Alone With You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

His mind was like a computer with multiple applications open, some of them buzzing with contemplation in the background. Most of the time Aldo did not give others the impression he was listening, a suspicion that was generally correct.

“Most people are relatively simple. A combination of environmental factors, genetic proclivities, inherent traits . . .”

“So within those parameters, some people are exponential functions, but still largely predictable. Regan”—Charlotte, he reminded himself too late, but dismissed it as a foregone error—“isn’t just difficult, she’s convoluted. She’s contradictory—honest even when she lies,” he offered as an example, “and rarely the same version twice. She’s confounding, really intricate. Infinite.” That was the word, he thought, clinging to it once he found it. “She’d have to be measured infinitely in order to be calculated, which no one could ever do.”

It’s obvious, don’t you see it, can’t you hear it? His name is written on my skin, he scarred me, I’ve changed my entire shape for having fit within the enormity of his thoughts, and now the only words I know are lines and color.

because what is religion except the vague promise of a reward nobody’s ever seen?”

“The idea that I might have options or other time-spaces to occupy is a little overwhelming.”

It frustrated him immensely that he would never be able to prove that time didn’t stop when she met his eye.

Aldo contemplated going back to live in that single second of time, when he and she had existed in perfect synchronicity.

She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. He contemplates formulas and degrees of rationality and they all turn into her. He thinks about time, which has only recently begun, or at least now feels different. He thinks: The Babylonians were wrong; time is made of her.

Jesus, he thinks, something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. Empires have fallen like this, he thinks, but it only makes him want her more, makes him look at his hands and think, My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her. What a waste, and then he says aloud, JesusfuckingChrist what have you done to me? And she says, Kiss me. He kisses her, thinks, Go on, ruin me. Wreck me, please. She kisses him back and she does.

she doesn’t really believe that love is anything more than science. Hormones, evolution, love, nuclear fusion, quantum theory, it’s all just a theory. It’s all just a sensation they tried to give an explanation to because humans are small, and stupid. Because people want to be romantic about everything, they want to give names to the stars, they want to tell stories. Love is a story, that’s all, until she fights with him for the first time.

The first time they fight, she knows she loves him because she has never been worth the fight before.

“I want you to expect—no, I want you to demand,” she amended. “I want you to demand things from me, to tell me to make this work, to force me if you have to. I want you to bet on me, Aldo. I want you to make investments, I want your future.” The last part slipped out. “I want your future, Aldo. I want it for me.”

Rinaldo Damiani knows how to love me, and I didn’t even think to put it on the list.

I want you to say everything, anything. I want to have your thoughts, I want to bottle them, I want to put them in my drawer for safekeeping.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m just waiting for something that will never happen,” he said. “Like I’m just existing from day to day but will never really matter. I get up in the morning because I have to, because I have to do something or I’m just wasting space, or because if I don’t answer the phone my dad will be alone. But it’s an effort, it takes work. I have to tell myself, every day, get up. Get up, do this, move like this, talk to people, be normal, try to be social, be nice, be patient. On the inside I just feel like, I don’t know, nothing. Like I’m just an algorithm that someone put in place.”

I don’t just feel differently about you—I feel more, a lot more. It’s like you woke up something inside me and it won’t be quiet. It refuses to calm down, and why should it? It’s not like ‘Oh, you make me happy,’ it’s not something as clichéd as that. You make me feel like I’m alive for a fucking reason. Like for once I’m not just a goddamn waste of time.”