips and the blank skin, unblemished by any tattoos or freckles.  Instinctively, my eyes travel to his left bicep to search for the dark Celtic cross etched across the skin; but, of course, it isn’t there.

“Well, I’ll be coming home soon,” I say as I shuffle around the room, cell phone in one hand, makeshift toga in the other.

“Not staying for breakfast?”

I snort as I pull on my underwear with one hand, which is a task neither easy nor graceful.  “No, I think I’ll just leave things as they are.  Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with a one-night stand?”

“Ask someone who’s having sex,” Ed laughs, and we hang up a moment later.

I rush around the room, picking out my things from Freddie’s and putting them on too quickly.  I latch my bra on the wrong hook, button up my shirt incorrectly and almost forget to pull the zipper up on my skirt.  I doubt Freddie is one of those people who pointedly stares at your crotch and irritatingly says, “Flyin’ low”, but I didn’t really want to find out.

I walk through the foreign halls of his apartment, taking in the dark blue colored walls and blown-up photos of the Manhattan skyline without much interest.  The fluttery feeling in my stomach tells me I still don’t know what to feel about last night: whether to be glad that I took a positive step in the right direction, which is of course away from Justin; or to be heartbroken that I could do such a thing when I’m still so secretly in love with him.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon,” I say to Freddie, leaning against the doorframe of the small kitchenette with my purse slung over my shoulder.  He has, thank God, put on some boxers.

“You’re going so soon?” he says with surprise, turning to me and wiping his hand on a towel.  He points behind him.  “I was going to cook you some breakfast.”

I shake my head, realising darkly that while I can spend the night having sex with Freddie, I can’t sit down and have an unaccompanied, sober conversation with him.  No, that would be too intimate.

“Thanks, but I’m just going to go on home.  I haven’t got any make-up or anything,” I blush, automatically running my hands through my hair to give it some body.  I don’t know why I bother, every strand is lank and alcohol-infused: a punishment for last night’s drinking. 

“Well,” Freddie puts down the towel on the counter and moves towards me, wearing a charming, straight-toothed smile that I recognise from last night.  “You look great to me.”

He circles my waist with his arms and pulls me towards him, capturing my lips with his and pressing his hips against me.  Immediately, I kiss him back hungrily, the feeling of lips on mine too irresistible to ignore.  The mood moves so quickly from awkward to intense that I’m not surprised when he pulls away, his brown eyes and protruding boxers giving me a mischievous look that asks, ‘Wanna go again?’, but I smile my no.   Last night, in all its passionate, drunken lust was wonderful, but to continue it in the sobriety of the daytime would make things more confusing than they already are.  I know I won’t see things clearly until I’m out of Freddie’s apartment: whether I’ll like what I see, I don’t know.

“Thanks for last night,” I blush, coy again as I step away towards the threshold of his apartment.  “I’ll see you around.”

He smiles, rejected and frustrated, but shrugs.  “I had a great time.  And anytime you want to...”  He trails off.  “Well, you know where I am.”

I clutch the strap of my purse with my left hand, masking my horror with a polite smile.  This booty is not for calling.  “Okay.  Well, great.  See you then.”

I bound down the steps of the apartment complex two at a time, suddenly uncomfortable in the murky waters of one-night stand protocol.  The air is filled with clogged pollution of New York’s smog as I navigate to the nearest subway, desperate to get home and think over the evening, which comes to me in flashes when I remember something.

Flash.  Fingers clenched and interlocked.

Flash.  Sweat sticking two bodies together.

Flash.  Freddie’s forehead against mine, lips against mine, body against mine.

Flash.  Brown eyes, not blue.

“Cutie?”

My body jars.  The voice that called that so-familiar nickname floats into my recognition, and before I feel the shock, it strikes me just how much I’ve missed him. 

He’s still the same.  Short, kind of chubby, hair that springs in blonde-tipped large curls from his scalp.  His tattoos, too large and ugly for his small size, scar his forearms; the rest are hidden underneath a casual grey track jacket and jeans. 

My eyes rise to greet the voice of the words numbly, my heart doing acrobatics in my chest at the surprise of seeing him here, now, in this neighborhood.  I struggle to think when the last time I saw him was: it was long before Justin and I met our messy end, even before they went to Los Angeles.  Perhaps two months.  But when had I last spoken to him on the phone?  What were our last words to each other?  “See ya, love ya, miss ya”, like we so often said at the end of our conversations?

