The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti Page B

when he was not there, and he thought of her when she was not there as well.
    When the weekend came he picked her up in his car and they drove east down the highway, and she giggled and laughed, and he just laughed, and she squirmed in her seat and tried to touch his body, and their bags were in the back, and the sun was out, and the windows were open, and she sang songs that were playing on the radio, and she was so joyful and he was damn happy.
    They made a stop to get some lunch and kissed each other’s lips and tongues right outside the restaurant. She kept her eyes open to see who was looking, and he kept his hands on her.
    Back in the car she felt sleepy, so they stopped again to get her a coffee so she would not fall asleep, so they would not miss a moment of their weekend together.
    When they arrived at the place where they were headed, she sat in the car and looked around while he got a key from the concierge, and he picked up the luggage, and she carried the fragile wine bottles. Together they hiked down a path through the trees and she said to him, “Have you been here before?”
    And he said, “No. My brother told me about it.”
    And she was happy, and he felt okay too, and though the lie was unnecessary, it made things better.
    That night they got drunk and did all those things, and in the morning they got up and did all those things. As he was cooking breakfast with the groceries they had brought, she called out from the bed, “I think we’ll never fight. I could never see fighting with you.”
    And he called back over his shoulder, “You could never make me mad.”
    She wiggled gleefully into the covers, and he felt a loving rise at her high and musical voice.
    In the afternoon they went for a swim, and, swimming, he tried to pull off her bathing suit, but she coquettishly swam away, batting her arms and legs at him. She called out, “Keep away, you madman! I’m being raped by a madman!”
    And while this initially jarred him, he quickly relaxed and decided he liked her impetuous, thoughtless ways.
    In the evening he made a fire, and everything was perfect and had been going perfectly, and she lay back in his arms and thought, “It’s picture perfect. It’s just like we’re in a movie.” And she said to him, “Doesn’t it feel like we’re in a movie? In some made-up fantasy land?”
    And he said, “Mmmm,” and kissed the top of her head, and it was even more like a movie, like everything she had seen and heard about love, and she was involved, and it was with him.
    She said, “I wish this weekend would never end.”
    And when she said that, in a way, it made his arms just clutch her tighter, and her face withdrew into thinking about Monday, and the ride home, which would be worse, and he felt her thinking, and he started thinking too.
    She tried to brush it off, to cover it up, as if she hadn’t said it, as if it wasn’t true at all, that of course they would be at that cabin forever, and she said to him, to make it all better, “Truly, it’s like a dream.”
    But it wasn’t like a dream. Not really. And they got drunk and did all that and fell asleep, and when they woke in the morning she felt crummy and he grew irritated.
    Because he had to pack their bags and clean everything up while she lay in bed just watching him. She had said, “Just let me watch you. I just want to watch you.”
    And he had said, “Well, you’re watching me,” in a joking sort of way, but he did not want to be watched. He wanted to be helped.
    And she flopped back into the pillows, into the covers, and she said, “I wish we could stay forever.” And she said, “You take the first shower. I can’t get up.”
    So he did.
    And while she was in her shower he opened the door and stood there watching, but she cried, “Get out!” And though she was joking, sort of, she really did need her privacy in the mornings, especially in the bathroom, so he left to pack the car.
    “One last swim?” he asked when she