To the Sea (Follow your Bliss)

by Deirdre Riordan Hall

  “You know what I think about people who assume.” Once again, a small smile crept over Kira’s lips. Nicole did her best impression of their monotone junior year history teacher. “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.” They laughed again.

  Tragedy aside, with Nicole there, it was the first time the walls of the house had heard laughter. She and Jeremy hadn’t spent much time together there, and like a pendulum that swung her back into his arms, she thought about all they could have been. Kira stared in the direction of Jeremy’s urn.

  “Earth to Kira,” Nicole said, snapping her back. “The second you let yourself experience a bit of lightness, you dive right back into despair. It’s like when we used to visit the lake, you’d be sweating in the summer sun, then dip your toe in the cool water, rush back up to the deck, and sit there, sweltering while I swam. You’re not that little girl anymore. It’s okay to smile and laugh. There’s no decree stating widows must be somber at all times or you’re not properly honoring the deceased.”

  Kira nodded. Vague recollections tumbled out of the past: Nicole’s comment about how she stuck to dry land during the summer, distancing herself from her friends to spend more time with Jeremy when they started dating, and late nights waiting up for him.

  “Wouldn’t Jeremy want you to be happy?”

  Kira raised her eyebrow.

  “Okay, maybe not. Who knows what he wanted, but do you see what I mean? Kira, you lived, you’re still alive. So laugh, live.” She punctuated the last word with such strength that it echoed in Kira’s mind, bouncing off the memories when she’d short-changed herself.

  “So Blain,” Nicole said continuing.

  Kira didn’t hear because a darker memory crashed into her mind. She cleared her throat.

  “Back in college, freshman year, during rush week, Jeremy and Blain’s frat and my sorority had a mixer— it was early on in the school year and I didn’t know Jeremy yet at all.”

  Kira remembered telling Nicole when they met, finally able to match the boyfriend stories Nicole had over the years.

  “The theme was high school hotties and heroes. The idea was to introduce the frosh, and humiliate us. From the start, Blain was flirting with me. I swear he was already drunk by the time they tapped the keg. He tried to kiss me. I didn’t want anything to do with him. He didn’t like that. Then he told me I was trash and that there were other, better girls.”

  Nicole listened wide-eyed, her lips tight with anger.

  “Then I met Jeremy. Blain was arrogant, mean, but I was just happy not to be rejected, I guess. It sounds pathetic. But does that make sense?”

  Nicole sighed. “No, but I get it. I’m just sorry you never told me.”

  “You grew up with brothers. You know how to handle guys. I was embarrassed, and then later, just happy someone like Jeremy paid attention to me, liked me, even.”

  “I think we need to reassess what ‘guys like Jeremy’ means. And give your self-esteem a little massage.”

  “My experience with men was so limited. I hardly allowed myself a breather from books. During the senior year crunch, I let Jeremy in to take some of the pressure off.

  “I’m just planting a seed, something to think about now, when you feel yourself getting sad about Jeremy dying, and something to think about later, when you’re feeling like yourself again, what kind of person do you want to be in a relationship with? Surely not the first guy that gives you the time of day, but one that treats you with respect, is honest, romantic, and certainly won’t cheat on you, for starters.”

  Nicole inadvertently planted another seed in Kira’s mind, feeling like herself again, but in the last weeks, she wasn’t even sure that was anymore.

  “As for meeting Blain later,” Nicole hesitated. In the pause, Kira suddenly realized Nicole had questioned her relationship with Jeremy from the beginning, and again at their engagement. She recalled Nicole asking, right before they left for the church, if marrying Jeremy was what she really wanted.

  “What are you thinking?” Nicole asked.

  “I’m remembering all the times you asked me if I was sure Jeremy was a good fit. If he was the right one for me, if I was happy with him and all along I said, yes, yes, yes.”

  Kira dissolved in tears as she saw clearly the ways she’d fooled herself. Nicole’s hug soothed her, accompanied by an ever-increasing glow of truth with each step she took toward honestly viewing the past few years. It was the same feeling she’d had when she left the commune the summer after graduating high school, and when she was behind the lens of her camera, taking photos for the Harvard Crimson, before Jeremy came along. It felt like alignment and like moving in the right direction.

