Bananapants: A Bonkers Romantic Comedy

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Ava left. I’d planned to carry her to the car so she didn’t have to walk on that foot, but I’d forgotten my own name after she—you know—kissed me. On purpose. With barely any warning.

How long did I stand rooted in one place, my mind blank, staring at nothing, expecting to wake up from a dream? No idea.

Luckily, my man Guiero had been waiting for her outside and was currently in the process of driving her wherever she wanted to go. But I’d been adamant with him before she’d woken up, if she went anywhere other than the Fairbanks Building, he had to let me know via text. I would call Alex Greene and tell him to go pick her up. Guiero hadn’t texted.

My left shoulder hurt like it had recently been dislocated because it had just been dislocated and reset. Also painful, the two hastily stitched bullet wounds—deep grazes, not holes—one on my right arm and the other just above my left hip. I needed an ice bath and another painkiller. Instead, I called my younger sister for advice.

“Desmond! Hello! I love you!” My sister’s greeting wasn’t unusual. This was how she answered all my calls.

“I love you, Nat. I have a question and I need some advice.” I faced the wall of the interrogation room, staring at the gray cement.

Right now, the advice felt more urgent than the pain of my injuries. That said, if I didn’t take a shower soon, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. I used to have this thing about germs when I was a kid. Germs weren’t an issue for me now, but if I felt dirty and didn’t shower, it could sometimes be difficult to think clearly.

The emo music resonating from Natalie’s side of the call abruptly ended. “AMA,” she chirped.

“What?”

“Ask me anything.”

I breathed in, wincing when the stitches I’d given myself pulled, and tried to parse through which information to share first. “Okay. Okay. So, just listen.”

“Listening.”

“I’m going to ask my main question first. Then if you need more information or clarification, ask and I’ll answer what I can. After that, I need advice about what to do next.”

Natalie didn’t know precisely how I made a living. If she cared that I was a criminal, she’d never said so.

But the one time I’d done drugs that were not prescribed, she’d picked me up from the party I’d been attending in a suburb of Boston, brought me to Uncle Dan’s place in Duxbury, and tried to beat me up. She’d locked me in a room with her, screamed at me for what felt like hours, and didn’t let me leave for two days. I’d been spoon-fed chicken soup. She’d ensured I took my prescription medication on time. She’d also read me The Brothers Karamazov, maybe the most boring book of all time, and wouldn’t let me doze off.

Then she’d threatened to burn down my art studio if I ever did that again. She’d never threatened to kill me though. Not even as a joke. It was an unspoken thing between us since I’d already tried to kill myself twice by the time she was sixteen. Ava had no idea about either of the attempts. Both her parents and my parents had decided they didn’t want her exposed to that kind of trauma at such a young age. I agreed with them. And I’d always felt guilty Natalie had been.

After my second attempt, my therapist back then had informed me that about 60 percent of people diagnosed with bipolar attempt suicide and 99.9 percent have suicidal ideation, and—perhaps it might seem odd to most people—the statistics made me feel better about myself. I’ll never be “normal,” but I’d reasoned at the time I could settle for being “normal for someone with unstabilized bipolar.”

I’m not saying it’s okay or that we should normalize suicide, I would never, never suggest anything like that. I’m saying my situation at the time wasn’t unusual for someone with bipolar who wasn’t yet stable, and I found comfort in being typical rather than broken and bad.

Regardless, I’d wished so many times that I could’ve traveled back in time to tell teenage Desmond that things would get better.

“Desmond? What’s the question? I’m on the edge of my seat!” Natalie squealed, making no attempt to hide her excitement.

“So, if a woman tries to—no. Wait.” I shook my head and turned away from the wall, pacing to the hospital bed where Ava had been resting earlier. I grabbed the blanket and picked it up. “If a woman kisses you, does that mean she . . . What does that mean?”

“Oh. Okay. Wow. Okay. We’re doing this, huh?” Natalie sucked in a breath. “I won’t let you down.”

“Answer the question.” I brushed the soft blanket back and forth over my lips, remembering the kiss. My chest swelled. “Nat, what does it mean?”

