Nat was Openminded. She told me so the first time we hung out, sitting on opposite sides of my brother’s truck bed drinking slushies in the heat and mosquitos of an August convenience store parking lot evening.
“It’s like having the TV of your mind turned on, all the time, to this channel you can’t change whether or not you like it,” she said. “Drives my parents nuts. Can you imagine what it’s like being told to watch what you think? I wish.”
Openmindedness only went one way and she was a transmitter, not a receiver. The syrupy taste of watermelon slush and the way our shoes pointed at each other, wanting to touch across the plastic ridges of the truck bed, I didn’t care. It wasn’t enough to make me not like her, or not want to taste her cherry limeade lips.
Which I did. Not that night, but a different night, and without the cherry limeade. We’d been hanging out so regularly that everyone at the store sensed us making eyes across the linoleum walkway separating Women’s Plus, my section, from Sportswear, hers. If you like me the way I like you, Nat, why should I be afraid of what you think? I thought it for weeks before I built up the courage to lean across the gear shift, clammy hands sticking to the steering wheel, and I was still thinking it when I pressed my lips to hers, hoping she’d be able to receive what I was thinking.
Instead, a flood. Deluge. Oh my god oh my god finally, no, what are you doing I’m so sweaty why are her lips so cold what does my hair look like I wasn’t even ready for that; of course I was I’ve been waiting forever; no, I wouldn’t wish me on anybody, I shouldn’t have said yes to going out the first time, I wish I could make this stop but I didn’t start it did I and besides, I warned her.
Our lips came apart but the flood of words didn’t stop, only quieted a bit with the distance. I sat blitzed, lost in the flow, those last words echoing in my head: I warned her. I warned her.
The first thing that surprised me about hearing someone’s inner thoughts wasn’t their jumbled nature or brutal honesty, I was ready for those, but the way they bounced between referring to me in second or third person. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether she was talking to herself or thinking at me when she used the word ‘you.’ Was it any less strange to hear her think of me as ‘her’ or ‘Krista’ or ‘my girl?’ No, I liked the last one. I couldn’t help but smile, and she smiled in return, knowing why I did, and we laughed without having to explain ourselves, and laced our fingers together in a clutch of polished nails, her highlighter yellow and my deep maroon alternating, pulling in complementary fashion at the soft skin between knuckles.
And I wish I could say it was perfect, like those romantic comedies about being Openminded and the quirky misunderstandings that unspool from the condition. Except people aren’t perfect and movies aren’t life. She was right to say it was like having an unmutable TV channel in your mind. Closeness strengthened the connection, but some nights I could hear her across town, thoughts scrambling, cycling, finally wavering off into sleep. Sometimes at work they were so distracting, deafening, that I forgot what I was doing halfway through, or couldn’t pay attention to a customer, or had to fight the urge to walk over to her section and insert my opinions into her internal conversation. It was agonizing, almost, knowing what both of us were thinking about each other when we had to stock racks and fold tank tops.
Doubts still riddled her thoughts: What am I thinking starting this, is this serious or not, how serious am I, how serious can it be after THREE WEEKS do I like her do I love her or what, what, what; am I supposed to be thinking about the rest of my life with her, when do you do that, how long do we wait to have sex, what’s the right way, shut up, she knows everything you’re thinking, stop thinking at all; no, that never works and you know it, think about food. What’s for lunch? Chimichangas? Taquitos? Did I even bring my lunch?
I had the same questions, hesitations, minus the awkwardness of knowing they’d be projected outside my mind. But it seemed like the more these questions came up for her, the more I had to think them, too. Why should it matter, these were the questions of how a relationship began. Answering them was how a relationship progressed.
It wasn’t her worries that cut to the quick, though, but rather her knee-jerk reaction to a customer in my section. I fought to remain focused on explaining different jean styles even while words like bitch and cow crashed through the back of my skull. My inner voice wanted nothing more than to scream back at her across the linoleum walkway, Who do you think you’re fooling? Look at who you’re dating and keep thinking that.
Later, while I was driving her home, she looked over at me, apologetic. “I thought she was flirting with you.”
I grunted. She didn’t have to say it because I’d already heard as much. And besides, even as she said it her mind rephrased the statement slightly but significantly: Or you were flirting with her.
“Don’t tell me what you think,” I said.
“What else am I supposed to—”
“You can’t unthink it, don’t try to make it sound better with words.”
She frowned down at her knees. “I wish I could make myself think differently, all right, but I can’t,” she said. And thought: I warned you and now I’m the bad guy; I never would’ve tried to kiss you first and this is why, you know what, Krista, you did this to us. Both of us. You wanted to have your own way so much well now you do and this is what you get, that’s a relationship, you get the good and the bad except with me you can never shut it off. Any of it.
“You have no idea what I was thinking,” I said, before I could stop myself. “You never have and you never will.”
Tears leapt to her eyes, frustrated and furious, and it took an effort to reach over and lace my fingers in hers. To drive her the rest of the way home with her thoughts amplified and raking at the contact. A migraine pounded, relentless, by the time I parked in her building’s lot.
“It’s late,” she said. And thought: Leave me alone.
I watched her gather her bag and open the door, and couldn’t help bitterly realizing that, already, I put more stock in her thoughts than her words. As though the raw impulses of the mind meant more than the way she navigated them into reality. My own response nagged me: You have no idea what I’m thinking. Thank god for that, or how much would she hate me for the fact that the memory of our shoes, so close but not touching, squeezed my heart with longing now?
She didn’t show up for work the next day, and I didn’t work for a few days after that. It helped the migraine fade, and the connection. The signal of that TV channel grew weak, distant. In the few transmissions I received, it sounded like it was a relief for her as well. To not have to know someone was always eavesdropping on her, judging her, overthinking her every unguarded moment and impulsive, imperfect thought.
When I next went to work they said she was transferring to another location. One closer to her home. I knew where she lived so I knew there was no closer location.
I waited. Waited for her to text and ask to see me again. Or to show up at work. Or for her internal monologue to spontaneously pop into my head so I didn’t have to be alone with mine. I wanted things to go back to how they had been, no longer wistful about our pairs of sneakers pointed together, but aching for the crazy rhythm of maroon and fluorescent yellow nails clasped in a steady cacophony, a hopeful chaos of connection.
And still, I wait. I want her to be the one to choose this time.
Late at night, over morning coffee, in the lulls when folding tank tops at work, I direct my thoughts toward her and hope she’ll catch my message. What I should’ve known to say back when I had the chance:
I’m listening, Nat.
As a fine art professional, Mar has wielded katanas and handled Lady Gaga’s shoes. As a veterinary assistant, she has cared for hairless cats, hedgehogs, and, one time, a coyote. As a writer, her short fiction can be found or is forthcoming in Analog, Escape Pod, Apex’s Robotic Ambitions anthology, and many other publications. She is a reader for Interstellar Flight Press, and a graduate of the Wayward Wormhole. She resides in the Pacific Northwest or can be found on various social media @MaroftheBooks.