Strawberry Shortcake

In Strawberry Shortcake, Tierney Khan tells a beautiful yet melancholic story about the grief of gradually disconnecting with the people we love. 

You never tell me, and I never ask... (Image: WIX)

It was Sunday. Your hands were tangled in the cherry-printed sheets, legs splayed as you slept. Despite starting off on opposite sides of the bed, I woke with you pressed all the way along my body,  my ribcage slipping off the side with every breath I took. We had formulated this routine so long ago now, it had worked its way into my blood. I wake, always earlier than you and always by enough to feel your absence in my bones. I watch you sleep for a while – whether you were aware of this part or not will hopefully always remain a secret to me – before getting up and making us coffee. You liked yours black. I liked mine with too much sugar to ever make it correctly in front of you. 

As is the case with every Sunday that’s come before this one, I wake up with the territorial urge to leave teeth marks on the hinge of your jaw, a lingering remnant of your stumbling in the night before. Always smelling like too many people, slipping into bed next to me and folding the covers around you in such a way that I’m always left colder than I was before. You never tell me, and I never ask. 

On this Sunday, you come and join me in the kitchen when you wake, leaning against the counter opposite me. I make small talk as you nod your head and smile at the right times. I’ve stopped telling you about my dreams – they got cut from the routine months ago when you stopped responding by telling me how we meet in your dreams every night and started replying with a noncommittal nod. You drink your coffee and tell me that you have a big day planned with your friend, seeing a movie and getting lunch. I’m acutely aware of the calendar hung up on the wall beside your head, telling me that it’s November with a big heart and your attempt at a cake drawn on the square a week away, marking the seventeenth. 

When we first moved into this tiny apartment, it felt like we were at the beginning of a 2000s romcom. Cocooned in a warm bubble of showering together with not nearly enough space, but your hands washing my hair to make up for it, and whispered debriefs about our day before bed. And time, which for most of my life had crept, suddenly flew. The fear of the mundanity of life, which I had held in my chest for as long as I could remember, began to feel needless. What was there to be scared of if a day spent achieving nothing also meant a day ended with a home-cooked meal served to me with a kiss? 

It happened gradually. You missed one dinner at home, then two. You started falling asleep before I could climb in next to you, and left in the morning without nudging me awake for a goodbye kiss. It was a Tuesday when I noticed. I was having my weekly call with Phoebe, who was gushing about the newest girl in a string of short-lived romances who made her feel alive. She was telling me about the latest bouquet that this girl had gotten for her, a dazzling array of peonies and irises that had taken up space at the centre of Phoebe’s kitchen bench. As Phoebe talked about the specific way sunlight caught in the girl’s eyes and how it made her borderline religious to witness something so godly, my eyes wandered over to our glassware cabinet. Amongst our nice glasses and fancy ashtrays that got shunned away to decoration when we both decided to give up smoking, sat the vase you’d gotten me for one of our anniversaries. A promise, you’d said, that as long as I had the vase, it would never sit empty. As Phoebe wound the conversation around to the girl’s mouth and the unholy images it prompted, I noticed the layer of dust that had taken residency on the lip of the vase. 

‘So, I won’t be back until later tonight.’ 

The calendar is blocked as you move directly into my eyeline. There’s silence, and for a second, I let myself believe that you’ll linger, the way you did when we first met, and you’d do anything you could to not part with me. You lock eyes with me, and I see the fantasy start to actualise. You’ll close the gap between us and take my face in your hands, telling me you’ll miss me every second you’re gone. But you turn away, and I feel all that hope that had been spreading through my chest morph into something ugly instead, something that chastises me for being such a lovestruck little girl, always wishing for a fantasy. 

As you start gathering your things to head out the door, I see my chance to talk to you slipping away with the jingle of your keys. 

‘Wait, before you leave,’ your head snaps to me, ‘just reminding you about my birthday…you don’t have to do anything. I just really don’t want to have to get my own cake for the party. Do you think you could take care of that?’ You inhale, it’s slight, but exasperation is woven so inexplicably throughout the breath I can’t help but deflate slightly. Your hand is paused on the doorknob. I can see it tensing and releasing as my question hangs in the air, as if you keep changing your mind on whether you should just leave or not. 

‘Yeah,’ you say with a smile that used to be reserved only for rude customers at your job, ‘I’ll take care of it.’ 

My birthday had always been an event to look forward to. For years, it meant a day surrounded by love and sunshine and this feeling that I was exactly where I was meant to be with all the people I was meant to find. But as I went to party supply stores and texted friends back about my wishlist, the feeling bubbling up in my chest wasn’t fulfilment. Instead, it had the bitter twang of waking up as a kid on Christmas to a tree with nothing stacked underneath and having to assure my parents I didn’t want anything anyway. 

Our apartment was made for two-person dinner parties and perching on any available space when we hosted a guest, but that didn’t stop the hoards of our friends piling in to celebrate me by bursting into renditions of Happy Birthday whenever they saw me. It had been a particularly brisk Saturday for mid-November, resulting in a pile of coats eating up the available sitting space. The night had progressed as they always do; my friends had arrived with open arms and planted kisses on my cheeks before gliding further into the apartment to drink more than is socially acceptable in any other circumstance. I had spent the night flitting between the different groups, laughing at the right times, and asking more when needed, always with you in my peripheral vision. You had spent the night tucked away in a corner with two of your friends, laughing with them as if the thought of spending time with me at my birthday party had never crossed your mind. In the current conversation I found myself in with Phoebe and her girlfriend, I can’t help but notice the dreaminess with which they caress each other's hands. I sneak a glance at you and feel like I’m somehow losing. I remember when we were the envy of all of our friends, how lucky they would tell us as they fawned over us, how lucky we were that we found a love like this. I feel something in my chest deflate as I look at you now, willing those days to return. 

Someone near me grabs my arm and yells something about cake, and I remind myself that you do love me, and that will be proven to me and everyone else when the cake is brought out. I had made a point to not look in the fridge for the past day, knowing that I had cleared enough space in it to have a cake box slide perfectly into the top shelf. I walk over to you in the corner and tentatively interrupt, feeling as if I’m a child asking for permission to speak.

‘I think it’s time for cake,’ I tell you, my voice as low as I can get it so as not to disrupt whatever conversation your friends are wrapped up in. You look at me blankly for a second, and then a slight wave of realisation passes through your eyes. 

‘Oh, okay, yeah,’ you shift in your chair slightly, ‘did you want me to get a lighter for candles or something?’ Your eyes shift back to your friends. I pause for a second, watching you re-engage with them and seemingly forget about me. Wandering back to the fridge, there’s a pit in my stomach just waiting to drop. In the split second between opening the door and seeing the contents, I let myself believe there will be a cake there, that I’ve made it all up in my head, and you are still as devoted to loving me as you always had been. If that shelf is empty, I’m leaving you. If that shelf is empty, I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding. If that shelf is empty, I’ve accepted too little. If that shelf is empty, it’s because you have something better planned. If that shelf is empty, I can’t pretend anymore. 

If that shelf is empty, if that shelf is empty, if that shelf is empty.