“I do have follow-up questions before I can give you an answer.” She cleared her throat. “Okay. First, did she initiate the kiss?”

“Yes. She initiated it. It was completely her doing.”

“And what were you doing at the time?”

“Just standing here, in the same room with her, across the room. She walked over to me and kissed me.” I glanced at the spot where I’d been standing. Yep. The spot was still there.

“And you were alone? Only the two of you?”

“Yes. Alone. Just the two of us, like the song.”

“And—wait, what song?”

“Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr.? Classic R&B?” I started singing it, making sure to deepen my voice dramatically on the word ‘I’.

“Oh!” she interrupted me when she finally figured it out. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. So this is the first time you two kissed? You and this woman?”

I nodded, but then realized she couldn’t see me. “Yes.”

“Hmm. Tell me what happened in the few moments leading up to the kiss. What was said?”

“Uh, well.” I stopped moving the blanket against my lips and considered how much to tell my sister. My little sister.

Ultimately, I decided to leave out the part where I’d grabbed Ava’s ass in an inadvisable game of chicken. I’d been attempting to call her bluff, force her to hand over the thumb drive. Touching her without gloves had been unwise. In retrospect.

No regrets, however. It was a memory I’d treasure for the rest of my life.

“Basically, she—uh—asked me if I was planning to see her again before I left town, and I—uh, well—more or less admitted that I’d be avoiding her. She, uh, she walked over to me and, so, that’s what happened. She kissed me.” Why did I sound like a thirteen-year-old being interviewed by cable news about his first kiss?

For the record, this was not my first kiss. It just felt like it was, in more ways than one.

I brought the hand still gripping the blanket up and tapped myself lightly on the forehead with my fisted fingers several times. Work, brain. Work! I’d taken all my meds this morning along with my fish pills. What was wrong with me?

“Wait, why would you avoid her?”

“I wouldn’t. I mean, I would. I’ve been avoiding her for years because I never thought—” Shit. I grimaced.

“It’s Ava,” my sister said with certainty.

Shit, shit, shit. See? This is what I get for calling my sister with a half-working brain.

“Yes. Fine,” I growled, then rolled my eyes. “It’s Ava.”

“If you’d known she wanted to kiss you, you wouldn’t have told her you would avoid her. Am I right?” Natalie sounded so smug.

“You are correct,” I said through gritted teeth.

“If it’s Ava, then this changes everything.”

“How so?”

“Because Ava isn’t the type to mess with people’s feelings. Nor does she kiss people lightly.”

I frowned, considering this information.

I’d made a point to avoid mentions of Ava these last ten years. I didn’t want to know about her eventual, neurotypical happily ever after and two point three kids. Her happiness was important to me, yes, obviously. I wanted her to be happy. One day, I hoped to be in a place where hearing about Ava marrying some other guy would feel good rather than devastating. I wasn’t there yet.

But my mom and my sister, whether inadvertently or on purpose, gave me updates on Ava constantly. Ava dated. A lot. She’d dated a lot. Based on the weekly phone calls with my mom, it seemed like she had a new boyfriend every month. One guy—someone named Cole who she’d dated for almost a year—even proposed. I remember holding my breath in anguish for the three seconds it took my mother to explain that Ava turned him down and they’d broken up.

“Ava doesn’t kiss people lightly.” I repeated Natalie’s statement. “Hasn’t she dated a lot? Are you saying she’s had real feelings for all those guys?”

“No. She didn’t have feelings for them. The reason Ava has dated so many people is because she doesn’t kiss people lightly.”

I squinted at her words, repeating them in my brain. “That makes no sense.”

Natalie huffed again, and I got the sense she was hesitating, like she wanted to speak but didn’t know if she should.

“Natalie?”

“I can’t—ugh! Listen, I might be willing to break the sacredness of girl code for you. But before I do, you have to be honest with me.”

What does she know?

My heart took off at a gallop. “What is it?”

“Are your intentions honorable? You’ve never said so, about Ava. It’s all of us guessing at this point.”

