Way better, I say. I can drink this. But what I am thinking is that both our lips have been on the glass, and I have got to stop thinking about that. He gives me a high five, and his hand is warm.
I cannot seem to stop looking at him. He leans over and whispers, “Phronsie, tell me what your novel is about.”
“I-I can’t,” I say.
He nods. “I get it. Not a good idea to talk about novels before they’re ripe.”
There’s no music to dance to, just sports talking heads with the volume turned down. So we play rock-paper-scissors until I beat him fifty games. Not in a row, but still. Enough.
He drinks the last of his beer and looks at me. His eyes flicker just a little. His hands circle his beer mug. “So . . . let me ask you this: When you went out on forty-four dates, what did you talk about with the guys?”
“Oh, I had a set of questions I asked.”
“Oooh. Ask me the questions.”
“Why?”
“I just want to be prepared for when I might go on Match.com. What women will say. You said last night that I might want to consider it.”
“Okay,” I say. I lick my lips. “First, I always ask, how was your day?”
“My day was excellent. One of the top ten days in life.”
I swallow. “And then—um, where do you like to go on vacation?”
He wrinkles his nose. “Anywhere I haven’t already been. Australia. Hawaii. Italy. Surfing if possible.”
“Are you a dog person, a cat person, or neither?”
“Seriously?” He hides a smile. “These are the questions you ask?”
“Yes! And I ask what they would consider a perfect date. And . . . whether they have been married before, and where they grew up . . . and . . . what are their pet peeves, and well, like that. Why, Mr. Smarty? What would you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe: How soon after sitting down at the movie theater do you think it’s okay to finish off all the popcorn—first preview? Second? During the commercial for the theater’s snack bar? And . . . let’s see . . . when was the last time you woke up at two a.m. and ate an entire box of instant pudding powder before you realized what you were doing? And this is very important—how many friends do you currently have who would drive the getaway car for you if you needed it? And, um, what do you think the penalty should be for trying to pass off raisins as chocolate chips in a cookie? And when’s the last time you tried to move an object with your mind just to see if you really could?”
He stops and gives me a long look.
“Well,” I say.
“See, it’s no wonder you didn’t find somebody when you weren’t asking the right questions.” He is smiling. “You probably don’t even know what anyone you dated thought about which condiment is the most controversial.”
“Well, if I’m answering that question, I’d say it’s unquestionably mayonnaise.”
“Correct.”
“But anyway, you’re discounting a very important point. And that is that I did find someone, and so it all worked out.”
“Yes, but you merely imported someone from your childhood, so that hardly seems like it counts. Kind of a technicality, actually. An asterisk.”
“Whatever. But it’s still love.”
“The debate rages on about that point.”
“I don’t see why it matters so much to you. It’s not your life.”
“You don’t? You don’t see why?” He keeps smiling at me, but his face looks pained.
“No.”
“Because I’m beginning to think you don’t recognize what love really is, and that is an unmitigated tragedy, if you ask me.”
“What do you mean, I don’t recognize it?”
“Who hurt you, Phronsie? Who turned you into such a love cynic?” His eyes are kind, turning from blue to green now. I never saw eyes that could change color.
“What are you talking about? I am the last person to be a love cynic, as you say.” And then, like that, the words just line up. It’s as though I’ve been living in one room of my mind while there was another, secret room, where everything real was happening, and in has come this other person, bumping his way in, turning on the lights, sitting down on the sofa I never let anybody sit on.
“Tell me who he was.”
Really, I’m just going to tell him this part—this one part—and then I’m going to be quiet, and never speak of this again to him or anyone. Although I can’t imagine how it will be when we’re back in the office or sitting at a staff meeting being all normal.
Maybe Darla will do us a favor and fire both of us, and then I can tell Judd we should get married immediately and move back to New Hampshire, which is where I bet he really wants to be anyway. Maybe this is where all this is leading. Full circle: right back home.
I lift my eyes up to Adam, and I hear myself say, “Okay, so I was married before.”
I tell him about Steve Hanover, how we met and fell in love. And how he was such a good man—wore his heart on his sleeve, my grandmother Bunny said—she’d never seen a man so loving and warm and giving. I said how I’d loved him so hard and so good. And that the best, best part had been that he loved me back. That he said nobody had made him feel this way. Except that when he slept with someone else and then left me, I saw all our good times again in my head, and this time I saw the times for what they really were. His acting ability. The way he was really always holding back a part of himself, how his smile seemed rehearsed—how swept away I had been, and how duped I felt when I stopped and really remembered it.
“So that’s what it was,” Adam says softly. “A good old heart bruising.” He leans forward. “I so get what you’re talking about.”
“I thought he really loved me,” I say, and he nods. “I thought that was all there was to love. You just got it, and then you had it. You got to keep it, as long as you tended it every now and then, touched it up. You ate dinner together, had regular sex, did things for the other person. And I did all that—I loved being his wife—and then one day there was someone else, and she was in our bed with him, and I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to say, What did I do? What did I miss?” I run my hand along the surface of the table, feel its smoothness. And then it hits me with a little ping of shock: I am going to tell him the thing I’ve just realized.