“Hey, Trace.”

There is a moment where we say nothing but allow each other to take it in, uneasy on this new ground that we share.  It wouldn’t be inappropriate to hug him, in fact I’d do anything to smell the cologne he and Justin share and wrap my arms around him.  But I won’t: it’s almost as though I’m worried he’ll smell the sex off me.

“What are you doing here?”

Flash. Kissing, kissing everywhere, even in the places I don’t expect him to go.

Flash. Hands all over my body.

Flash.  Gasps meeting moans as one body thrusts into another.

The minute the words leave his lips it seems a ludicrous question.  He knows what I’m doing because he’s doing the same thing; his rumpled clothing and urgency to get moving make it clear he’s on his way from his own one-nighter. “I thought you were living up in Brooklyn?” Trace continues, apparently hell-bent on getting a response from me.

“I am,” I reply, feeling as though the sex is all over me as I try to surreptitiously straighten my blouse and skirt.  I feel sweat prickling at my forehead with nerves, then immediately wish I hadn’t thought about sweat as last night flashed its movie stills in my mind.

He pauses, apparently not in the mood for any shyness.  “So...I guess this means you have another boyfriend.”

I recoil from his hostility; a tone I’m so unused to hearing from Trace.  “No, it doesn’t.”

“You do look different,” he murmurs, his eyes dancing over me so that I run my hands over myself nervously.  “Justin was right.”

I tighten my facial muscles stubbornly, refusing to let his name have any effect on me.  “Really?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, crossing his arms.  “He mentioned you’d lost lots of weight, done shit with your hair.  You look good.”  His compliment comes begrudgingly, as though he wished I hadn’t looked different at all.

“It was time for a change.”  I almost want to laugh and add, ‘Look how great that turned out,’ but the words get stuck in my throat when I realise this situation is not at all funny to me. 

I want to apologise for not being in contact with him, but I have no reason as to why I didn’t call him other than the obvious: I couldn’t put him in the middle between me and Justin.  I want to ask him all about what he’s been doing, who he’s been seeing, how he’s coped with the break up; but it’s as though we’re on two sides of the divider and there’s nothing we can say to break the glass. 

Even though Justin isn’t here, his presence is so strong between us it puts a gag around the great friendship that existed here only a few months ago. 

“So you were out last night?” I ask, eager as ever to move the focus of the conversation from my body.

“Yeah.”  He raises an eyebrow as if to show he knows exactly what I’m asking.  “Justin went home kinda early.  Alone.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” I respond hastily, disliking so much to be talking to Trace like a stranger but feeling my pride slip away by the second.

“Let’s just...not do this whole thing, okay?” I stare at him blankly.  “I don’t want to argue with you, Cat, or talk to you like you’re the enemy.  I’m only supporting Justin because he’s my oldest friend –”

“I know that, Trace, and I wouldn’t expect otherwise,” I interrupt.  “It’s just...there was no one on my side.  And I really hated losing you like that.”

Trace doesn't reply but looks up and down the street.  I worry that he's sick of talking to me already, that I've put him under too much pressure and he's looking for the nearest subway.

“Wanna get a coffee?” he suggests suddenly, taking me by surprise and grabbing the conversation before it goes into territory too dangerous to approach standing awkwardly on a sidewalk.  “It’s sucked not seeing you, Cutie.  Shit,” he laughs, rubbing his stubbly chin.  “I’ve missed you.”

My pride melts and I couldn’t be more grateful.  “I’ve missed you too.”

“So, coffee?”

I shift uncomfortably from one foot to the next, torn between an answer.  “I just don’t know, Trace.  I mean, it’s great seeing you, really great, but it might be kind of...weird.”

“Cat, we’ve known each other too long for anything to be ‘weird.’  Christ, I was your roommate for a year, nothing can be weird after I walked in on you in the shower that time.”

My laugh erupts before I realise it was coming and I thump my forehead with my hand in embarrassment at the memory.  “That was only weird because you didn’t leave when you realised I was in there.”

“Hey,” he shrugs, “I couldn’t find my razor.”

