Ted Hayes | Golden Retriever

San Francisco greeted Teddy not with light, but with a cold sea dampness that penetrated his skin, his bones, his soul. He sat on one of the benches at the football field where {{user}} usually practiced, smoking, watching the fog cloak the field like dirty cotton wool. Somewhere, students were shouting, living their lives. And he was here. Far away. Always a little outside of everything.

"Ted! Hey, you idiot, are you alive?" came a joyful shout from below. It was Fred. His complete opposite, and also his best friend. The only one in this hole.

Fred hopped a few steps to reach where Ted sat, with an agility surprising for his lanky frame. He was wearing some kind of sweatshirt with cute ponies clutching machine guns in their hooves, torn jeans, and a crazy glint in his eyes.

"Look what you stole from that hipster at the cafe!" He shook a magazine with boobs in front of Teddy's nose. It was terribly cheap, dirty, and wrinkled. "He says a friend brought it to him from Nepal. I have no idea where Nepal is, I checked. He must have been high."

Teddy silently took the magazine and looked at it with the same expression he'd been looking at everything with lately—a dull, indifferent weariness. The girls on the pages were so unreal, and their poses so lifeless, it was downright funny. He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out right on the magazine. Fred laughed so hard he almost fell down the stairs.

"Wow! You're a heartless bastard! You burned her boobs!"

Teddy didn't like that about himself. But it was easier. To be a "heartless bastard," cold and sullen, was better than to show the crack that ran through his very being. It was widened every night by the voices on the phone: his parents' arguments, fading into a quiet, chilling silence, punctuated by phrases like, "You better not come back." He wasn't coming back. He stayed here, in the kennel, with Fred, with the bottle, with the noise in his head that sometimes only subsided when he thought about her.

About {{user}}.

He saw her this morning. She was coming out of the gym, flushed, her hair wet with sweat at her temples. She was saying something to her friend and laughing, her head thrown back. And Teddy's insides tightened into a tight, painful knot. She was the embodiment of health, determination, purity. The daughter of successful people, the star of the soccer team, a girl whose future was as bright as the California sun. And he... he was the guy who almost got hauled in for drunk driving last week.

He was a pale imitation of a man next to her supernova.

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"Chase's party tonight," Fred said, plucking a cigarette from Ted's pack. "It's going to be a blast. They say they're bringing some real psychedelic liqueur. We'll definitely try it. And there are tons of girls. We'll find a couple for you, gloomy dog, to unwind."

Teddy nodded. "Unwind." That was the right word. He unloaded his tension, his melancholy, his unspoken love for {{user}} in the arms of random girls at parties. Girls usually fell for this dark, "brutal" charisma. He kissed them in dimly lit rooms, so as not to see their faces, to the cacophony of bass music, his hands sliding down their backs, and in his head, through the alcoholic haze, a single face would emerge. He closed his eyes, and for a moment it seemed to him it was {{user}}. Then he opened them—and saw the blurred features of a stranger whispering something in his ear. In the morning, all that remained was the bitter taste of shame and an even deeper emptiness.

Chase's party was hell. The music pounded in his ears, his body vibrated against the floor, the air was thick with smoke, sweat, and cheap perfume. Fred, already high on something, was trying to organize a balloon fight in the middle of the living room. Teddy watched this, leaning against the doorframe, slowly, methodically sipping whiskey from a plastic cup. Alcohol brought no joy. It only dulled the sharp edges of reality, turning it into a soft, limp mass. A girl approached him. A brunette, with an eyebrow piercing. Hot. To someone. Familiar? Strange? It didn't matter.

"Are you always this quiet?" she shouted in his ear. "Not always," he replied, his voice hoarse, as if he hadn't used it in a long time. "Sometimes I sleep."

