Today I got to take a new girl up to my new apartment. I had just moved in and still had stuff everywhere but she didn’t mind, and I didn’t mind. I was looking forward to getting to know her and thought showing her my castle was a sign of a serious intended commitment. Every man needs a castle. Basic need. A place that is his.

“This is nice!” she commented and looked around in a way that suggested she did not think it was nice.

“Thanks, yeah I’m still putting it together.” Hmm.

“Did you see my email though?”

Her email? She hadn’t written me in a few weeks. We’d switched to texting. “Actually I didn’t. When did you send it?”

Her demeanor changed as she sighed like an ocean wave about to obliterate a small fishing village on the west coast of South America. “I just feel like you kind of forced this. I did say several times I wanted to wait a while and get to know you before coming over. This is only the first time we’ve met.”

My brain had become a brown swamp of regurgitated failures and this prevented me from replying like a human being. “Uhhh…” was all I could squeeze out before she said this:

“I think I’m going to go. I’ll write you later.”

“Umm…” I was still struggling to process these events as she slung her handbag over her shoulder and made her way to the door. Some paintings I had yet to hang up were in the way and she carefully moved them to the side. I think that was the worst part. I felt like a toddler and she was the adult cleaning up after me. “Okay I’ll be around.” That was all I could think of. She looked back and nodded imperceptibly, lips pursed in a taut line of disappointment. She closed the door and I closed my brain. Well that sucked.

A few minutes later my phone rang. It was her. We hadn’t talked on the phone yet. My addled mind quickly decided she was calling to apologize and ask for a second chance. She was outside and would want to be let back in. She realized she’d been intensely unfair.

I answered the phone the way I always do. “Hello?”

“Hi. So. I’m wondering what you’re thinking right now.”

“Uhh… kind of confused I guess? What was that all about?”

“Well so I did say I was hesitant to come up and you were really insistent about it.” My fantasy a few paragraphs up evaporated like my fantasies always do. “I just want to know why you wouldn’t let it go. I felt like I had no choice to come up and it made me really uncomfortable.”

There it was, the dreaded U WORD. “I’m sorry, I just—“ a sudden thought speared into my brain like a spear thrown by a pro spear thrower. If I cut myself off and refused to make another sound it would seem like I had no service! Can’t have this conversation if you don’t have service.

“…Hello?”

“…”

“Are you there?”

I waited, still as a dead woodchuck, refusing to breathe much in the same way a dead woodchuck refuses to breathe. I am the woodchuck. I am dead.

She tried a few more times to get a response and then sighed another ocean sigh. I looked at my phone’s screen and saw the words I’d been waiting for:

Call ended