Freehand

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As she worked on her latest hobby, conversations from the past few months swirled in her head, one particular line popping up over and over. “Does this mean you won’t ever consider getting back together?” he had asked, out of the blue after a year and a half of not speaking with her, but it had been the start of a barrage of phone calls and instant messages from her ex-boyfriend.

The third time she tried and failed to stab the wire into the breadboard, she gave up and threw it down. The wire joined others on the table, which looked like an explosion of electronics parts had occurred there.

Maybe I’m just trying too hard to be upset about Kevin, she thought. She didn’t feel particularly angry or upset, but her hands were shaky, and she could feel her eyes stinging as she stared at the wires.

Her gaze moved to the drawing of the circuit that she was trying to build. The drawing was a copy from a book that had come in the electronics sensor kit that she had bought last week, a beginner-level kit – for 12 year olds! – her roommate had joked. She had stuck out her tongue at him in reply. At the time, she had thought a new hobby would help occupy her mind from the depressing job market and the Kevin-troubles.

Suddenly, her brow furrowed, and she leaned in to examine the drawing, and then the breadboard. She realized that for the past 10 minutes, she had been trying to place the wire into the wrong spot. She groaned quietly and rubbed her eyes. She had a feeling that as she continued with her new hobby, she would continue to have these moments of clarity where she would feel utterly foolish.

But that’s the great thing about hobbies like these, she thought. Think long enough about any problem, chances are good that a solution would become clear soon enough. Not like real life. If only life problems had a help support staff or FAQ page, things would be a lot easier. She wouldn’t have to constantly wonder if she was doing the right thing.

—

“I don’t know what to do,” she had sniffled into the phone, the last day as Kevin’s girlfriend.

Kevin didn’t respond for a few seconds. Finally he had said, “That’s childish. It’s your life. You need to take responsibility for the choices that you make.”

“What?” she had said.

“You chose to go to school away from here, before we met,” he had explained. “Of course we can’t see each other as much. You said you don’t know what to do. That’s bullshit. You already decided what you’re gonna do two years ago.”

“What?” she had repeated. His words were not processing correctly in her head.

“We broke up two years ago when you got accepted into college. We just didn’t know it yet,” he had said.

The week following the breakup, she had somehow made it through her classes. She held back tears when Professor Dean went over sound change; she almost started sobbing when the cute TA with glasses passed out the graded papers; and she finally cried while her literature teacher went on a quick smoke break.

And a couple of weeks later, she had caved. She had called Kevin and asked her reluctant ex-boyfriend, “Please, at least consider getting back together.”

“I’m moving to Washington,” he had replied.

—

She remembered the feeling of desperation well. It was hard to forget. But she certainly wasn’t feeling it now. Her apprehension about the constant calls, she decided, was just her mind trying to create problems that didn’t exist.

Night-time calls now were nothing in comparison to the rambling conversations they had had years ago. Now, at 2am, it was mostly he who rambled, his speech drunken and slurred, his intonation low and steady, a sleepy stream of commentary about the bars he had visited that night. She could hear the murmur of music and people talking in the background.

His drawl was lulling her to sleep. Suddenly, she realized he had stopped talking.

“Hello?” she said. She lowered the phone to look at it. The call had ended without her realizing it, just as quickly as it had taken their relationship to end.

The circuit she was working on earlier was disassembled now and she had organized the different parts in little piles. She closed her phone and placed it on the table. She started clearing the kitchen table, where she had been working, packing everything into baggies before placing them in the box that the kit had come in.

Her brow furrowed again, just as it had done before when she had finally realized her mistake on the breadboard. She realized that, just as she had earlier tried to place a wire where it did not belong, Kevin was doing the same. He was so set in getting back with her that he didn’t realize there was a completely different path he could take.

His words during their breakup, from years ago, echoed in her mind, and now she knew what to say the next time he called: “We broke up two years ago, only you didn’t seem to know it.”

—

© Some rights reserved. “And Afterwards, Washington” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

June Owatari is a recent college graduate, floundering in the poor economy. She likes drinking beer, listening to music, and making things.