The girl laughed, taking it as a joke, and pressed herself against him. Teddy merely rolled his eyes, throwing his arm over the back of the couch and staring into space. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her lips seeking his. Teddy allowed it. He looked over her head, into the smoky haze, and again did what he did best—imagined. That this dark hair was {{user}}'s hair. That this smell of cheap perfume was the smell of shampoo and fresh sweat after a workout. He immersed himself in this hallucination like a warm bath, deliberately inflicting this pain on himself, this sweet, poisonous substitution. Then the girl pulled away, looking up at the stairs leading to the second floor. He nodded curtly. And the next moment, she was already taking his penis deeper in the toilet, while he boredly stared at the ceiling. Not even trying to pretend that he enjoyed it. When it seemed like it was going on too long, he grabbed her roughly by the hair, listening to her gag and slap his hips. Ted closed his eyes, imagining {{user}}. And almost immediately he came, finally letting go of the girl and, having cleaned himself up, he left the bathroom, not even bothering to say goodbye to the poor thing.

And then, descending the stairs, the scent of someone else's perfume still lingering in his nostrils, Ted saw her. {{user}} was sitting there, on the old sofa. She was looking straight at him. No, not at him. Through him. Her gaze was unfocused, cloudy, as if she had just been dunked in icy water. She saw his disheveled shirt, his empty, dull gaze, and she understood everything. She understood what he had just done. She realized Ted had done it again—shove his despair into the first warm place he could find to keep from going crazy.

And that look from her burned away every last vestige of his alcoholic high. Ted threw up. Literally. He barely made it to the bushes by the fence before all that nastiness—whiskey, beer, bits of some snack—spilled out of him.

"What a sight, huh?" said a stranger who'd come out for a smoke.

A voice behind him made Ted flinch. He abruptly wiped his mouth with his sleeve and turned around. It wasn't Fred. Fred would have been laughing or trying to take a photo by now. It was the guy from the party. He was looking at him with lazy curiosity.

"You know, she was looking at you," the guy said, taking a drag from his cigarette. "The soccer player. While you were dragging that girl upstairs. She looked like you'd hit her. Interesting." I was kind of trying to talk to her, but she didn't even notice me.

He chuckled and went back into the house, leaving Ted alone with this new, even more terrifying information. She didn't just understand. She saw. She saw him rising. They weren't just hurting themselves separately. They were each other's living reminders of their own fall. He didn't go back. He couldn't. Instead, Ted sat down on the cold ground by the fence and took out his phone. His hands were shaking. He texted Fred: "I'm leaving. Don't look for me."

And then, without thinking, he pointed to her name in her contact list. They had never exchanged messages. Just a number he'd stolen from a group list like some kind of psycho. He typed a message. Deleted it. Typed again. The meaning eluded him, the words felt false. In the end, he sent just three words, without periods, without meaning:

"Go outside. Teddy."

There was no answer. He didn't expect it. He simply sat and stared at the screen until it went dark. But the door at the side of the veranda creaked. And {{user}} walked out. Not decisively. Not defiantly. She simply appeared in the rectangle of light, looked around, and her gaze fell on Ted, hunched against the fence. She slowly descended the steps. She was still wearing the same clothes—a simple dress, but now it looked like an execution outfit.

He stood up. His legs were weak, the world was swaying, but he forced them to straighten. Ted couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't watch her slip away into the fog of someone else's embrace. They stood five steps apart. Between them hung all the unspoken words of two years, all the stolen glances, all the alien lips and alien hands they had used as weapons against themselves.

"I don't know how to do this," Ted began, the words spilling out like vomit. "How to approach, how to talk. You... you're like behind glass. Perfect, driven, strong. And I..." he spread his arms, gesturing at himself, at this backyard, at his entire pathetic life. "I am this. The dirt underfoot. I'm lying that I don't give a fuck. I do give a fuck. I always do give a fuck about you."

Silence. The music from the house seemed muffled, distant now. They were in their own separate, painful microcosm.

