by Wendy Chen
Kate was more than a little disappointed when she entered her apartment and it was dark—no sign of Adam anywhere. When she saw his sneakers lying haphazardly near the door, she remembered he had an evening class tonight. He’d told her right after an extra-long run. They had raced the last few blocks back to her apartment, but she had still been behind schedule and hadn’t paid enough attention to what he’d said about tonight. She let out a sigh. It wasn’t like she didn’t know how to be on her own; she’d done it all this time. It would be nice to catch up with the girls, anyway. She knew Cass has plans with Nick, but Mia and Suzanne were probably around, so she texted them:
Hell day. Bring on the martinis?
Mia texted back first:
So sorry! David just back from work travel. Haven’t seen him in a month. Staying in tonight.
Well, who was Kate to stand in the way of love? Or sex.
Suzanne texted back next:
On call. Stop by anyway?
It was nice of Suzanne to offer, but “on call” meant “no drinks.” And Kate definitely needed a drink.
She texted Alberto:
Meet for a drink near my place?
Alberto was always fun to have a drink with, and if they felt like something a bit more physical afterward, well that’d be fun, too.
He texted back right away:
Sure
By the time Alberto walked into Kate’s favorite cocktail bar a few blocks from her apartment, she was already there at a table for two, already halfway through her first martini. She felt better already, the alcohol taking the edge off her day and the energy from the bar reminding her there was fun to be had. So when she saw Alberto, she offered him a genuine smile. He was just what she needed. He ordered a drink as he slid into the seat next to her.
“I have good news,” he said as he kissed her cheeks in greeting.
“Please! I need to hear some after the day I’ve had.”
“Business school might pay off after all. Remember Danielle from our class?”
“Was she the one who got divorced during first year and married during second?”
“That’s the one. She’s at Sony now and set up a meeting for me for next week. It was good to run into her when I did since she’s about to go on maternity leave with her third kid.”
It seemed like all the women who had gotten their MRSs along with their MBAs were now on to babies.
“See, this is why I don’t hang out with anyone from B-school,” Kate told him. “I don’t want to hear about sleep schedules, spit up, and stretch marks.” She didn’t need to hide her snarkiness from Alberto, knowing he wouldn’t think less of her for not wanting what most other women wanted.
“You’re a jewel,” he said to her as he took her hand and kissed it.
American men just don’t know anything about romance. “If only everyone thought so,” Kate responded.
“So I take it you had a rough day, then?”
“The boss. You know.” Kate didn’t want to get into it. She’d vented to Alberto enough times before and didn’t want to go back to the foul mood that she had been in just a couple of hours earlier.
“Speaking of the boss, when is that dinner getting rescheduled?”
“What? What are you talking about? I was just going to ask you about why you practically stood me up. Thank goodness Adam was around to pinch hit.”
“No, you cancelled on me. I got your text after I’d spent so long reviewing your notes. I felt like I was studying Black-Scholes all over again. OK, not quite like that. But I’ll have to prepare again—”
“Wait. I didn’t text you.” Kate thought back to that day. “I forgot my phone at home. Adam was checking for messages for me, and he said there wasn’t anything from you.”
They were both silent for a moment. Finally Alberto said, “Adam showed up instead of me? Sounds like he’s more than a friend.”
By now Kate was fuming. Who does Adam think he is, messing around with my life? I was getting along just fine without him around, better than fine. He may not approve of how I handle things, but this is my life. She felt her mouth go dry and her face flush. She’d considered him her closest friend at one time and had been so happy to reconnect. And now he had lied to her. She let so few people into her inner circle, and now she remembered why.
“Sorry, Alberto, I have to … I have to go.” Thankfully he seemed to understand. This was what friendship was about—friends let her be and didn’t meddle when she didn’t want them to. She fumbled around her purse in her fury, trying to find cash to cover her half of the bill.
Alberto covered her hand with his. “I got it,” he said gently. Kate just nodded in response, too blurred by her anger to speak. Alberto didn’t let go of her hand right away, holding it until she looked at him. “Take care, yeah? Don’t be too hard on him. The man must have his reasons.”
Kate rushed out of the restaurant and headed toward her apartment, her anger building with every step. Betrayed. She felt betrayed that Adam thought he could come waltzing back into her life after he was the one who broke up their friendship in the first place. And then screw around with first her social life (because she hadn’t forgotten the guy she might have gone home with at Alberto’s last gig), but then to screw with her career? It didn’t matter if Adam played the fiancé perfectly. He had lost the right to have any input into her carefully cultivated plans.
By the time she reached her building—their building, she thought resentfully—her emotions were about to explode. But she tried to keep to her well-disciplined demeanor. She would give him a chance, she decided, a chance to tell her what he did and why. Maybe he didn’t approve of the way she was doing things, but that wasn’t his decision to make. She just needed to remind him of that.
She took some deep breaths in the elevator and as she walked down the hall to her apartment. What an end to the worst fucking day, to realize one of her closest friends was messing with her life.
