Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall Read Free Book Online Page A

definitely.”
    On August first, I had moved all of my possessions into Roxy’s second-storey apartment on Gladstone. For just over a month, I’d had my first real bedroom alone since I was sixteen. Still, Maria and I continued to hang out a lot. It would have been unnatural for either of us to pretend the other didn’t exist. And it was still easier to share a bed with Maria. The sounds she made while dreaming instantly pulled me into sleep. Alone, I dreamt about my teeth falling out, about getting shot fifty times.
    When I got home, I dropped the remaining bit of Rescue Remedy, a flower-based tincture I’m certain is one hundred percent placebo, into a glass of water and spent the night watching Designing Women reruns on Roxy’s TV in the living room. On a piece of paper, I wrote out a list of my shifts at the café, and the three classes I had registered for. So far independence wasn’t my strong suit. I put my notebooks into my backpack with the two textbooks I’d managed to buy, and laid out my clothes on my bed, in hopes I might actually make it to class the next morning.
    As I sipped at the Rescue Remedy, I knew the bitterness was probably a lie. I was an hysteric, a wandering womb. I might have made a great Victorian lady, dying in a tower somewhere, pinching my wrists until the wilting finally killed me.
    [ 3 ]
    Amy
----
    This morning I woke up in a slug’s casing of my own regret, pushing the duvet to the floor with my shoes. I had evidently fallen asleep fully clothed, heels and all. My mouth opened reluctantly and my extremities tingled. The clock read 7:15 a.m. Josh was due home soon. I managed to curl upwards only to fall back against the mattress with a moan. I hate this day . I cursed the sun with all its expectation.
    I’d always been a morning person, one of those cliché bright-side-of-things people who drive normal folks crazy. At summer camp, I used to jump out of my sleeping bag at 6 a.m. for the polar bear swim, fuelled by the frigid temperatures and the euphoric calm of dawn light. Now I liked to jog around Trinity Bellwoods Park as the sun rose.
    So it was unusual to feel this way, to wake up grumpy and disoriented.
    On weekend mornings when Josh and I first fell in love, we would open our eyes around the same time, as if good timing had tapped us on the shoulders. Feeling the flutter of Josh’s eyelashes across my back triggered instinctively the flutter of my own. One of us would press “play” on the stereo. We stubbornly played cassettes, even though we’d been raised on CD s and digital files. We made perfect mixed tapes. I made dozens of videos of him, followed him around with my camera asking him questions. I must have edited more than twenty short films that had my love for him as the only narrative thread. Pure beauty.
    When we kissed too long in public, our friends would insert forefingers into open mouths with wrinkled gag-poised faces. Josh wrote e-mails home with subject headings such as Bliss , and opening sentences like This is what everyone talks about. This is It. Amy is the One I never used to believe in . He’d blind-copy me on them — we had no secrets. I knew all of his passwords. We shared a bank account.
    Our elevated state of rapture lasted much longer than most and was therefore experienced not as a honeymoon phase but as a constant state of euphoria. We joked about getting a submissive houseboy for lazy Sunday mornings, so that we could have breakfast delivered in bed. We’d wrap around each other, ease into the day lazily, like melting ice cream cones accepting their liquid state.
    When my mother met Josh she said, “Amy, I can see you with him for a very long time. He seems so solid, so good for you.” She’d not been so supportive of my lovers before Josh, just quietly tolerant, making some efforts but nothing overwhelming. It wasn’t a gender thing. She had liked my one girlfriend just