The bones of what you believe

Chapter 4: Under the tide

'We're friends, Carrie.'

She laughed.

'We're really not, Quinn.'

Quinn smiled maddeningly. Carrie started to gather her clothes. She got dressed while he watched. Angie appeared to have slept through everything, but Carrie still worried. Was this the kind of thing that warped babies? Being in the room while your mother had sex?

'Are you free this Saturday?' Quinn asked. She paused to stare at him. He didn't cover himself up. No false modesty there. Not that she had expected that of him. He seemed not to care about how he looked. Sort of the way she felt about her own body, except she wasn't allowed to because she was a woman.

'I can't drink; I'm still breastfeeding. Life is fun.'

He smiled as if she'd said 'yes and I'll go with you and let's marry and have more kids.'

'I want to take you out. I want to date you.'

Carrie didn't contradict him. After all, maybe he wanted to. Wonders never ceased. She tied her shoelaces and looked around the cabin.

'I don't think that's such a good idea,' she mumbled, beginning to fill up Angie's bag with errant toys.

'Convince me,' Quinn proposed. He rolled onto his side.

'You shouldn't be anywhere near me,' Carrie said. Like most every conversation Carrie had these days it felt like they were having several conversations at the same time. It wasn't just Quinn who brought on this feeling of layers upon layers. It was Saul too. It was the worst with Quinn, though.

Carrie couldn't shake the feeling that she was permanently scratching at the surface to get at what was underneath. Face-to-face conversation had always been made up of different components. Voice, facial expressions, body language, eye contact, physical contact and so on. And then you added up the pieces and you got the true story of the conversation.

Nowadays, Carrie got a lot of stories out of a single conversation. Sometimes her own contribution seemed to have two, three, four meanings.

'You shouldn't be anywhere near me,' she repeated.

'You said something similar during the Javadi operation. What did it mean then? You're too close? You're not close enough?' Quinn asked. You shouldn't be anywhere near me: it fucks with my head, Carrie thought. At least, that was what it meant now.

'No, I don't like this. That's what it means. I don't want you to care about me. Or, if you have to, do it… somewhere else,' she suggested, her voice fading.

'At a safe distance?' he intuited. Carrie rolled her eyes, but that was exactly it. She didn't mind him caring – though she could do without it – but why did he have to be so in your face about it?

'I'm too fucking far away as it is,' Quinn protested. She ignored him and tucked the last toy into the bag. She leaned her back against the wall and sighed.

'Quinn, I'm tired. Let's be realistic here. Maybe once upon a time, if I'd met you in high school or something. I bet I would have filled a million notebooks thinking of you then. Hearts, arrows; you know, the works.'

He chuckled.

'I don't believe that. You? Drawing hearts? No.'

'You're right. I probably would just have imagined that I was married to you and scribbled my married name initials on everything. I'm not a great artist,' Carrie admitted, chuckling too. She would have done more than that. She would have made him a mix tape. She had never made a mix tape, but she would have made Quinn a mix tape.

But they weren't in high school anymore. So, she gently lifted Angie and went home.