I pause, biting the side of my lip anxiously, my smile easing. 

“Even if it’s just this once, Cat, I’d really like to talk things over.”  He pauses.  “It’d probably be good for both of us.”

“Okay.”

---------------

“So,” I begin, jamming my purse between my thigh and the side of the red, velvet chair.  “How is he?”

Trace shrugs, staring into his coffee uncomfortably, shoulders hunched; as though he doesn’t know how to tackle the subject now that it’s actually here.  “He’s...fine, he’s fine.  Maybe not where you are yet, but, you know.”

I feel guilty and embarrassed but refuse to show it, picking up my bottle of water to distract from my heated cheeks.   I should have known Trace would ask about Freddie, under the circumstances. 

“Trace, you don’t know where I am,” I say, pulling at the label on my water bottle absentmindedly.  “I know how things look, but...”

He raises his eyes to look at me.  “So you’re telling me that you didn’t spend last night with some guy?”

“But with some other guy?”

“Well, I can’t exactly go to Justin asking for a shoulder to cry on, can I?” I mutter darkly, wishing that it weren’t the case. 

Trace’s silence shows he gets my point and I pray he’ll drop the subject.  There’s no heavy feeling of regret weighing down in the pit of my stomach like I thought there might be, but just an acknowledgment that sleeping with Freddie only made me feel better for a precious few moments.  That, really, I was just using sex as an escape from feeling so awful about myself because, when Freddie’s eyes were on me, I felt wanted.  I wouldn’t necessarily change last night, but I certainly wouldn’t call it healthy.

As though reading my mind, Trace says, “It’s not like you to turn to men to make you feel better about yourself.”

His comment stings me in a way that I’m sure he didn’t intend it to; probably because I know it to be true.  Justin’s words on the final morning come back to me as I stare numbly at my water, which I know I chose because it didn’t have any calories in it.

“You’re not how you used to be . . . The old Cat would never have done that.”

He had been talking about my losing weight, and it strikes me what a ridiculous plan that was.  Justin had always loved me just the way I was, so why on earth did I think that changing to meet some self-imposed standard would make him happier?

“Oh my God, Trace,” I take a sharp inhalation of breath, not allowing myself to get emotional but feeling my eyes itch to let all the confusion and hurt go, “I really fucked things up.”

His eyes widen, as though he hadn’t expected anything of that sincerity to leave my mouth over coffee.  I keep my gaze stuck on the water bottle, knowing that if I looked at Trace I’d feel worse.

“Well, yeah, the cancer thing was...”

“But it’s everything that came after that, the whole weight thing.”  As I sit, maybe fourteen or so pounds lighter than I had been when Justin and I had been happier, I feel worse about myself than ever.  “I was just so desperate to patch things up that I was going to do whatever it took.”   

“But Justin didn’t want you to try and get down to a perfect size four, Cat, he wanted you to get the trust back on.”

I smile regretfully.  “You know, I am a six now.  On top, at least.”

Trace leans back in the cushion of the chair, arms folded and his black coffee forgotten.  “Well, that’s something.”

“Oh, Trace,” I look away as a tear falls over my cheek and quickly brush it away.  “Where did it all go so wrong?”

He remains silent.

---------

 Last night didn’t quite do the trick.

It was nice to spend time with Trace, feel the tension ease off between us after all that time spent being mad about the way things went up in flames with Cat.  We had a few drinks, talked to a few girls, but I’m so far from moving onto other people that I called it a night pretty early on and went home.  Trace went off with some girl and still hasn’t returned. 

It has been weird getting used to being single again.  There’s just so much spare time that I would have spent shopping with Cat, watching movies with Cat, eating with Cat, in bed with Cat.  Sure, I’ve gotten better at filling up my time without her; I check my mail, email, catch up with people I’ve somewhat neglected when I was loved up and happy, do business, and, of course, record.  But there are always times that I’m on my own and my mind will rest on her or, even worse, all the fun we used to have.  When I think back to my relationship with Cat, I realize just how much time I spent laughing. 

I hear the front door close, signalling Trace’s return.  I let out a call to let him know I’m in the TV room watching some shit without really watching it; a documentary about obesity or something.

“Hey,” says Trace in a somewhat subdued manner as he sits on the armchair beside the coach.