“Who is ‘all of us’?”

“Me, Rebekah, Bethany, and Aunt Ashley are in a group chat.”

“There’s a group chat?!”

“Oh! And Aunt Sandra and Uncle Greg. They’re not in the chat, but we compare notes. Uncle Dan chimes in too. You want to be with her, like, forever. Am I wrong?”

“Yes,” I said, my heart in my throat. “Yes, forever. If I thought I had a chance, yes. But let’s get back to the group chat⁠—”

“And you won’t pull any noble bullshit?” she asked, obviously attempting to distract me from the fact that she had set up a group chat to discuss Ava and me. “Walking away for her own good like those guys do in romance novels? I hate that. It infantilizes women, like—dude—don’t date her in the first place if you can’t trust her to make her own decisions. You don’t deserve her.”

Feeling suddenly lightheaded, I sat on the hospital bed, propping the pillow behind me like Ava had done earlier. “Nat. You know my thoughts about other people making decisions for me because they believe they know better. I’d never do that to someone, especially not Ava. And I would never have a group chat⁠—”

“Then why did you cut her out?” Natalie made no attempt to disguise her indignation or the fact that she wouldn’t be defending or discussing the group chat. “I know you never want to talk about it, but I’m not telling you anything I know unless you give me a satisfactory answer first. Do you even know why you cut Ava out of your life?”

“Yes. I know why.” It was easy to answer, but thinking about it made me feel like shit, which was why I’d never wanted to talk about it when Natalie had asked in the past. Even now, my instinct was to avoid the question.

“Then tell me. And it better be good.”

I’d need to override instinct. If I wanted—as Natalie put it—forever with Ava, I’d have to discuss my thought process ten years ago. And yet I knew, even if I attempted to explain the thought process of a fifteen-year-old suicidal mental patient, I had no guarantee my sister would break her girl code.

I had to. For a shot with Ava, I had to try.

“Nat.” I sighed, not disguising my exhaustion. “Think about things from my perspective for a minute.” I cleared my throat because my voice had gone suddenly hoarse. “Before I left, I’d been released from the partial hospitalization program, which was after a stint in residential. Before that, I’d been in a juvenile detention center. I wasn’t taking my meds. Everything hurt. I thought I was crazy. I thought you would all be better off without me. Then I attempted suicide for the first time after learning Ava had a boyfriend—obviously, that wasn’t her fault. For the record, I never want her to know about that, okay?”

“Okay, okay. I know. But⁠—”

“This is nonnegotiable. And that’s not me being noble. She’ll think it was her fault. She won’t understand how I was, how I felt like every day was worse than the day before and I wanted the pain to end. I wasn’t in school. I had no plans that didn’t include her. I had nothing to look forward to except spending time with her. It wasn’t right.”

“That’s why you cut her out for her own good?”

“No. I cut her out for my own good. When I was in juvie, and then residential, and then the PHP, I made her the center of my world. I lived for her letters and calls. I left Chicago for many reasons—things with Dad, needing a change, a new place where I wasn’t reminded of being a failure every day, and yes, Ava—but I cut Ava out specifically because I needed to find a reason within myself to stay in the game with the cards I’d been dealt. I couldn’t make someone else the reason I lived, or didn’t.” I rested the back of my head against the cement wall and closed my eyes, gingerly rubbing my chest. My heart currently hurt more than the bullet wounds.

I hated thinking about my teenage years. I couldn’t dwell on them without feeling shame and regret. It had been explained to me over and over by many professionals that I shouldn’t feel ashamed for things I did, said, and choices I’d made as a kid and before my disease had stabilized.

But being told something is true and accepting it as truth are separated by a mountain, one I was still in the process of climbing.

“It was selfish, not fair to her,” I admitted easily, groaning under my breath as I arranged my legs on the bed. My knee suddenly hurt, but I didn’t remember injuring it at Henri’s office. I’d need to get that checked. “I know it was selfish. I was also mean to her when she kept calling, threatening to come see me in Boston. If I hadn’t been mean, she would’ve kept calling, kept writing letters. She would’ve flown out to visit no matter what her parents said. So I don’t regret it. I had to be selfish and mean if I wanted to figure things out on my own and live.”

