My boyfriend meets another girl at a party. He wants me to know that they like the same kind of movies—meaning, movies that I don't like.

"Sometimes," he says, "it's hard to imagine our future when there are other people I click with better."

So don't talk to other people. So don't watch movies. So go be with them.

I started using dating apps a week before my 24th birthday, at the behest of my cousin. She told me I have to use a photo where I'm wearing makeup and my hair is down and it's taken from above and you can see down my shirt and that's how I met my boyfriend. He wears a lot of black and gels his hair every day. I put a lot of details in my bio but I had to tell him all the same things again once we were dating.

What's in that other girl's bio? Or would he only look at her photo, too?

I figure out he's going around with her when I'm in bed with my cat and go look if he's posted anything on Instagram. There it is, under Tagged: a photo of the two of them on her actual public page. No caption. Just a tag. Like she's saying hi. To me?

I think about this. I could be down for polyamory. Maybe.

My cousin tells me: "I get extra slutty for a while when someone cheats on me. It helps."

But he's still here and I'm still with him. My boyfriend is still my boyfriend, but now he has another girl.

No, I can't meet her.

No, I can't talk to her.

I go to a gallery opening without him. I wear makeup but nothing on my skin so I look washed out in selfies. I try to flirt with people. I look at art.

Can you own a person? Was he mine before and now he's not anymore? If he isn't only mine, can he still be my boyfriend?

I message his other girl on Instagram.

I write Hi, followed by five jazz hands smiley faces.

A guy approaches me and I go out to his car and the backseat is surprisingly spacious for a sedan and then we have sex and our connections with other people have to transform and become something different, transcend what we previously knew, about them and about ourselves, whether it's physical or emotional or mental, and I don't know this guy but still it only takes a little bit for a relationship to change and it's so wild how you can be out of a moment and in it at the same time and then and then


we finish and I go home.

The other girl hasn't answered my message.

I make a cake that is inexplicably, erotically, perfect.

My boyfriend has keys to my place, which is how he lets himself in, which I might not want him to do anymore.

"What did you say to her?" he asks.

"Here," I say.

Distantly I think, I haven't showered yet.

"Forget the cake," he says. "You're lucky I already told her about you!"

Oh. I'd assumed she was aware of me already. Assumed she knew of my claim. Now it's like I didn't exist until he told her I did.

His fingers leave trails in his hair. Does his hand get coated when he does that? If I smelled it now, who would I smell? He takes a step toward me, like he wants to hold me. The thought of being touched by him now, having been arms deep in flour, cunt deep in a car, disgusts me.

I leave him in the kitchen. It isn't until the shower has warmed and I'm feeling the water pour over my face that I think maybe I've ruined things for us. But then I don't really care and there's relief in not caring about him and it fills me in the strangest way, as if with this sudden thud.


.