To Be Loved

I

Margaux sat at the table fidgeting with the hem of her skirt, not sure what to do. I mean it wasn't everyday one got to go on a special date with their boyfriend, especially a boyfriend as busy as Eli.

The boy always had something to do. Work he says, school he says. School and then work and then the boys, he says. School and then work and then the boys, and then soccer with the boys.
At least that's what he says.
This, to Margaux was never really a problem until she found it hard to find an empty spot where she could fit herself into the equation of all the THISs and THATs that Eli came up with every time she called him.

So when Eli called her with some half-baked apology about not seeing her, and offered to take her out for nice dinner, how could she refuse? I mean he had told her that he'd be taking her downtown and all the restaurants downtown were expensive: Chez Dubois, The Lab, and The Little Eatily Confectionery were not places that served meals for the average salary—let alone that of a teenager working a minimum wage job.

"He must've been so sorry, and it's crazy, I barely played cat and mouse with him for a week or so," Margaux had told her sister, Sorine the night before. Margaux was fishing through the piles of flashy clothing, bubbly with the scent of laundry detergent yet slightly coated and baked with the dust from her closet.

"Don't you think a week is a long enough time to do that little silent-treatment game of yours?" Sorine, on her sister's bed, propped up her head on a pillow and raised a brow inquisitively. Margaux shook her head, no, and turned her head back to the closet so Sorine couldn't see her smile falter.

"Well our games usually go on for a bit longer, so it's actually a good thing. And it's only normal to get upset at each other and stuff."

"It's normal to talk and work things out. That's the adult way to handle a situation."

"We're only in high school, Sorine."

"Ok." Her sister, too exhausted to put up a fight and hear yet again the rest of Margaux's "high school love" monologue, turned over and closed her eyes, laying silently in thought. Probably of her sister and her sister's boyfriend. Margaux, at the time, had let out a huff of air and thought about how Sorine knew nothing about Eli, and nothing about their relationship; and she was tired of her sister asking questions or offering responses that obviously tried to point out the faults in the relationship—which Margaux would be happy to point out that there weren't any. Or much. She had to admit that no one was perfect.

Take herself, for example. She had thought that this would be a make-up date between her and Eli—

"Hey, Eli's girlfriend, you okay? Why so quiet?" Margaux picked her head up now to look down the long table she sat at with Eli and a bunch of his friends. They looked between the quiet girl and her untouched plate of food that one of them would so kindly be paying for.

—But only a half-idiot would assume that a guy like Eli would make such grandiose gestures of love. Ok well maybe going to the Eatily didn't seem like such a big, romantic gesture but to Margaux it was. Well anyway, this was definitely not a date.

"I'm fine, just a bit tired," she laughed lightly and hurried to cut off a piece of orange cake with the side of her fork, just to occupy herself from having to stare back at a group of subjectively intimidating individuals. Her and Eli were indeed sitting next to each other at The Little Eatily Confectionery. It just wasn't the two of them. Something Eli forgot to mention to her.

I feel like such a fool, she thought. Here Margaux had worn her best pleated skirt and ran to buy a matching cardigan that afternoon just for the occasion. She spent hours in front of the mirror pulling and tugging and raking a thin, dry comb in front of her mirror to get her hair the way Eli liked it: pin-straight and shiny, as if there were no curls to begin with. Just an endless waterfall of thick, dark strands.
She had shaved and waxed. Waxed the parts she couldn't shave and shave the parts she couldn't wax. She ran a cool roller up and down her face in a manner that left her skin red and waxy instead of the lifted glow she was supposed to be going for. But that was all covered up by makeup, which she spent another great amount of time doing. Layers and layers of face so fabricated that she could barely recognize herself in the end. But she liked it like that. Sorine noted that it's because Eli said he liked it a couple times, but to Margaux it was all one in the same.

So when Margaux arrived at the restaurant, and passed by their designated table a handful of times before someone recognized her and called her over, she was embarrassed and confused at her hopeful thoughts, passing it by as a mix up on her part for desperately wanting her boyfriend's attention. She stumbled through a bewildered hello and sat next to Eli—who obliviously seemed proud of the turnout of his girlfriend—and spent the rest of the evening picking apart her food the same way she was picking apart the memories in her brain, trying to figure out where she got the information wrong.

The group had long resolved conversations on something she wasn't too particularly interested in. But regardless if the conversation was about her, some gnawing feeling inside couldn't make Margaux help but feel that she'd still feel this pawing sense of loneliness in her chest. All alone and unnoticed in a large crowd.

Every now and then Eli would reach under the table and squeeze her thigh, sometimes holding onto it a little too long. Sometimes letting his fingers dig into the dips in her knee. He did this often, as if trying to keep a hold of something that could easily slip away. Like a rabbit in a bony cage. Or a bird in a cage. Or anything in a weird, meat-and-bones, circular cage. Whatever it was, Eli clasped onto it as if to say that it was his—she was his. Margaux loved it. Or at least she did, in the beginning of their relationship all those months ago. Almost a year now.

She had liked having someone hold onto her the way Eli held onto her because in Margaux's mind, no one else seemed to care if she'd slip away from them. If only Eli held her like that then only Eli would care if she were gone, you see. But his hand hurts now, the way he keeps pressing into the same little dips and dents. Margaux winces when he, every now and then, applies a bit more pressure to remind her or himself that he's there.

She still wished for him to touch her so it's not like she could say no. She just wished he'd move his hand up her thigh, but up the thigh, to Eli, meant his bed that night. And that's not what she wanted. Most of the time that's not what she wanted.

Margaux squeezed her fingers beneath his and laced their hands together. It was the best and happiest middle she could think of. She wished he would stop talking to notice that she really wanted to leave.