In my experience, the fact that two things can be true at the same time was exceedingly difficult for the human brain to grasp. Humans hated nuance and always wanted only one thing to be true at a time. A good guy and a bad guy. A selfish decision and an unselfish decision. Right and wrong.

It was selfish to leave Ava and cut her out so brutally. Absolutely true. But brutally cutting her out and being selfish were the only things I could have done for my own survival. Also absolutely true.

“Why didn’t you simply tell her that?” Natalie didn’t sound judgmental, just curious.

“I didn’t have the words as a fifteen-year-old, or the energy, to explain the situation to her. Getting out of bed was hard enough, and you wanted me to what? Make a PowerPoint presentation? She didn’t understand what my diagnosis meant, what it was like. No one did, not even the doctors I was seeing. Ava and everyone kept asking me why I stole things, why I was sad all the time. I didn’t understand it either, how could I explain it to her or anyone?”

In retrospect, given how unstable I’d been, me cutting her out was probably the best thing for her too. But that wasn’t why I’d done it and I wasn’t going to finger paint over the past in an effort to make present me feel better. I’d cut her out. I’d been an asshole to her on purpose because I didn’t have the energy or ability to do it softly and carefully. That was that.

“Hmm.” Natalie seemed to be considering this explanation. Several seconds passed before she asked, “Then why didn’t you reach out to her once things got better?”

I breathed a laugh. “Are you serious? Is that a serious question?”

“Yes.”

“Nat. Things didn’t start to get better until four or five years ago. I’d already ghosted her for years. And I have these—these fucking feelings for her, I always have.” I couldn’t help my snort of disbelief. Was she really going to make me spell this out?

“So? Five or six years don’t matter, not if you really care about a person.”

“No. You don’t understand. Being around her at the barbecue was pure torture. She’s never expressed that kind of interest until today. Not once. Every time you or Mom talked about Ava, she always had a boyfriend. She wasn’t pining for me. She was living her life.”

“The only reason we keep talking to you about Ava’s boyfriends is because we hoped you’d get off your ass and do something!”

“Really? Do you think it’s a good idea for me to push myself into her very active dating life? And I’m not only talking about what’s best for Ava, I’m also talking about what’s best for me. Why would I torment myself like that? The chemicals in my brain already torment me enough.”

Being stable with bipolar 1 means being careful about my mental state, not exposing myself to people or situations that might agitate it. Despite my occupation, I consider myself exceedingly risk averse.

I avoid crowds, loud places, and loud sounds. I’ll never go to a concert and I never drive during rush hour. When I’m not working, I’m working out, training, researching a job, painting and drawing, reading a book I know will end happily, or watching a movie I know will end happily. I don’t like surprises. I’m picky about food, the quality of clothes, and smells.

Basically, I’m my grandpa Eugene.

“Okay, okay. Fine,” my sister said. “I accept your explanation. I will break the girl code.”

“Thank you.” I sat forward. “Now tell me, what do you know?”

“Ava dates a lot, but it’s never for very long. According to Grace, Ava usually breaks up with a guy as soon as he tries to kiss her.”

My eyes moved up and to the left. “She breaks up with guys when they try to kiss her?”

“Yeah. That’s why her kissing you and her initiating the kiss is such a big deal. According to Grace—and I swear, I will go to girl jail for this if you ever reveal me as a source, I already feel guilty enough, but hopefully you won’t let me down. I’m counting on you! According to Grace, Ava is really picky about, you know, physical stuff. She doesn’t like to kiss a guy unless she’s already caught feelings. In fact, she never kisses a guy unless she’s caught feelings.”

The pain in my heart evaporated, replaced with a swelling lightness that felt like hope. My imagination took this morsel of gossip and attempted to sprint off with it to all sorts of great destinations. I forcefully shut that shit down.