She wasn’t surprised to see that Adam was already there when she got home. But tonight she resented the intrusion. She alone determined who came and went from her home, dammit. The brown flip-flops tossed in her entryway were the last straw. Hadn’t she told him that New York men don’t wear flip-flops?
“Can’t you put some socks on or something? I don’t really feel like seeing your hairy toes today,” she called out.
Adam popped his head out of the kitchen. “Bad day?”
“The worst.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” He went back in the kitchen and Kate could hear him clattering some pot lids or something. Did he always make this much noise? She went into the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
“Steaming salmon and slicing a lemon. I didn’t get a chance to eat before class.”
“No, I mean, what are you doing here? In New York? In my apartment?” Kate felt heat rising to her face, suddenly needing to know right now why he appeared on her doorstep.
Adam wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and tossed it on the counter. Kate grabbed it and folded it over the handle of the oven. Where it belonged!
“Are you picking a fight with me?” he asked calmly.
“Maybe.” Kate felt her lower lip jutting out like a petulant child before she regained control and tucked it back in.
Adam sighed. “You had a bad day—why don’t I make you a drink?” He raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe you’ve already been drinking? I hadn’t taken you for an angry drunk,” he said nonchalantly and turned back to the stove.
Was he always this calm? It just annoyed her more that he hadn’t answered her and was obviously avoiding the conversation. Why did he get to keep his personal life to himself when he knew all her secrets? “I asked you, why are you here? Are things so bad in California that you’re running away? What, is Claudia getting married or something? Did you run away because she found a real man?” Kate saw his jaw tense. Finally, a reaction. “I told yo
u to put socks on!” she said, unable to think of anything comprehensible.
Adam stalked out of the kitchen. “If I put socks on, will you stop yelling at me for no reason?”
“Tell me why you’re here!” she shouted as he went into her bedroom. She saw him putting on his sweaty socks from this morning’s run and was satisfied. She was winning. Winning what, exactly, it didn’t matter. “You just show up one day and move into my building. And you have nothing to do but hang around my apartment all day? You may not have a life, Adam, but I do. Or I did until you showed up!”
“Don’t push me, Kate.”
Hah, she thought. Winning again. She could figure out how to push his buttons.
“Get your own life, Adam, and stop intruding in mine.” She stood in the living room, arms across her chest.
He came back in and stood right in front of her, his arms at his sides, his face inches from hers. It annoyed her more, how tall he’d gotten, how he seemed to tower over her now. His eyes blazed a deeper shade of blue than she’d ever seen before. He spoke in a low, angry tone at first, one she had never heard before. “You said you were getting married,” he said slowly. “On Facebook,” he added with disgust. “I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to see if you’d found a real relationship, a real partner.” He stepped back from her. “But no, I came out here and found a sham. Planning your way to city hall with a guy you’re not remotely in love with, wearing a fucking piece of glass on your finger, playing games at work to get ahead.” His eyes flashed and his speech quickened with annoyance. “When are you going to grow up, Kate? You wonder why you haven’t been promoted in five years? You can’t handle the responsibility. You’re even sleeping with the same guys you did when we were in college. Play an instrument or at least pretend to? Check. Don’t own a tie? Check. Can’t commit to anything beyond three hours from now? Check.” He stepped closer to her again, so she could feel his breath on her face and she had to turn away slightly to avoid seeing the disappointment in his eyes. “You’re afraid, Kate. Afraid to be an adult, to have an adult relationship because you’re afraid to get hurt.”
Kate was hot with anger and fighting back tears, thankful that she’d already tilted her face from his. No one had ever spoken to her this way. She would not give him the satisfaction of crying in front of him. She cried in front of no one.
“Get out,” she whispered. He didn’t move. “You’re just envious,” she said, even though that statement rang hollow. “You wish you could be me, with my freedom. You don’t have the balls to get out there like I do. You’re just jealous because you don’t have fun like I do.” She was on a roll now and turned to glare at him. “You can’t even bring yourself to call that girl from the bar who was hitting on you. You’re just the same nerdy kid you always were.” Adam’s jaw tensed again. He clenched his fist as he moved toward the door, the only show of any emotion. How could he be so in control while causing her to lose any sense of it? She suddenly recalled one of his high school science projects, when he built a robot—his “experiment with artificial intelligence” he called it. “You’re such a—robot,” she goaded him. “A jealous robot.” She knew this made no sense at all. How was it that he’d brought out an entirely non-sensible, emotional side of her?
“Maybe I am jealous,” he said tersely. “But not for the reasons you think.”
“I know you lied about Alberto cancelling. You had no right.”
Adam’s expression softened then, and to Kate’s satisfaction, he looked guilty. “I didn’t, I know.” He seemed at a loss for words, which fueled her anger. She held such careful control over her life, and he was thoughtless about meddling with it.
“Why did you do it?” she spat out.
