My nightstand rattles against my bedroom wall in the wake of the buzzer.

He’s here. Finally. I have been occupying myself, trying to shove the block of time along that has been standing in-between his fingers on my buzzer. His perfect and capable fingers. The fingers that deliver me the one thing I can depend on in this life. My one irrevocable pleasure. 

My thumb aches from scrolling through a sea of bullshit on my Instagram feed. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I just let go. If I detached from my body and let my fingers type what they really wanted to comment on the pictures I see. “We all know you didn’t actually eat that.” “I give that relationship 3 months.” You know, the shit we think but don’t acknowledge. Our responses to social media posts are just as fake as the posts themselves. 

If personalities could have a taste, mine would be the bitter herbs I ate at my friend’s  Passover seder. On your plate, they’re lush and green. They look promising, even. But brush your tongue against its salty water, and your lips will pucker almost immediately. I can be a tough pill to swallow, not that anyone would actually know that. To my friends, I’m perfectly content. In fact, they come to me for advice. And I’d be devastated for that image to be shattered. Like I said, we’re all fake in one way or another. 

But I don’t want him to know that about me.

I don’t want him to know I’ve been sitting in the same position on my bed since I woke up hung-over at 1:30 this afternoon. Or that I haven’t thrown out the leftover pizza he so kindly brought me 3 days ago. And I definitely don’t want him to know that I cried myself to sleep in the loneliness of my studio, the acoustics of this 11-foot ceiling apartment mocking my sobs. 

My buzzer cries out again, and I know he’s getting impatient. I read in a Cosmo magazine that a man likes a girl who makes him wait. Is he one of those challenge-hungry men, enticed by the chase more so than the girl herself?  To be fair, I wouldn’t really know. He’s only been here a few times before and that’s not enough time to get an accurate gauge on him. I’ll give him one thing, though—he’s never tardy. In fact, he is the most punctual guy I have ever opened the door for. Punctuality says a lot about a person’s character. At least, that’s what my mom once told me when I was 5 and I was worried Santa’s present wouldn’t be under the Christmas tree for our early Christmas wakeup call. “Good men are always punctual,” she had said. “Santa is one of those men.”And if there’s anything I know to be true, it’s that moms are always right. Even when they’re wrong, they somehow end up being right. 

I glance at the clock and feel a peculiar twinge in my stomach.

I’m unsure if it’s the Tito’s from last night, or the sudden realization that the last literal sound to escape from my throat was at 3:30am, thanking my Uber driver for the 5-star experience and stumbling into my apartment building. If he knew that, he’d judge me. I’d be just another one of the many girls I’m sure he’s visited that woke up in an empty apartment, laid in their stale makeup, and had only gotten up to throw up last night’s vodka, while reaching for a liquid IV.  

“Coming,” I call out, tossing my blanket to the cold, empty side of my bed. He hates it when I keep him waiting and I think that’s really why I do it—to appear indifferent to his arrival. Desperation is an ugly look. Another one of those things my mother told me. “To be woman is to be desperate,” she’d say. “But a desired woman knows how to disguise it.” 

The journey to my door is always the same. A swipe under my eyes to rub off any excess black tears. A pop of an Altoid to conceal the smell of vomit that has snuggled into the crevices of my teeth. And a throw of a giant sweatshirt over my chest, because I’m too lazy to put on a bra. I mean, come on. I don’t give this stuff away for free. I’m a lady, after all. Lady Lana, I used to call myself. Now, I’m just Lonely Lana. 

I smack my phone to my ear and let out my best contrived laugh. This one is my best work yet, a deep belly cackle I often perform in front of my friends too. 

“Stop,” I tease, to literally no one on the other end of the phone. “Hold on. Someone’s here.”

 Indistinct mutters crawl under my door. He’s so mad. I’m so bad. 

My hand reaches for the lock, fumbling with the rusting metal.

There’s a thud on my door and I can feel as he shifts his weight against the piece of decaying wood that stands between me and the thing I have been impatiently awaiting. Fumes of glory penetrate my nose, so much so that I think I can already taste all that he has to offer. I wiggle the knob, the door sticking in the thickness of this summer’s humidity. Or maybe, the thickness of my own damp, relentless breath. Either way, the faulty door is a dead giveaway of my rent budget—loose change. 

The door opens and I see him standing there. I remember those eyes—a deep, muddy brown—and the way the right one twitches if you stare long enough. He runs his free hand through the grease in his jet-black, curly hair, exhaling an offensively strong onion odor into my face. The 5-o’clock shadow on his cheeks suggest he hasn’t showered in at least 48 hours, with mucus-filled, white heads of acne speckled between his scruff. It’s forgivable though, I know he is busy—work always calling him to scurry and traipse all around the city. Self-care is probably put to the side as he serves everyone before his own needs. 

His sturdy hands are gripping that which he has brought for me.

All for me. There is something ethereal about the way the setting sun falls on the side of his cheek. Beads of sweat interspersed on his forehead, dribbling like little rivers down his nose. All that can be heard in this sacred moment is the ruffling of the plastic bag that he fiddles between his spectacular, giving fingers.   

I smile and his eyes meet my gaze. I let the door close behind me a bit, clinging my back to the sticky, green paint, and shielding him from the life I live behind it. Disguise. Conceal. Show the world anything else than what you really are. 

His mouth opens and I hang on his every word. “One pepperoni pie, extra cheese. One order of garlic knots, hold the marinara. And a slice of raspberry cheesecake. Your total is $21.87” 

Those words, those glorious, succulent, delicious words. It’s euphoric. Orgasmic. Utterly ravishing. My wait is over. 

“Can you throw in a bottle of diet Coke?” I ask, with an endearing wink.  

“$21.87,” he repeats.  

“Us women are so demanding aren’t we?” I say with a smirk as I fork over $25. “Keep the change.” 

He crumples the money in those hardworking hands and sets off to the apartment 3 doors down from me.

The girl who lives there is Laura. She’s everything I’m not. Besides the fact that both of our names start with an ‘L’ and end with an ‘A,’ we’re about as similar as a dairy cheese is to that trendy “nut cheese.” 

I meander back in my own little corner of this downtown, walk-up apartment, nestle up in bed with the one thing I can count on in this world, and open up Instagram. I snap a photo of my food. “No Sunday scaries here. Glorious,” I caption it. And no one will know I ate tear-soaked pizza alone in bed at 4 in the afternoon.