jo moved back to urbana

in february, jo asked me if i’d noticed how often amateur writers loved to write about coffee.

what’s the deal with it, you know? it’s just coffee. who cares. i mean, i like it, you know, it’s just not that serious.

then we talked about it, the intellectualization of a cup of coffee. something that’s important in the way that ritual is necessary for human life, but also has descended into a class issue. artisan beans and a scale, little whisks to fluff up the espresso and pricey pour-over apparatuses. jo didn’t even really like coffee. she drank red bull, the yellow one, the blue one, whichever one. she said that coffee people think that they’re better than energy drink drinkers. she’s right, even the people who drink gas station coffee find a way to make it tragic and romantic. writerly. jo said that i was writerly, too.

but not in a bad way. i like when you do it. you think everything means so much, that’s what’s nice about you. you probably have something written about coffee in that gay little notebook now, that’s why your face is all red.

jo squeezed my cheeks across the table like i was a toddler, laughing at me because i was so serious and talking with her mouth full. she said that i was too serious all the time. i wasn’t, but i guess that wasn’t for me to say. maybe i’m being too serious now. i’m too earnest to be a dick, she says. but just enough to be an asshole.

in two weeks, she was moving back to Urbana. she had a job as a children’s physical therapist. she’d cut her hair short after the interview, for good luck. it was short and curly and perfectly parted in the middle. a kid on the 61 said she looked like aaron carter. jo called him a dumbass because aaron carter has straight hair and he’s a blonde. i was a blonde, but jo wasn’t. i didn’t know anyone younger than thirty even knew who aaron carter was. jo was boyish and perfect then, in baggy canvas pants and a cable knit sweater, bending over so her plaid boxers hung out over her pants. jo was short for something, but i wasn’t sure what. i think it was her middle name, anyway.

she was from Urbana, but she told girls at the bar she was from Chicago. they believed her, maybe it was because of the nasal bite of her oh’s and oo’s and ah’s. there were sometimes when we were alone that her oh’s sounded different, and it was all my fault. we didn’t talk about urbana, because it wasn’t something she wanted to think about, so we fucked instead.

that night, her friends invited us to a bar. the booth was too small, and jo slid onto my lap. i put my hands between her thighs, felt her sturdy on top of me. she seemed small, but she was always a lot more dense than she looked, rounded out with muscle like a pony. i leaned forward, pressing my cheek to her back, feeling the muscles contract as she reached forward for her beer, breathing in the smell of tiger balm and dove eucalyptus antiperspirant. i sighed against her, rolling my eyes to myself while she told a story about how she shit herself on a ski lift last year, thinking about her heart thumping and her lungs pushing and pulling, the sound of the blood rushing around her body. she reached back and scrunched her fingers in my hair for a second, reminding me that i was there. i pressed my lips to her spine, though she couldn’t feel it through her sweater.i’d only do that when she couldn’t feel it. little things like that, i mean. i’d only make little gestures when i knew she couldn’t feel it, and i’d only say i love you when i knew she couldn’t hear it.

i sat on her bed next to her while she played video games on the tv on her dresser, wringing my hands and glancing at her. i was too serious, maybe. jo wasn’t worried about anything, besides making quesadillas and stitching shut the holes in the crotch of her jeans.

when jo moved back to urbana, she didn’t say goodbye, because that would mean we’d never talk again. i guess that’s how that works, except when it doesn’t. in march, jo moved away. in june, she called me once, but there was nothing to say. i met christa in july, and i didn’t dare tell jo. not that she cared anyway.

this year, christa and i got a holiday card from wilmette in the mail, from her high school friend who she’d lost touch with. two kids in soccer uniforms, and two happy parents. i hadn’t seen jo’s face in years, and there she was hanging on my fridge. i didn’t feel like telling christa that i knew her- it felt silly, because i didn’t have the language to describe what happened. what do you call someone who you play pick up basketball with and fuck three times a week, not exactly your friend but not exactly not?

jo is an elementary school gym teacher with a wife and two kids. they go skiing and go to disney and go to piano recitals. she is chubby and radiant and beautiful. i look at her picture on my refrigerator, and suddenly i can’t think of my live-in girlfriend anymore. lately i’ve been sitting at my desk, and all i can think of is jo. i think about sending her a facebook message and asking her what it’s short for, but instead i go to sleep.