“I just … I wanted … I wanted you to see—”
“What? You wanted what? To get a taste of what my life is like? You’re that petty? You need to go,” she said, opening the door.
He faced her again, but she couldn’t look at him. Let him think that she was merely angry, without letting him see the hurt that she knew was in her eyes. “One day, Kate, you’ll find someone who loves you for everything you are. And not just the façade you put on. Beautiful.” She flinched. “Smart. Vibrant. Insecure.” She was surprised at that last one and looked up at him. His expression was tender and then turned to steel again. “Don’t miss out on him because you’re stubborn.”
For a moment, she wanted to just tell him she was sorry for everything she’d just said, but she’d learned over the years how to use her wounds to her advantage, to use them as a fire that lit her determination, her ambition. And tonight she found it was a fine line between hurt and anger. He was the one who lied about Alberto cancelling. And now she was so angry she didn’t care why he did it, just that he had no right to intrude on her life like that.
“You’re a jerk,” she said reflexively, knowing as soon as she said it that she didn’t mean it.
“I’m not here to be your doormat or your punching bag. Or your prop for whatever show you think you’re putting on.” His voice was low and angry again, as if he could barely contain his emotions. She’d never seen him angry before. “Go and marry your fuck buddy, Kate. I’m not always going to be here to stop you from sabotaging your own happiness.” She felt herself flush, but she said nothing, just stared at his back, at him carrying his ridiculous flip-flops while he walked down the hall in his socks. He didn’t turn around, didn’t even toss her a sideways glance when he turned the corner. Finally she closed the door and leaned against it, letting the metal cool down her anger. And when she eventually caught her breath, she sank to the floor and sobbed.
Chapter 16
The next morning, Kate was back in control. Her eyes were a tad puffy, but nothing that wouldn’t go away by the time she got in to work. She had already resolved to apologize to Adam when she saw him for their run, so she dressed quickly and went to the lobby. When he wasn’t already there waiting for her, she checked her watch. 5:29. The doorman at the front desk shrugged his shoulders when she looked his way. It wasn’t like him at all, so she waited until 5:35 before heading out by herself.
The crisp, fall air and quiet morning energy of a city about to wake up did its usual job of relaxing Kate. But she missed Adam, she realized, missed knowing that he was right behind her. She had missed her friend, after all these years of being just fine on her own and making new friends, she missed the one person who knew all the facets of her personality, who had shared their own history together, who apparently knew her better than she knew herself. It took willpower not to cut her run short. When Adam was there, the time flew by. Today she just wanted to run back to their building and find him, wake him up to tell him she was sorry for picking a fight, that she didn’t mean what she had said. That he had clearly grown up and out of the insecurities that she herself was still fighting.
Finally, after she got in her full hour, she went to her apartment and saw that Adam hadn’t been there. He must still be really mad, she thought. She showered with her phone on the bathroom sink, in case he called or sent a text. Finally she decided to call him herself—she was the one who needed to do the apologizing, after all. But when she went to call him, she realized she had an email from him, that he had written early in the morning, before the run. She felt even worse realizing that he had emailed instead of texted so that he wouldn’t wake her.
“I’m sorry for how I left things, I shouldn’t have said the things I did. Going back to CA today. I’ll ping you later.”
Kate felt a lump rise in her throat as she dialed him. The call routed to voicemail, and she hung up. He’s gone. She had always hated when she and Adam argued back when they were teenagers. This brought back those memories and something more. This felt different. She didn’t feel certain that they would make up. She looked at his message again. I’ll ping you later. Was that like “I’ll call you” after a one-night stand? He didn’t say if he was coming back, and even if he did, wou
ld it just be to pack up his things for good? She must have really pissed him off for him to just take off like that, literally in the middle of the night. She didn’t blame him, really. He obviously had a life in California, so why shouldn’t he go back when his only friend in the city just chewed him out for no reason?
Kate gave herself another minute to sit on the edge of her bed, trying to take deep and steady breaths. “Get a hold of yourself,” she said out loud. It might be hours before Adam was reachable by phone again if he’d gotten an early morning flight. She needed to get herself to work and focus on the day ahead. No use sitting here sulking over a fight with a friend. A friend, she repeated to herself.
All the same, Kate found herself unable to concentrate all morning, taking more trips to the water cooler and coffee machine than she needed to, just to keep herself from sitting at her desk watching the minutes pass. Finally, after drinking way too much caffeine, she typed out a message to her girls, wanting some advice from any or all three. It was so unlike her, to be the one needing support and input about a guy—a guy who was just a friend, no less. She summarized the fight, how she found out he lied about Alberto not being able to show up to the dinner. She slowly typed out that she was upset about it all. I miss him. She looked at those words again and couldn’t believe she typed that. She deleted that line. And then typed it again. I miss him being around, she added. Then deleted those last two words. I miss him. She stared at those three words again and left them there. She could admit this to her closest friends. She exhaled and hit send before she could talk herself out of it.