“When—when you’re raised by people who got love all wrong, you just want to do it better. I had studied them. I knew their mistakes. I wasn’t going to muck things up like my mom did, and I wasn’t going to walk out on somebody I loved because of duty like my dad did—and yet there were no signs. Not one sign that I’d hooked myself up with a bad guy. Nothing. So after something like that . . . well, you don’t trust yourself anymore. Maybe.”
He’s smiling at me. “Maybe. Yes. The same kind of thing happened to me, too. I got left also, blindsided. And you feel so stupid. Like there must have been all these alarm bells and red flags, and you didn’t see a thing.”
“And . . . well, that was the thing I said to Judd when I decided to marry him. I said there would be no cheating! No cheating ever, and he agreed. And he means it. He isn’t the type who cheats.”
“Safe,” he murmurs.
“Yes. I want to be safe.”
He is looking at me and looking at me, and I get a shiver. He would be so goddamned good in bed. It’s almost ridiculous how good sex with him would be.
I’d start kissing on his face and work my way around. Those earlobes, his neck. I would like to kiss his clavicle. And all the rest.
“I’m writing about this,” I say in a low voice. “My novel. It’s about a woman getting left by her husband.”
“And the heart bruising.” He nods.
“But it doesn’t work. I can’t get it to be the way I want it to be. I want it to be a funny story, but it just keeps drifting over into being morose. This woman can’t move on, even though I gave her a great job and some jokey best friends. But she still feels like a failure.”
He’s silent fo
r a moment, fiddling with his glass of beer and the condensation on the table. Then he says, “Sometimes when you can’t get a book to do what you want, it’s because you might be telling the wrong story. Like, what if this woman who can’t stop crying is instead someone like you, someone who is hilarious and has this spark about her that she isn’t going to let anybody crush. Write about how she doesn’t need this stupid man. Maybe that’s the story, how she gets revenge on him. Maybe her mother is magic . . .”
“Yeah, right.”
“You should let me read it. I’ll help you see what’s funny and real about her.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Nobody has read it.”
“Not even John-Boy Walton?”
I let out a guffaw. Involuntarily. “He would never.”
“Well,” he says in a light voice, “if you ever want a reader, I could be the one. I like novels about imperfect people who do stupid things like fall in love with the wrong people but keep their sense of humor. And then they have friends who help them see who they are.”
I should ask him what his novel is about. That’s what I should do. But I don’t. Because my eye drifts over to the window, and I see that it’s getting dark, and I suddenly spin into a panic. Like a switch has flipped. Daydream over, credits start rolling. Time Out of Time Day is drawing to a close. All my worries have caught up with me, marching back into my head with their relentless reminders of doom and gloom ahead.
“I have to go,” I say and stand up. “It’s nearly five o’clock, and we should get back to the hotel. And oh my God, I never called Darla to let her know what’s happening. And also, I’m worried about Gabora. It just occurred to me—what if her daughters didn’t go and pick her up? What if it was one of those protesters from last night, and they followed us and then kidnapped her out of her room? And then they found her cell phone and made her tell them somebody they should call, and so they told Darla it was the girls.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He shakes his head, so hard it’s like a dog after a bath. “Wow, woman, this is quite a one-eighty you’re pulling here. Where is this coming from? None of that is even slightly true.”
“I-I just think—I just have been away too long from my life, that’s all, and there are all these things I haven’t done. I want to call home, and I’ve got to call Darla before she leaves for the day. She must be worried sick. Not hearing from us.”
“Our phones were dead because we lost power,” he reminds me.
“But she doesn’t know that. And anyway, don’t you see that’s no excuse now? The power’s back on. The phones are probably charged. Let’s go back.” My feet are wet, and my hair is dirty, and I’m tired of walking through snow and tired of being cold. Tired of Time Out of Time. I want to face whatever Darla’s going to say to me, hear what I’ve done to the company through my negligence. I’m not a person who takes whole days off and kisses men that I shouldn’t kiss and then recounts the time she got left by the man she really loved. What have I been thinking? And now I’ve even told him about my novel! Good God in heaven, what was I thinking?
He stands up. “You know what this really is, don’t you? What you’re doing just now? My mom’s a therapist, and she says when people are getting really close to a big emotional breakthrough, they kind of freak out a little. Try to run back.”
“Emotional breakthrough? I’m not having an emotional breakthrough.” My voice might be a little shrill. “I’m seized with responsibility is all, and I’ve got to do my job.”
“Yeah, well, I’m having a breakthrough.” He reaches over and tries to take my hand, and our fingers graze each other before I reach for my coat. “I won’t speak for you. I’ll tell you about me instead. I’m having . . . feelings for you.”
“Feelings?” I keep putting my coat on, coaxing my hands through the sleeves, which are wet and tangled up. “Don’t. Please don’t do this. I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. You can stand to hear about feelings.”
“But I don’t think you’re right about them.”
“But you don’t know, do you? Instead of trying to find out, it’s easier to run away right now and then go get married to some guy who won’t cheat but who’s just not really in love with you. Because it’s safe and it puts a stop to you having to believe in love.”
“I believe in love!”
