ARDEN YUM

Creative Nonfiction | Trinity School, New York, NY

Spencer

“I miss you.”

“I’m still here, you know.”

“I just want to say that I miss you before you’re really gone. It's an anticipatory feeling.”

Spencer loved using long words that he had recently discovered in online thesauruses. English was his second language, and he often flaunted his expansive vocabulary as if he needed to prove his fluency to the world. I chuckled, rolling over onto my right shoulder to stare at the glowing harbor outside of his white-trimmed window. It must have been well past midnight, but there were still tiny flickers of light radiating off of the docks. Glittering bulbs of coral and amber floated near the water’s surface like fireflies. I imagined groups of fishermen gathered on the boats, clinking glass bottles in an imperfect circle, temporarily forgetting about their wives and children fast asleep at home. They would have to get out on the water early, in just a few hours actually, before the sun rose again. It was better not to think of the family they had to leave behind. Instead, they laughed as their drunken faces grew hot and dizzy. In the soft incandescence of the harbor, singular moments seemed eternal, conversations rattled on without the petulant reminder of time passing by, no one checked their watches on sun-drenched wrists. I envied the men on the boats, only appearing to me as small brown flecks, by imagining their circumstances. I opened my mouth, about to say something, when Spencer wrapped his long arm around my waist.

“What are you thinking about?”

He asked me this question whenever I was quiet for too long. I usually let his voice float in the air, either pretending to doze off or turning to gaze outside his giant window. If I had responded that I was thinking about fishermen, he would have been selfishly disappointed.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Nothing, really.”

Spencer and I could talk for hours about new music, school teachers we liked and disliked, childhood memories, potential baby names, but neither of us knew how to define the spell of entanglements and latenight car rides and groggy mornings that we continually found ourselves in. Me screaming on the tall, bedazzled carnival ride in the open air, his hand on my thigh. Eating noodles and fish cake in a family-owned Cantonese diner, sitting on makeshift stools—buckets turned upsidedown. A month after we kissed for the first time, Spencer took me to the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. We huddled close on a public bench near the water, facing the highrises in Central that were decorated in flashing neon lights. Our legs stuck together with sweat. He clasped my hand and his voice shook faintly when he said, “So, what are we doing? Not literally, I mean. In the greater sense.”

I didn’t have an answer. I knew that I liked feeling the weight of his arm around my shoulder, but my hand clammed up when he insisted on holding it when we were out in public. I wondered if it was him or the pheromones that kept me coming back to his apartment at night. I dreaded the conversations he initiated about our feelings. I didn’t realize that emotions had to be verbally processed. It seemed irresponsible to place a label on something so amorphous, so dreamlike, especially when we both knew it was fleeting. Now, these memories have a soft blue overlay, the color of the sky at dusk, cracked a bit at the edges like an old reel of film.

“You can come visit me in New York. I’ll ask my parents if you can stay with us.” I finally offered, staring straight out the window, avoiding eye contact. The water was reflecting the lights of the harbor in a scattered, almost mosaic formation.

“That sounds nice,” Spencer replied. I could hear him smiling through his teeth.

I knew then that I had effectively shut him off for the night. He would leave his feelings alone and we could go back to watching movies on his flat-screen and making each other laugh during the lulls in conversation. I had kept his hope alive; if I thought that we would still be talking in two months when I moved halfway across the world, then he could believe it too. Spencer always needed reassurance from me. I suppose I was too difficult to read.

Some nights, when I didn’t feign excitement or provide a vague glimpse into our future together, he would go on long tangents about our relationship that would spiral into his abstract theories on the meaning of life. I thought he sounded incredibly cheesy during these philosophic revelations, but I listened quietly, staring up at the ceiling. Of course he would say that romantic relationships took precedence over reality; he lived in a grandiose apartment, on a small island off of Hong Kong, that was decorated with colorful, oddly-shaped furniture and opened up to a massive foyer designed like an old-fashioned hotel lobby. He could drop out of school at any time and never have to worry about having enough money to live. It is an extreme privilege for love to be the only pressing issue on your mind, I remember thinking. Once, to break the uncomfortable silence after one of his more elusive and long-winded spiels, I asked him to repeat himself, as if I had not heard him correctly the first time. He laughed, and said, “And here I was thinking that you were preparing an elaborate response.”

My phone vibrated on the nightstand, and I reached over to check it. The harsh blue light stung my unadjusted eyes for a second, and I blinked a few times before I could read the time and the four texts my mom had sent me, asking if I ever planned on coming home. I’m on my way back, I typed with drowsy fingers. I told Spencer that I had to go; it was already three-thirty in the morning and my parents were getting worried. He let out a groan of protest, and teasingly tugged at my arm, but he offered to take me down in the elevator. I said I was okay.

I sat down on the white couch in Spencer’s lobby, and didn’t know where to rest my gaze after I asked the doorman to hail a taxi. What did he think of me? I opened up my phone camera and studied my face. Mascara was smudged underneath both my eyes, which accentuated my already atrocious under-eye circles. My concealer had also rubbed off, so tiny red bumps and browned acne scars freckled my cheekbones. My long black hair was flipped to one side, and looked tangled even though I had brushed it that morning. I imagined that the doorman was silently judging me, slut-shaming me, even, for coming out of a boy’s apartment looking disheveled and exhausted. I resented that possibility, even though I did feel somewhat dirtied. A respectable girl would have visited in the afternoon and had dinner with his family, I thought. After visiting Spencer’s house almost every day for a week straight, I had only spoken to his father once, and our awkward pleasantries had lasted less than two minutes. When the red car pulled up to the driveway, the doorman opened the door for me and I thanked him, looking at his mouth, because I was afraid to meet the disgust I was so sure filled his eyes. I wondered if the cab driver, too, judged me for being picked up so late at night. I spoke as little as possible, paying him extra when he pulled up to my house, as if a generous tip would make up for my disgrace.

