Chapter 1 - The Sound Between Us
The first time Derek made the noise, I laughed because I thought he was trying to make me laugh. We were standing outside a coffee shop in Logan Square, waiting for a rideshare, and he pressed his lips together, puffed out his cheeks, and produced a wet, cartoonish raspberry that made a woman near the bike rack turn around. Derek bowed to her as if he had just finished a stage act. I covered my mouth. The laugh escaped before I could decide whether it belonged to me.
“See?” he said. “You needed that.”
I had spent the afternoon presenting a budget revision to my department, and my manager had described my work as “technically sound but emotionally flat.” I had been carrying the sentence around like a stone. Derek knew that. He had waited outside my office with a paper bag of dumplings and a grin that made the whole day feel less serious. The noise was ridiculous, but the timing seemed kind.
That was how Derek entered my life: as a person who knew when to interrupt the heaviness. He remembered the name of my childhood dog. He sent voice memos when he passed a bakery that sold the pistachio cookies I liked. He could make a grocery run feel like a road trip, complete with invented radio advertisements for canned beans. When we moved in together, our apartment filled with his music, his mismatched mugs, and the particular confidence of someone who believed every ordinary moment was waiting to become a story.
For the first year, the stories were mostly ours. He made the noise in the kitchen after I burned a pan of rice, and I laughed so hard I had to sit on the floor. He did it in the car when we were alone. Once, during a thunderstorm, he held up a blanket like a curtain and performed the sound behind it while I applauded. Immaturity was part of his charm. I had never wanted a solemn man who spoke in careful paragraphs.
The trouble began when the audience changed.
At my friend Nia’s birthday dinner, Derek made the noise after the waiter set down a tray of champagne. It was louder than the first time, and longer. Three people at the next table looked over. Nia’s smile froze halfway to a laugh. I leaned close to Derek and whispered, “Not here.”
He tilted his head. “It’s a birthday dinner, Mara.”
“Exactly. It’s not our apartment.”
“You’re acting like I set something on fire.”
I looked at Nia, who was pretending to read the menu. “Please just don’t do it again.”
Derek’s mouth tightened, but he lifted both hands. “Fine. No more fun.”
The phrase followed me through dessert. No more fun. He said it whenever I asked him not to embarrass me, as if my request had been a referendum on his entire personality. In the car afterward, he drove with one hand and drummed the other against the steering wheel.
“You know what I don’t get?” he said. “You like me funny until someone else sees it.”
“I like you funny when you’re being funny with me.”
“So the second a stranger looks over, I’m supposed to become a tax attorney?”
“No. You’re supposed to hear me when I say stop.”
He glanced at me, and for a second the teasing disappeared. “You’re really upset about a noise.”
That sentence made me doubt the shape of my own feelings. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe the request was too specific, too polished, too much like the kind of thing a person said when she wanted to control every detail of a room. Derek had a gift for making my discomfort sound like evidence against me.
At home, he apologized by ordering my favorite noodles. He put the carton in front of me, kissed my temple, and said, “I’ll try to keep my comedy private.” I believed him because I wanted the problem to be small. Small problems could be solved without changing anything important.
Two weeks later, he did it at the neighborhood market while I was introducing him to my coworker, Calvin. Derek had been charming all morning, asking Calvin about his new baby and complimenting the ridiculous orange scarf Calvin wore. Then, as Calvin described a difficult meeting with his supervisor, Derek interrupted with the same vulgar burst of sound.
Calvin blinked. “Was that—”
“A medical emergency,” Derek said. “I’m fine.”
I felt heat move up my neck. “Derek.”
“What? Now I can’t have a digestive system?”
Calvin laughed awkwardly, but his eyes went to me. I recognized that look. He was not wondering whether Derek had a digestive system. He was wondering why I was standing beside him.
On the walk home, I told Derek I needed him to take me seriously. Not forever, I said. Not every minute. Just in public, especially around people connected to my work. My job involved donors, board members, and city officials. I could not spend every introduction bracing for a stunt.
“You’re making this sound calculated,” he said.
“I’m saying it has consequences.”
He stopped under a flowering tree, petals caught in his dark hair. “Do you hear yourself? You’re giving me workplace conduct rules in the middle of a sidewalk.”
“I’m giving you a boundary.”
He smiled then, but there was no warmth in it. “That word is having a real moment.”
That night, while Derek showered, his phone lit up on the counter. A message preview appeared from someone saved as Rook: Did she get the market clip? People are going to love this.
I stared at the screen until the display went dark. When Derek came out, towel around his waist, I asked who Rook was.
He reached for the phone too quickly. “A guy from an old comedy group.”
“What market clip?”
“Nothing. We were messing around.”
“Did you record me?”
The pause lasted less than a second, but it had weight.
“Mara,” he said, “if you’re going to turn every dumb joke into a courtroom, we’re going to have a miserable life.”
May you like
I wanted to ask again. Instead, I looked at the damp footprints he had left on the floor and told myself that a relationship could survive one unanswered question.
I did not yet understand that the question was not whether Derek had made a joke. It was who, exactly, had been laughing.