“Then listen to me, Phronsie. Because I’m going to tell you what I see. I could love you. I could so easily fall in love with you right now, and nothing would ever be the same for either of us.”
It’s too hard to look at his eyes, all intense and smoky, so I stare down at my shoes, wet still, in a puddle on the cement floor. “Could you . . . not?” I say.
There’s a beat of silence. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I could not. I definitely could not. But I’m not going to not. Because I’ve been feeling this way for a long time, and this is a true thing. In fact, I’m going to tell you something you maybe didn’t think about. And that is that this John-Boy Walton guy—he doesn’t need anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly love him either. He may think this is fine, but it isn’t. He doesn’t do it for you. I see it in your eyes, I hear it in your voice, it’s written all over your face whenever you talk about him. You know something? I think I’m on Tenaj’s side, with all those messages she’s getting from the so-called universe or whatever the hell she’s talking about. I bet I would love your mom! I bet she would agree with me that when you’re drawn to someone, they also feel the same way about you because it’s the spark in you talking to the spark in them. And I believe that nothing ever really is an accident. And I believe in love at first sight and that love is a way of seeing the world, and that nobody is safe from it, because it just takes over; if there’s any little crack of light, it can work its way in. And I believe that we’re put on this earth to trust all joy. And today I got a new insight, thanks to the waitress this morning, and that’s that snow isn’t some kind of lovely illusion or metaphor for coldness or even a beautiful backdrop for winter sports. That shit is frozen water.”
I look down at my hands because I can’t stand to look at his face. “No,” I say quietly. “No, I’m sorry, but you’re not right. You don’t really know me. And we’re coworkers. And this is just because we’re at the end of an adventure. That’s what this is.”
He looks at me for such a long, hard time that I can’t stand it. “Okay then.” He puts on his coat. “And now,” he says, “let’s go back to the hotel, so you can take whatever punishment you’re expecting Darla Chapman to decide to dish out to you. Because heaven knows the quota of fun has been had for today. Maybe for life.”
And he turns and walks out. He’s walking slowly and I could easily catch up with him.
But I don’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Wednesday evening crowd in Tandy’s seems extra-large this year. When I enter with Judd at my side, a shout goes up, and people rush over to us. “The fiancée! ” someone yells. And, “She’s here!” Somebody else calls out, “She escaped from snowy South Carolina!” and “Yes, back to the basking warmth of New Hampshire!” and “Congratulations!”
I stand there blinking in the dim light of the bar, startled. I try to remember how it is that one activates the response called Happy Smiling Reunion Face.
But it’s hard. I am not feeling totally like my regular self. I only arrived in Pemberton about two hours ago. And the hours leading up to that were not easy ones. Darla was just as furious as I expected she’d be, blah blah blah, and when she said she doubted that Adam had done enough to keep Gabora from being upset—well, I’m afraid I just stayed silent. I know, it was awful of me. I’ll have to straighten everything out when we’re back in the office on Monday. Also, in an attempt to smooth things over with Gabora, I called her on the phone and sweet-talked her. She seemed more confused than ever. She didn’t want to talk about calling her daughters or her trip with them to Georgia. No! Amazingly, all she wanted to talk about was my upcoming wedding. She just kept
weeping and begging to be invited.
But here’s the part I feel the worst, worst, worst about: I simply texted Adam and told him I was leaving on a flight the next morning. When he texted back to ask if we could see each other that night, I didn’t even answer. That’s how bad a person I am. I don’t even know why. Except I do, sort of. I didn’t want to face him.
The Tandy’s evening has all the elements of a surprise party. Once my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see that it’s all exactly as it’s always been, as though it had been preserved in amber—the dark paneling, the long bar running along the side, the little candles on the table that look like miniature colonial lamps. The neon beer logo signs hanging on the walls, always crooked. Even the smell is the same: hamburger grease and spilled beer. The stained and crusty brown carpet, worn down to nothing in spots near the bar, is the same as always.
And . . . the faces of our old friends.
They’re all there, and I feel myself getting verklempt with a feeling that has to be nostalgia. This is what I forget every single year—that I get overcome with a wave of tenderness, seeing it all again: the Old Spice guys, the cheerleading squad, the mean girls, Judd’s football teammates, everybody looking older and tireder, but still standing. Even old Mr. Tandy, who’s now about a thousand years old, is sitting at the bar, watching us all while his son tends bar. I want to hug him. The television set on the wall, filmy with grease, is showing a commercial about baby products. And the piped-in music is playing the Carpenters.
The Carpenters! Like it’s 1970. The year we were all born.
I get hugged and patted, and somebody puts a drink in my hand. Judd is next to me, telling some story about the drive from the airport, traffic, the route he took. All the guys nod and clap him on the back. Route talk! Always a crowd-pleaser.
The women are all talking at once—wedding plans, babies, manicures, leggings. My fabulous black leggings are mentioned, I’m pleased to report, and also the fact that my hair now has some really good streaks of blonde intertwined in the curls. Little episodes of blonde, says Missy Franklin, who does hair and somehow feels entitled to touch my hair and examine the underlayers. She approves, and I want to hug her, too.
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