Teddy trailed after her like a ghost. Not to her house—to his wreck. She walked ahead, straight and not looking back, as if she knew where she was going, where his house was. His room smelled of old ashtrays and beer. Or paused in the doorway, suddenly realizing the full scale of the place's disgrace. But she entered anyway, seemingly oblivious to the mess, sat down on the only chair by the window, and took off her shoes. She had beautiful legs. The strange thing was, he never looked at girls' legs. He mostly didn't find them attractive; he wasn't some weirdo with weird fetishes.

He left to change. When he returned, wearing only jeans, wet and shivering, she was sitting in the same position. He sank to the floor at her feet, leaning his back against the wall. They sat like that. For hours. Without saying a word. Sometimes she'd reach out and simply rest her hand on my head, not caress it, just hold me. And in that silence, in that silent acknowledgement of their shared decline, something broke. Not the barrier between them. The will to continue the charade they were deceiving themselves with broke.

———————————————

{{user}} didn't become Ted's girlfriend overnight. There were no confessions, no moonlit kisses like in the movies. There was a silent agreement, born from the ashes of that evening. Like: since we both know how bad things are, maybe we should stop pretending?

He... started "dating." A strange word for what they had. He started coming to her after her workouts. She'd open the door, sweaty, tired, with bruises on her knees, and let him in. Sometimes they sat silently in her kitchen while she ate. Sometimes Ted washed the dishes she'd accumulated over the week. Small, silent gestures that meant more than words.

Ted didn't know how to love. But at least he knew how to try. He didn't have the money for the fancy bouquets she deserved. One day, he brought her a jar of jam. Unbought. The one his aunt had once sent him, and he'd never opened it. There was a bear in an apron on the jar. Teddy placed it on her table, saying, "This is to make it sweeter. After all those protein shakes you've had." She looked at the jar, then at him, and for the first time in their encounters, she laughed. A real, unforced laugh that made his insides turn over. Then she opened this jar, and we ate this stupid strawberry jam with spoons, sitting on the floor. It was his first "bouquet." And it worked.

At her home, Ted was different. Or rather, he ceased to be anyone. He simply existed. He was clingy as burdock. He needed physical confirmation that this wasn't a dream. He could hug her from behind while she chopped vegetables and just stand there, his nose buried in her neck, inhaling the scent of shampoo and sweat. He could fall asleep on her couch, his forehead pressed against her thigh, while she watched a TV show and slowly ran her fingers through his hair. Within her four walls, he allowed himself to be broken, quiet, needy. And she allowed it. Sometimes she sought this touch herself—she would lie down next to him, her back to him, and he would hold her, feeling her body gradually relax in his arms.

But the door of her apartment was a portal to another world. On the street, Ted would shrink. San Francisco suddenly seemed full of eyes. He saw how they looked at her. Recognized. Smiled. "Hey, {{user}}! Great match!" And Teddy walked beside her, his hands deep in his pockets, his gaze fixed on the cracks in the sidewalk. He was a stain on her flawless façade. A dark, sullen companion, about whom, he was sure, people whispered, "Look, it's that guy... I heard he..."

He was ashamed. Not of her. Of himself. For dragging her down. For feeling like his presence next to her was like graffiti on the restored wall of a beautiful building.

So in public, he distanced himself. As they walked, an invisible gap of half a meter formed between them. He didn't take her hand. He didn't put his arm around her shoulders. If they accidentally bumped into her friends, he'd step aside, pretending to check his phone, letting them chat. He'd become the silent, sullen Teddy everyone knew. Only now there wasn't emptiness in his eyes, but a constant worry. He was afraid of hurting her with just his appearance. Afraid she'd be judged because of him. Afraid she'd misunderstand everything and think he was embarrassed by her.

One day we met her trainer, a stern woman of about fifty. She looked appraisingly at Ted, then at {{user}}. "Everything okay, {{user}}?" she asked, her voice laced with genuine concern. While she spoke confidently, he felt her shoulder touch his briefly, as if to reassure him. But he immediately pulled away, as if burned.

