Patricia Wants to Cuddle

by Samantha Allen

Desire can be such a heady substitute for self-confidence.

Amanda is the kind of girl who can swim straight through compliments hardly noticing them, like a guppy floating downriver.

DexIsMyZaddy • 9.19.19 • 1:30 AM I swear to God, if he starts another Catch podcast, I’ll lose it. CatchTheseHands • 9.19.19 • 1:33 AM Right? How can there be so many of them? Are people really buying enough new mattresses to fund them all?

There’s comfort in knowing their youth won’t last forever. The girls Casey produced when she first started working on The Catch eight years ago are all either mommy vloggers or anti-vaxxers now, or both.

“Episcopal.” Lilah-Mae considers the word, as if saying it for the first time, her tone souring further with each syllable. “Hmm …”

“I took ketamine and Klonopin at the same time once at Coachella,” Amanda volunteers. “That was a really weird day.”

Describing Jeremy is like trying to describe the empty space inside an atom; he’s technically there, but for all intents and purposes, he isn’t.

Is Amanda’s head as pretty and empty as a Fabergé egg? Yes. Does every conversation of theirs turn into Amanda asking Renee why she isn’t on Glamstapix? Yes. Does Renee want Amanda to kiss her? Also, yes. God, yes.

Abortions, Vanessa has found, are a lot like affairs: lots of women have them and lots of women judge you for having them, and often those two groups of women are the same.

Some people die, and it’s just shit luck when you love them before they do. Incompetence is always a better explanation than conspiracy.

Renee can barely stand to look at this man. The way he makes his greasy widow’s peak stick straight up, the idiotic expression on his face like he’s trying to read a book in a language he doesn’t speak, the pride with which he carries himself, as though he weren’t a patently ridiculous human being—everything about him is so very tedious. Did he want to come look for clues about Amanda or did he want to waste her time gabbing about reality TV?

Amanda doesn’t speak back, because she’s a disembodied head.

What was so maddening about being with you was that you always had it much worse than I did, and yet you always loved me better.

Imagine a world so small that your ego can fill all of it.