Novels by Gao J

Monday, 7:14 a.m.I am standing in the lobby of a physical therapy clinic in Silverlake that is not the one I go to, and I am wearing a lanyard that says Park, E. - Assistant, and I am about to start my first day back at work in a real, professional, not-Sophie, not-Aiden capacity, and I am terrified.The clinic is called Silverlake Movement Lab. It is the same clinic where I have been doing PT with Carlos, except now I am on the other side of the room, behind the front desk, with a clipboard, doing intake, and helping Carlos, and not being a patient, and the small, specific fact of being a person who is working is making me very emotional in a way I am going to have to deal with later, in private, probably on the couch, probably with the candle lit.Carlos is here. Carlos is wearing the same resistance band around his wrist. Carlos is in a good mood. Carlos is the kind of man who says things like "Let's get you warmed up, Park to patients and to me in the same voice," which is the mo

Saturday, 6:48 p.m.I have been standing in front of my closet for fifteen minutes, which is six minutes longer than is reasonable, and one minute less than I stood in front of my closet the first time I went on a date with Aiden Black, which means I have either learned a small amount of restraint, or I have decided that a sweater and jeans is the appropriate uniform for a man who has, in the last forty-eight hours, fallen asleep in a break room and been found by me with two coffees and a hurt voice.I am going with the sweater and jeans.I am going with the wine.I have also, in a moment of clear weakness, put on the small silver necklace Sophie lent me. I am not going to think about why. I am not going to think about the fact that Sophie lent it to me for the first date, and that I am wearing it now, on the second date, on a Saturday, because it has become the small, specific thing I wear when I am a person who is going to see Aiden Black.I take a Lyft to Silverlake. I get there at

Three days is not a long time.Three days is, in fact, the exact amount of time a person can go from being a person who is happy to be a person who is panicking. Three days is the exact amount of time between. I want people to know I am with you too, and I have not heard from him since Tuesday, and I am a person who is fine.Tuesday, we had dinner at his place. We had pad thai on the kitchen floor. We had Sophie on speakerphone. We had burned garlic bread in the trash. We had Lincoln on his lap. We had his hand across the takeout containers, his thumb on my knuckles. We had the small, careful, very specific way he looks at me, which is the way a man looks at a person he is going to be with, which is a way I have not stopped thinking about for three days.Tuesday was good.Tuesday was the kind of good that a person gets used to very fast, which is the kind of good that becomes a problem, because the second Tuesday stops being the shape of the day, the person who got used to it starts c

Monday, 9:58 a.m.I am standing in the parking lot of the Silverlake Clinic, holding a small paper cup of coffee, looking at the building, doing the small kind of math that a person does when they are about to walk into a place that is, technically, not a place they should be walking into.PT with Carlos. 10:00 a.m. Monday. My new official physical therapist. The man whose name is on the form that says patient transferred from Cedars-Sinai, A. Black, MD, recused. The man who does not know that I kissed my old surgeon on Friday night in the hallway of my Koreatown apartment. The man who is going to be entirely professional and entirely kind and entirely the kind of man Aiden Black is not in public, which is to say, normal about me.I go inside.The fountain is doing its fountain thing. The front desk woman, whose name I do not remember, smiles at me. Carlos is already in the PT room. He is a man in his late thirties, with a kind face, with strong hands, with the kind of calm that makes

I woke up on the couch.This is a fact I am going to lead with because I am a grown woman who fell asleep in a little black dress on a Friday night and did not go to bed. I did not change. I did not wash my face. I did not take off my heels, which I will regret on Sunday morning when my feet are angry at me, but right now, Saturday, eleven a.m., I am a person who is waking up on a couch with mascara on my cheeks and a small crinkly pillow imprint on the left side of my face.The dress is the dress from last night. The little black dress. It is slightly hiked up at the hem. The small silver necklace Sophie lent me is still on. The heels are still on. I am a person who fell asleep like this, because I walked in the door, and I sat down on the couch, and I put my head back, and I thought I just kissed Aiden Black in the hallway, and the next thing I knew it was Saturday.The apartment is quiet. Koreatown quiet. The cello neighbour is silent. The fridge is doing its fridge hum. The candle

Friday, 6:47 p.m.I have been getting ready for forty-seven minutes, which is approximately forty-five minutes longer than it takes me to get ready for a normal human activity, and approximately forty-four minutes longer than it takes me to admit that I am not, in fact, a normal human being right now.The little black dress. The one that has been in the back of my closet for eight months, ever since I bought it on a hopeful Tuesday in February for a man I was dating who turned out to be a man I was dating in the wrong way. The dress has been waiting. The dress has been patient. The dress has been folded in a square that was slightly less wrinkled than the rest of the closet, like a piece of clothing that has been saving itself for a moment.This is the moment.I am wearing it. I am standing in front of my bathroom mirror in Koreatown, in a little black dress, and I am panicking. It's not the kind of panic that involves tears. The kind of panic that involves a person looking at her own