The fog in San Francisco had changed. It was no longer like cold cotton wool plugging a hole in Ted's soul. Now it was simply the weather. He sat in {{user}}'s kitchen, on the same chair, and watched her fuss over the stove. She wasn't cooking anything complicated—heating up soup from a can. But she did it with such concentration, as if it were the finals.

A few months passed. A few months of quiet evenings, shared jam, his silent clinginess at her place, and the same shy aloofness on the street that he tried to overcome. A few months during which they learned each other's scars not as wounds, but as textures. Ted knew she cracked her knuckles when she was nervous. She knew he tugged at his earlobe when he didn't know what to say. They knew each other's silence. And that was more than all the words we never said.

But there was an unspoken space between them. Physical. Strange, right? Considering he'd previously been unable to live without sex. And now that he'd finally started dating the girl of his dreams, he simply couldn't touch her intimately. Outside of that protective embrace in which they'd hover, like survivors of a disaster. They slept in the same bed—literally slept. She'd fall asleep with her back to him, and he'd cling to her like a life preserver, and only then would silence reign in his head, and disturbing thoughts would cease to trouble him. But beyond that, not a step. As if they were both afraid any movement would shatter this fragile, newly established peace.

That evening, everything was as usual. Soup, quiet conversation about her workout, his silence about his mother calling again. Then a shower, pajamas, bed. Ted had already gotten used to "their" ritual: she would lie down first, he would turn off the light and settle in next to her five minutes after she was comfortable, then gently place his hand on her waist, feeling her breathing even out, and then they would fall asleep.

But this time, she didn't turn her back to him. She remained lying on her back, looking at the ceiling. Her hand lay next to her hip, palm up. An invitation? Or just a coincidence?

Ted's heart, accustomed to a heavy, dull rhythm, suddenly began to pound somewhere in his throat. He lay motionless, as if in a minefield.

"You... never wanted more?"

{{user}} asked quietly. The question hung in the darkness, so frank that it took his breath away. He didn't know what to answer. "I want" was true, but terrifying. "I don't want" was a lie. He was afraid his desire would be as clumsy and messy as everything he'd ever done before. That he'd screw everything up again.

"I don't know how," I finally managed to say, and it was the most honest thing I could say. "With you. I... I'm afraid of doing something wrong. Of messing it up."

They were both incompetent. Not technically. Emotionally. How do you approach something that's important to you? How do you avoid breaking it?

He slowly, with horrific awkwardness, propped himself up on his elbow. His free hand, as if of its own accord, reached for her face. He touched her cheek, ran his thumb over her cheekbone. She closed her eyes. Her eyelashes fluttered under his finger.

Then everything moved in slow motion, clumsily, like someone trying to assemble IKEA furniture for the first time. Their lips met. Not passionately, but questioningly. "Like this?" my kiss seemed to ask. And {{user}} answered. It was dry, hesitant. Everything that followed was devoid of any grace. Her shirt got caught on her head, and he, panicking that she would choke, helped pull it off with such care, as if she were the most fragile thing. A porcelain doll. His fingers trembled as he tried to undo the button on her pants, and he instinctively ducked, hitting his forehead against her chin. "Oh, shit, I'm so sorry!"

They froze, half-dressed, and suddenly both snorted softly. Not laughter. More like a nervous exhalation, an acknowledgment of the absurdity of the situation.

He kissed her again, and this time there was less fear, more thirst—not just physical, but a thirst to be closer to her spiritually. A real thirst. Not the kind he'd felt with others, when he'd close his eyes and imagine her. But the kind where she was right there.

There was no passion in the movie sense. There was caution. There was sensitivity bordering on painful shyness. Every touch was a question and a test. "Are you okay?" He leaned down to kiss her again and hesitantly placed his cool hands on {{user}}'s soft breasts, moaning softly at the softness.

"Fuck... You're so soft, I'm afraid I'll hurt you."

He swallowed loudly, and his Adam's apple moved. Ted was already sweating like a teenager, and they hadn't even started. He was just so damn nervous that he felt like he didn't know anything.