I throw him a glance.  “Hey, man.”

He swirls his set of keys around his index finger.  “I...I don’t really know where to start.”

I raise an eyebrow disinterestedly, eyes fixed on the TV screen.  “You’re gay, I knew it.”

“Shut up,” he mutters, still swinging his keys.  “I saw Cat today.”

It was all he needed to get my attention.  I shift from my lounging position instantly, staring at him.  “Really?”  Strangely, even though we live in the same city, it’s never occurred to me that I’d run into Cat. She knows all the places I tend to be: which stores I shop in, which bars I go to, which streets I have friends at; and I’m sure she’s avoiding all of them so that we don’t bump into each other.  Anyway, she lives in Brooklyn, two subway journeys away and over the bridge...not that I’ve ever wondered how to get to her new apartment or anything.

“Yeah.”

A wave of envy washes over me, strong enough to let me know that the feelings I so often push down for Cat are still there.  I wish it had been me that had bumped into her, seen her, talked to her.  Even if just to see that she’s okay; I’ll never forgive myself for dragging her away from her home in Tennessee where she’d been comfortable for four years, only to abandon her in this bitch of a city. 

“In Brooklyn?”

Trace crinkles his nose in thought.  “Nah, it was Queens. Somewhere in the middle,” he shrugs.

“What was she doing in Queens at ten in the morning?”

Trace gives me a hard stare. “She was on her way home.”

“So, how is she?”

A faint smile plays on his lips.  “Funny, she asked me the exact same thing about you.”

I don’t allow myself to show any outward sign of pleasure to Trace, but can’t stop the inner twang of happiness from my heart.  It feels good to know that, somewhere over the bridge, she’s still thinking about me too.

“Well?”

“It was real good seeing her,” Trace nods, looking down at his keys.  “I mean, just last night I thought I’d never see her again.  And you’re right, by the way, she has lost a lot of weight.”

I roll my eyes, unhappy with this news.  “Probably more than when we broke up.”

Trace shrugs.  “I think she’s realizing how fucked up that whole thing is, though.”  He speaks carefully, perhaps wary not to divulge everything that they talked about.  “She’s got some self-esteem issues, for sure.”

“Yeah,” I agree, thinking back to that morning when she was so different from the girl that I loved.  “It thought they were just quirky insecurities; didn’t know they’d fuck everything up.” I cough gruffly.

“But if she worked that shit out, maybe you two could work things out?” Trace ventures hopefully.

“I told you this last night, man,” the words are painful as they come out of my mouth, “it’s not going to happen.”

 When will that become easier to say?  When will I believe that I’d have the courage to turn down Cat if she showed up and asked for me back?  I know I couldn’t say no to her a second time; I wonder whether she knows too.

“But Justin, she’s changed...and I mean in a good way this time.  She’s real aware of where she fucked up and I think she really regrets it.”

“Trace, unless I hear these words from her mouth, things aren’t going to change.”  But even as I say this, a little, too often extinguished flame of hope rekindles in the back of my mind, and I suddenly remember how great it felt to have Cat by my side all those nights that we spent together.  I have to admit, even if not to Trace but just to myself: I’d give anything to have her back.

“Well, don’t waste too much time being stubborn about it,” says Trace, propping his feet up.  “She’ll move on, man, and don’t think she won’t.”

-----------

I come back from coffee with Trace feeling awful.   Dizzy, unsure, upset: angry at myself for letting a ridiculous thing like low body-confidence ruin a relationship; worried whether I had made the right choice in sleeping with Freddie.  Suddenly all the flashbacks to last night didn’t make me tingle, they made me feel sick: a fuck to make myself feel better has most definitely had the opposite effect.

I hate girls like me.  The ones that aren’t mature enough to let go of the little things and realise their own worth and enjoy themselves.  But worse – the ones that use men to make themselves feel good. 

The vomit creeps into my throat the moment I unlock the door to Ed’s apartment.  I fling my bag into a corner and rush into the bathroom, heaving up all the disappointment in myself and how I had handled things into the white cistern of Ed’s toilet. 

As I sit on the gleaming black tiles of the bathroom floor and rub the imprints the floor made on my knees when I was being sick, I realize just how good the numbing emptiness left by vomiting feels.