Wet Socks

There were late-night muffins and hep cat riffs with an Indian-print blue scarf to ward off the cold of a house lacking heat to save money. College students can barely afford Ramen and thrift store sweaters, after all. And this particular one, hunched at a Mac, tokenly art kid, had quite the clash of choices on which to obsess. To be or not to be, homework or the ever soul-eating monster of facebook, ex-boyfriend or distanced current [in more ways than one]?
It wasn’t her house. Or one she’d known very long at all; it’d been perhaps a month since she met the fabulous four inhabiting it. Lovely literary people, three of them creative writing majors and one guitarist a la hipster band. Half-past midnight and Aleks stared idly at the row of dully shining bottles, wine and otherwise, lining the open-blinded window. Jack, dubbed her new best friend willingly or not, worked industriously on a screenplay due the next day.
Her feet were cold in more ways than one. Wet socks. And Jonathan, a boyfriend six hours north raised to unfortunate selfishness, but charismatic and roguishly Italian enough to make her fall in love, or so she thought, verses Davy, a challenging ex re-entered into her life to bring her to frisson and frustration…he’d always been ‘that guy.’ Not to mention a friend recently estranged due to a huge fight over their past fling, a bisexual roommate who’d drunkenly confessed her [explicit] wishes Aleks not be hetero, and a strange crush on said new best friend. Aleks sometimes lackadaisically considered becoming asexual. She wondered how legitimate any of the above attractions could be, and why they came in such a barrage fashion.
Lily, aforementioned as the roommate, said the attraction to Jack stemmed from the lack of affection via Jonathan, the boyfriend. The weekend prior to this chilly Monday they’d had a conversation deep into the morning post-party (it was Jack’s birthday).
“I think there’re two things I need to stay in love with someone.”
Lily, a blanket stretched over her head to mask embarrassment, waited.
“One, unconditional love…like that ‘I’ll be there for you through everything’ kind of nonjudgement. Second…I guess an intoxicating kind of chemistry…challenge, otherwise it’s boring and I’m done in a month.”
“I think you have the second one with Jonathan…”
“…he doesn’t handle the first.”
“Well, you don’t have a crush on Jack. But I have to say…if I talked to him as much as you do, I’d probably fall in love with him too. Who wouldn’t? He’s…kind of wonderful. And you’re craving affection from Jonathan. But at least you don’t have a perfect-in-every-way boyfriend you doubt because of your selfish obsession with pussy.”
“I don’t know..the whole downing three-quarters a fifth of vodka and him saving me from drowning in my own vom even after I bruised him so epically when he wrestled the fifth away from me…it was just so very much part one.” Aleks blew a loud sigh between her teeth. “Fucking stupid. I do love Jonathan. But I think Davy might have both. Which is why I’m making him wait…if he does I’ll know I’m worth it.”
“I guess.” Skepticism under white fleece.
“He’s just always been there. Since I was fourteen I’ve been half in love with him.”
“How can I be with Will forever if I’m always after vagina?” Slurring, Lily’s belligerence had exposed a lot of deep dark secrets tonight, but none Aleks hadn’t suspected. “It sounds so stupid, but I know I want to be with him for the rest of my life…and I just want cunt AND dick!”
“I don’t know…I mean, I don’t need sex the way you do. I want it, all the time when I’m with Jonathan, but I can deal without it. And Lil…everyone has different things they want from who they’re with. I just wonder if they can ever both be found in each other, you know? But I know you have everything Will wants…”
“Exactly, that’s why I hate when I think about girls. I’m so lucky.”
Aleks undid the last few buttons of her shirt; a blue Converse half-sleeve thing jazzily worn over red tyedye. “Yeah. You are. I feel like you and Jonathan are the same person sometimes. Thanks for the shirt loan.”
“Probably true…I think both of us are pretty sexual. Like, do you think you and Jonathan could be together if you didn’t fuck?”
“With the distance? I don’t know…not?”
“That makes me feel like things are really off somewhere. And pretty guilty too, because
Will gives me everything.”
“I know…I get jealous sometimes. Why is my life always such a soap opera? I mean, it’s not like boys just like me. If they do, it’s not like, it’s this immediate love thing. I’m definitely not the girl turning heads walking down the street, but over and over this thing keeps happening where all of a sudden somebody’s saying I love you and I have no idea why.”
“God, sometimes I hate so much that you’re straight…people DO fall in love with you all the time. And you’re right, you’re not the girl sexing up the sidewalk, but I mean, you’re so much more than that. I mean you’re fucking gorgeous and you have no idea, but you like…are so complex and complicated and the way you look at life is so unique, intense. You intoxicate people.”
“I never know when to believe people. All of a sudden Davy’s back in the game, and I
mean with a vengeance, because he’s so so persistant and says things with so much confidence. I mean, the other day he kept saying ‘I know we’re going to be together, we just are, you’re going to be with me again.’”
“Cocky much?” Lily’s reaction was much the same as Aleks’s had been.

Aleks pulled back from the reverie to watch movies/break from studying with Jack. After a half hour episode of the British Office and a failed attempt at Taco Bell delivery, they digressed to making Velveeta at 3 AM. Slouching in a ratty comforter, she drifted to reflect as the water boiled and both stared into computer screens.
“I know, I told him that, he said he wasn’t cocky, he just knew. He was so sure…and really, I couldn’t entirely disagree with him, because we do keep going back to each other and he does that thing where I’m completely into him and everything. We’re kind of…really good together.”
“Hearing that I kind of understand why you’re talking to him now…I guess it’s more complicated than I realized.”
“I do love Jonathan, though…”
Over his bullshit, though. She’d realized lately how much a friend crew made a
difference, and just how much loneliness amped up the familiar drain of depression for so much of semester. Too many days spent bailing on class and absorbing Elliott Smith in fits of deep blue; these were the moods her dad called ‘indigo.’ She wasn’t sure what the color was for the mania, but she wished it’d come around more than the indigo. Some kind of burnt ruby-orange, maybe, or painfully acute burnished gold. Indigo meant a longing for dreamless sleep and the cruel irony of constant insomnia.
How could you know? Wet socks. Cold feet. And where to take them. The water continued to boil. As the tearing of Jack opening cheese powder for pasta sounded, she thought about muffins again. The coffee shop girl who rang them up had had half-dreads. Aleks considered changing the unruly mass of black on her head for similar hippie girl effect.
“Fork or spoon?” Jack asked, and she could smell pasta, classic college kid food. It wasn’t T-Bell, but there were many more late nights to come.