  “I hate to say I told you so,” Nicole said playfully. “But now back to Blain,” Nicole said grudgingly.

  Kira rolled her eyes.

  They discussed their game plan while Nicole bustled around the kitchen, unpacking lunch. Kira didn’t remember Nicole having such an appetite as she dug into a tuna melt, chips, a salad, and some browned butter double chocolate cookies she picked up from the bakery down the street.

  “How did you know I seriously needed some chocolate?” Kira asked.

  “Lucky guess.”

  Chapter Seven

  As they entered Café 101, the smells of roasted coffee beans and pastries brought back grief-free days spent studying. When she spotted Blain’s tall figure and shortly cropped blond hair, the nostalgia sank like a dead weight in her stomach. As Kira neared, she noticed his hairline had thinned. He raised his eyebrows and smirked.

  “Well, well, well. You brought a little friend. Hi, Nicole.”

  Nicole disregarded the comment about her petite stature. “Listen, I’m sure losing your best friend must be burning a hole in your black heart, but Kira lost not only her husband, but her sense of who she thought he was. We’re hoping that now that he’s just a memory and can’t speak for himself, you can fill in some spaces.”

  Blain smiled with narrowed eyes. “You’ve come for the truth, huh?” he said, lacing his fingers behind his head and rocking back on the wooden chair.

  Nicole and Kira sat down opposite.

  “Jeremy had what some people call a wandering eye… and a wandering cock.”

  Kira’s sense of propriety made her inhale sharply, hoping no one overheard.

  “He was never faithful to you.” This made Blain smile widely and his eyes grew even narrower. “He only asked you out because of a frat dare. Remember that first party he brought you to? It was themed, ‘blokes and jokes’. You were the joke. Still are.”

  Kira’s eyes moistened. She knew she wasn’t a joke, but the idea that he’d say their relationship started as meaningless burned.

  “Blain, that’s unnecessary,” Nicole said, looking sharply at him.

  “She wants the truth. Sometimes the truth hurts. Like your hippie parents are too poor to send you to college so you have to get financial aid? Or that your boyfriend went out with you because of a dare?”

  Kira already heard enough, but couldn’t will her legs to walk away.

  “Though I suppose now that you’re single and back on the market, I could find out if there was a reason he followed through with the whole thing.”

  Kira’s stomach churned as he eyed her, but anger burst through her discomfort and disbelief. “Or that a freshman girl wasn’t interested in you, wouldn’t kiss you, wanted nothing to do with you and still doesn’t,” Kira said.

  Blain shifted in his seat and snorted. “That? I could’ve had any girl in that sorority. In fact, I did. I didn’t need you. What was her name? Stacy? We fucked that night. Oh, and there was Anna and Winona and Gia. Should I go on? Anyway, I was drunk, what’d you expect from me?”

  “Respect.” Kira shot him her fiercest look.

  “That’s nice. The thing about me, ladies, is I do what I want and say what I want. That isn’t going to change. ‘Kay?” Nicole rolled her eyes and Kira knew she’d agree that they were dealing with a
n overgrown toddler.

  “Your nasty attitude is not why we’re here. We want to hear more about Jeremy,” Nicole said.

  “Right. So what would you like to know? The number of times he was with other women, the strippers, the bachelor party? Yeah, we still rocked the college parties too. The getaways and business trips and ladies we’d have to our hotel rooms, the clubs. How about the dating service, which seemed like a reach even for The Hammer? But oh, I don’t know, I’d say he slept with a couple dozen of those Ivy League grads.”

  The casual way Blain threw these figures around incensed Kira, doubled by the fact that after their wedding and trip to Nantucket, she and Jeremy had slept together exactly once. A flurry of anxiety about STD’s made her dizzy, the room tilted.

  “You see, doll,” he said smugly, “You started dating as a dare, and then it became a bet. Jeremy’s family was pressuring him to marry this girl—old money, family connections, but she was a dog. D-O-G. So, I suggested you. You were already dating, sort of, and aren’t hard to look at—that would get his family off his back. Since you hadn’t caught on to his philandering in college, he figured you wouldn’t after he moved you to the ‘burbs.”