Spencer and I met for breakfast the next morning, in the upstairs room of a small cafe on Queen’s Road in Central. He looked at me in my red and white t-shirt, track pants, and Adidas Superstars, and his lips turned up in a goofy grin. “I think I own every piece of that outfit,” he teased.

“This is all I have left. My clothes are packed.”

The verbal reminder that I was leaving and my belongings were folded in suitcases wiped the smile off his face. His shoulders tensed like they had been pulled upward by marionette strings.

The waitress came to our table and filled our water glasses from a metal pitcher. She was blonde, short, and spoke with a thick Australian accent. I asked for black coffee and scrambled eggs; Spencer ordered banana french toast. I knew that I would want to try some of his dish, but it felt unnatural to ask. It was strange, I thought, how I could be wrapped up in his arms in the middle of the night and feel at ease, but I could not bring myself to ask for a bite of his food. The mundaneness made me feel a sharp vulnerability.

A busboy came over with a pot of coffee. As I poured the hot black liquid into my mug, I made eye contact with Spencer, trying to capture a mental image of his face, because I didn’t know when I was going to see it again, with all of its intricacies and shadows and long lines. I thought he looked quite handsome in the soft yellow light coming through the back window; the sun was still rising. His family was from Hong Kong, but I always thought he looked more like a Korean pop star, with his hazy brown eyes and high cheekbones. Spencer’s skin was lighter than mine, the color of a butterscotch candy, and he never tanned in the sun. His lips were pink and a little too big for his face. He was freshly showered, his hair slightly damp, and smelled like laundered linen. I always complained, jokingly, that he had been unfairly blessed with long lashes; they fluttered when he spoke. Mine were short and stubby, plus I could never find a mascara that made them stick upright.

When our food came, he offered me a bite of his toast. I exhaled a breath of relief I didn’t realize I had been holding in. The sticky sweet sauce melted on my tongue.

“It’s your last breakfast here,” he said.

“I know, you should feel honored that I’ve chosen you as my company.”

“I do, actually.”

Spencer blushed. I could never tell if he was oblivious to my sarcasm, or just decided to take me literally. We spoke vaguely about our friends: where they were, what they were up to this summer, when they would be coming back. There were long pauses in the conversation when Spencer would look at me intently, and I would awkwardly shift my gaze. He seemed to like to make me squirm. When we both finished eating, I excused myself to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. I felt like I should have been much sadder to leave than I actually was. When I got back, Spencer was downstairs and he had already paid the bill.

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that.”

“Of course I did.”

He told me that he could drop me off at the hotel where I was staying. In the taxi, he leaned over to kiss me, and I tasted his sugarcoated lips mixed with the salty tears dripping from his eyes. I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t crying, and our emotions felt oddly unbalanced. The warm, salty-sweet kiss continued until I recognized my building outside the window. Spencer told the driver in Cantonese to wait a few minutes for him to return. The two of us got out of the car and turned to face each other.

“Come here,” Spencer said in a low voice.

I obliged, letting myself melt into his body. I rested my head on his shoulder.

“You know, from the moment I saw you, I was infatuated by you.” He began another one of his speeches, this one even more dramatic, intense, splendid. Tinged with heartbreak. His voice eventually faded out to the sounds of traffic going by, cars and people with places to go, lives of their own. I barely heard him utter three words that sent a chill down my spine.

I was quiet. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever loved him, but Spencer sounded so unwavering.

We were both only sixteen. Something in my throat prevented me from saying it back.

“I’ll miss you,” I said instead, after a pause that seemed like an eternity.

He leaned in to kiss me again, and I let him, but I pulled away after a few seconds because I was afraid that my parents would come downstairs and see.

He crossed the street to the taxi, disappearing from my sight in seconds. My parents and I took a car to the airport. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint the feeling in my stomach. It was a mixture of uncertainty and sadness and relief. I was lighter without him, somehow. I quickly dismissed this sensation and pulled out my phone. Hey, I texted Spencer, I miss you. I mean it, not knowing if I did. A few seconds later, a flashing light popped up on my screen. I miss you so much more. The rest of the trip home rushed by like a dream.

*

We lost touch after a month, when phone calls became text messages, sparsely worded and with large gaps in between.

On September 21st, it had been fifteen days since we had spoken. Although a part of me was relieved to say goodbye to him outside the taxi a little over a month before, I selfishly expected him to stay in my life, there for me if I needed him. The way he seemed to move on so quickly was an unexpected betrayal. At night, I slipped on my white tennis shoes and leather jacket, and left my apartment without saying goodbye to my family. My consciousness leapt out of itself as I walked down Madison Avenue, watching my body drift across the gum-stained, grey sidewalk. I heard Spencer’s voice, from that night near the water, when he asked me what we were doing, playing over and over again like a broken tape recorder. I still didn’t know.

The image of his face appeared like stained glass in my line of vision. I forgot where I was and where I had intended to go. I didn’t want to admit that I had given an irrecoverable piece of myself to Spencer, yet I felt this stinging in my heart, like I was mourning the loss of a cherished fragment that had been stolen away but could not pinpoint exactly what it was. Even my thoughts had gaping holes in them. I kept repeating to myself: What is my life without Spencer in it? I didn’t want to be with him, the boy made of flesh and charm and arrogance and new clothes. I don’t know if I ever have, even when we were together. But his memory had transformed into an entirely new entity, a projection of my desires, the life I left behind in Hong Kong, the warmth of his skin, the gentle way he said my name. I thought again of the fishermen, laughing on the harbor long after the sun had set, as if time did not exist. Maybe forever could be contained into a single night, a single summer. Maybe that’s all we were ever supposed to be.