The Sun in Your Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

associations that used to hold everything together, in a way, and all of those associations are still there, but they don’t have the same meaning for me anymore. I think there are things you have to come to at exactly the right age to really fall in love with them. If you’re too young, you don’t quite get it. And if you’re too old, you get it, you appreciate it, but it doesn’t necessarily move you so much. You don’t identify in the same way.”
    â€œYou don’t think the music changes with you? That you can experience it differently over time?”
    The look on his face: I didn’t mean to make this a metaphor for our relationship.
    I held his look, long enough to feel that something between us would crack wide open if neither of us averted our eyes. But he did. I pulled more things from drawers. If he’d noticed that I was reaching for the best versions I had—my most flattering jeans, the T-shirt that hangs just so, my “good” underwear, as opposed to the tattered yet still functional pairs I wore around the house all the time, around him—he didn’t say anything. And whatever might have combusted between us under slightly more pressure merely dissipated. The rest of the night passed like so many other recent ones, ending with the two of us in bed, reading. Andy turning off the lamp on his side and rolling over. Me turning off my lamp and doing the same.
    T HE NEXT DAY was Saturday and I realized I should have chosen a spot to meet Lee instead of having her pick me up at my apartment. Leaving Andy would have been tense but not nearly as complicated as it was now. Because now he was home with nowhere in particular to be. If he’d come up with something to do, it would have been a signal: I must take my strong feelings elsewhere. I still have strong feelings when it comes to Lee. No, he would have to stay and be here when she arrived. They would have to interact, I would have to watch them interact, and then he would watch me go with her. I was the one who had put us all in this position. I didn’t want to ask myself why.
    Lee rang the buzzer as I was getting a few toiletries together. Andy let her up, and part of me wanted to stay in the bathroom forever and just listen to them.
    â€œAndy,” I heard her say by the door. And it was so much at once: greeting, apology, request, demand, past, and present.
    â€œIt’s good to see you, Lee.”
    I gave them time for what might have been an intense hug before calling out, “I’ll be right there!” and heading into the hallway, ready to go.
    â€œThis is such a nice place you guys have,” she said.
    I thanked her but didn’t ask if she wanted to look around. Something had already shifted since I saw her at the diner, when I’d wanted to have her over, to show off to her. But Andy offered her a tour. He took her from the kitchen into the living room, and she complimented the ways we’d filled the space. The teak sideboard Andy’s parents had passed down to us, a marble and brass lamp we’d bought one weekend in Cold Spring, an old framed mirror. Furnishings that conveyed intentions, building a life together.Through her eyes, though, I saw them as an arrangement of props. Staged domesticity.
    Andy didn’t ask her about the last few years, and she didn’t offer him details. Maybe it was understood that I’d already let him know. Maybe neither of them cared, in the sense that it didn’t matter to them; they would always just pick up wherever they had left off. Or maybe I was reading too much into it and each of them wanted to get this over with and get moving. Andy asked Lee if she’d like a cup of coffee and she said no thanks, she’d had one earlier and didn’t want to get overcaffeinated. Everything was smooth, polite, and strange. The way Lee and Andy said goodbye. Even the way Andy and I said goodbye. A quick kiss before he pulled