  Kira broke out in a cold sweat. It was one thing to read about it online, another to hear Blain confirm it.

  He smiled wickedly before continuing. “First, I bet him he couldn’t pull off the engagement without you figuring it out. Five grand. Then the wedding. Ten. Then, well, you didn’t make it to the honeymoon, did you? That would have been fifteen-thousand dollars if he could stand to keep his dick in his pants for two weeks out of the country with you. See why he put off the honeymoon?”

  “You’re messed up,” Nicole said.

  Blain ignored her. “You started as a joke and ended as a joke,” he said to Kira.

  She sat there, speechless, trying to wrap her head around what she’d just learned. Moments ago, she doubted herself sexually and as a girlfriend, a wife, and as a human being. Now, with absolute certainty, she knew something was wrong with both Jeremy and Blain.

  “Why?” Nicole asked.

  “Why not? For shits and giggles. You see, Jeremy wanted to please his family, so when the time came he’d get his inheritance, but he also wanted to please himself. Win, win, Annandale.”

  “Yeah, except he’s dead,” Nicole said bluntly.

  “Well, he’d had a lot to drink that night. I tried taking his keys. But he was in a hurry to get back to the condo and get laid. She was super-hot. Big tits,” he said motioning with his hands around his chest.

  “Unfortunately for her, she was also in that car accident.”

  “Yeah, well, thems the risks. I always say, practice safe sex. Call a cab. That way we can do it twice, once in the back and once in the bed.”

  Kira steadied her breath. “Jeremy kept the condo as a place to bring women?”

  “Yep. The lair. Man cave. Sex den.”

  “Do you know the name of the woman who was in the accident with him?” Nicole asked.

  “Hmmm… Jeremy had been with so many; it’s hard to keep their names straight. Let me think, Court or Cori. Something like that. If I recall, she went to Yale. He wanted to hit one from each of the Ivy Leagues, except Harvard, that’d be like pissing in your own beer.”

  “Do you miss Jeremy at all, Blain?” Kira asked.

  “Of course, stupid bitch,” Blain spat. “Not a day goes by I don’t think about him, the Hammer. He was my best friend. But he went out probably the best way a guy can, buzzed, getting a blowjob, and about to fuck a hot chick. Win, win Annandale.”

  “You disgust me,” Kira said, standing to leave.

  Kira didn’t expect flowers and a box of chocolates from Blain, but she never imagined he’d reveal the disturbing way in which Jeremy had gambled with her heart.

  “Ah, come on, I was just getting warmed up. There’s more to tell—hot tubs, sailing trips, surfing. Ha! That was a good one. You never wondered why he didn’t bring home sand?” he called after them.

  Whatever else he said, Kira didn’t hear it.

  She sat in the car, stunned.

  “A monster,” Nicole started. “A beady eyed, balding, nasty, atrocious, vile person.”

  “And filthy, sick, twisted—” Kira added.

  “I can’t imagine what women see in him.”

  “I have no idea,” Kira said, letting out her breath and letting the truth seep in. “Jeremy wasn’t much different than Blain—he just revealed all the dark parts of Jeremy. I only saw what I wanted to see.” She sighed.

  “Or the parts he wanted you to see.”

  The raking despair that had consumed Kira for so long made room for disappointment, disenchanting clarity, and disgust.

  “You know how badly I wanted to get away from the commune? Out with the macramé and flow-y skirts and in with high fashion, and by extension an upgrade to my entire life, my career, my house, my car—when I think about it, I wasn’t much different from my parents at all. I just chose preppy, mega-organized, and Pottery Barn. And they chose bell-bottoms, incense, and tie-dye. It was something to hide behind, an identity to create when I wasn’t sure who I was.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t exactly agree with your parent’s lifestyle, their free-love mentality or any of that. I’ll never forget the time they tried tie-dying their skin.”

  Kira couldn’t will herself to smile. “They were stoned. But, isn’t free love essentially what Jeremy practiced?”