Calm the fuck down, Desmond. Don’t get your hopes up. This is conjecture. Inadmissible. Nevertheless, this was good intel. Hearsay? Sure. And yet, still valuable insider info.

“Okay,” I said, nodding while regulating my breathing. In. Out. Repeat. And since I could calm myself down, I knew what I was feeling was actual happiness. I would allow myself to feel happiness in this moment. Not too much. Just a little.

“So what are you going to do now?” Natalie asked, again sounding like she was on the edge of her seat.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I lifted it away to check my messages. Guiero, Ava’s driver, had texted. He’d dropped her off at the Fairbanks Building and helped her inside. She’s so smart. I breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Desmond? Are you there?”

I lifted the phone to my ear again. “I’m here.” I was allowed a modicum of cautious optimism and that’s it.

“What are you going to do now? Are you going to tell her how you feel?”

My eyes drifted shut. “Well, one thing is for sure, I’m not telling you anything.”

“DESMOND!”

“You’ll share it in your group chat.” I grinned despite the pain from my wounds, needing a shower, and still being aggravated by the existence of the group chat.

I hated being discussed by other people when I wasn’t in the room. When I’d been a teenager, I used to overhear my mom telling her entire knitting club about what was going on with me. I understood now what I didn’t then, that she’d needed to talk about it, to process it, to ask for advice. For better or worse, the presentation of my disorder had also been traumatic for her and my sister, maybe even my dad. But at the time it felt like an invasion of privacy and it made me feel like garbage.

Then again . . .

The idea of a group chat being created by my sister in order to actively root for Ava and me? That didn’t sound too bad.

“I won’t say anything to anyone! Sibling code trumps girl code. Please. Please tell me!”

“How about this?” I felt my grin widen. “What do you think I should do?”

“Oh! I’m so glad you asked. Ahem.” She paused, and I imagined she was getting comfortable, preparing a lengthy monologue on wooing best practices and etiquette.

I grimaced.

Before she could continue, I said, “You know, actually, let’s—uh. Let’s talk about this later.”

“What? Why?”

“I think I need to read up on it first.”

“‘Read up’? What does that mean?”

“It means, you know, I have no idea what I’m doing and—if I do decide to pursue things with Ava, if I decide it’s a good idea for both of us—I don’t want to fuck it up.” I laughed, because no truer words had ever been spoken. “As you’re aware, I’ve never had a girlfriend. Hell, I’ve never even been on a date.” Nor could I recall ever wanting to go on a date with anyone but Ava. And didn’t that make me pathetic?

Opening my eyes, I glanced around the room. It was stark. Dark. And if I considered it from Ava’s perspective, probably scary. What a mess.

“Oh! Definitely lead with that.”

“What?” I asked, certain I’d misheard her.

“Tell her that. Tell her you have feelings for her, deep feelings, unrequited feelings, and that you want to give things a real try, but you’re clueless and worried you’ll fuck it up. Tell her you’ve never had a girlfriend and never been on a date. And then tell her you’re going to research it. You’re going to put in the work to⁠—”

“Goodbye, Natalie.”

“Wait! Des! Trust me on this! And you should grovel. Grovel a lot. Tell her you’re so sorry for cutting her out of your life and explain it clearly, but still grovel! I know⁠—”

I hung up, rolling my eyes, then huffed another laugh as I considered her suggestions. I would never say any of that to Ava. Not ever. Why would I volunteer how inept and inexperienced I was with relationships? Sure. Yeah right. Exactly what a successful woman wants to hear.

And grovel? Whaaat? No. Women didn’t like guys who groveled. They wanted confidence, competence, and acts of service. They wanted someone like my father, someone⁠—

Wait a minute.

I thought about that. Someone like my father. If memory served, my father had groveled on more than one occasion to my mother. He’d apologized, admitted wrongdoing, and asked for forgiveness. That said, I couldn’t remember him ever asking for forgiveness or admitting fault with anyone else. Only her.

Hmm.

I shook my head, dispelling the idea. Natalie was a great sister. The best. But she gave seriously shitty advice.