  “No, that would be called deceit and infidelity.”

  Kira felt herself cracking wide open.

  “Wasn’t I somehow complicit in what he was doing? By overlooking all his time away and the fact that we hadn’t had sex since we moved to Newton, wasn’t I ignoring the truth?” Kira imagined everything she believed about herself spilling in chewed up chunks onto the city streets.

  “We all want to be loved. There’s nothing wrong with that. But we don’t want to be lied to.”

  “Do you remember he never came back the night before the wedding? He was probably out getting laid, stomping all over what I held sacred. Blain probably dared him.” The gears in Kira’s mind turned as she wiped away a screen of deception and ignorance that had clouded her sight.

  “I can recall nights when he didn’t even bother to call. I chalked it up to his commitment to his job, which I took to mean his commitment to our financial future. Moving to Newton, I thought was us settling down, someday having a family together, but it was so he could use the condo and wouldn’t have to get a room at a hotel. I bet the reason we stopped going out into the city together was so we wouldn’t run into any of the women he dated.”

  On the other side of the car’s windshield, pedestrians shuffled by on the sidewalk, going shopping or nabbing street food, oblivious to the fact that Kira’s entire world continued to painfully and slowly fall to pieces before her eyes. All she could do was watch it happen. No amount of planning, organizing, or her usual approach to problems would fix it. But deep down, she hoped to find something redemptive in the ruins. She wanted to find herself there, but feared, as the sun, filmed in clouds, dipped behind a tall stone building, she’d only find more sorrow.

  “And the rowing trips, the surf-trips, the travel for work, how do I know what was true and what wasn’t? How could he? And he had the audacity to say ‘married’ on his dating profile. What kind of scum—”

  “It was a game to them. Nothing more. A big boy’s game of how many women they could have sex with, without the grown-ups finding out. I’m so sorry you had a role in it. I never imagined they were that awful.”

  Kira simmered, replaying promises Jeremy had made, excuses he’d given, and nights spent alone.

  “It’s okay to be angry.”

  “Damn right. But the thing is, part of me says I really loved him. That I still love him. I can’t explain it, but there was the Jeremy I thought I knew and loved. Or maybe I just made up a version of him to match nicely with my perfectly planned life.” Kira lo
oked desperately at Nicole.

  “I think you’re getting somewhere,” Nicole said softly.

  “It’s all so confusing now. Becoming a widow in my twenties, at least before my pain was normal, expected. This new information adds another element. I haven’t quite wrapped my head around how I feel. How can a person feel angry, sad, frustrated, despair, lonely, and broken all at the same time?”

  Sudden fear flashed in Kira’s mind. She squirmed in her seat. “I should be tested,” she said. “We weren’t intimate much, but still.”

  “I know a clinic that’ll take you right away. My cousin, well, anyway, long story.”

  “Yeah.” The gravity of it all hushed Kira.

  Later, as they left the spotless clinic housed in a non-descript brick building, Kira plummeted even further.

  “We still have some time before enacting plan alpha. I’m starved, but first, why don’t you and I do some retail therapy?”

  Chapter Eight

  Nicole headed up Mass Ave and into Cambridge. The two friends strolled through the glass doors at Saks, Kira leaving her jumbled emotions at the entrance. The cloudy, grey skies outside contrasted with the brightly colored fabrics and short hemlines on display.

  “How about a cruise?” Nicole suggested.

  “A cruise?”

  “You aren’t going to Paris, are you?” she asked.

  Kira shook her head.

  “I think that ship has sailed.”

  Nicole laughed. “You have the vacation time still, right?”

  “If, I still have a job,” Kira said, admiring a teal bag.

  “You do, and you’re returning to it in a couple days. You may have been wrong about Jeremy, but you’re good at your job.”

  Going to the office the next day felt like a manned mission to mars; as impossible as the events, that had just unfolded in Kira’s life, would have sounded if someone predicted them months earlier.

  “Think about it. Let’s get you some fun clothes, you know, just in case.”

  Kira consented, letting Nicole sweep her into the rush of retail therapy.