by Claire Adams
“You seem off,” she said. “You seem like something is terribly wrong.”
“Things are just…” We were sitting on the porch, and I looked off toward the front yard. “I broke up with my girlfriend.”
“Oh, yeah? Things not going so great?”
“It just got too hard.” That was the simple way to put it. I didn’t feel like getting into all the details, of re-living everything.
Paula was looking at me closely. “But you love her, I can tell. Don’t even bother trying to tell me I’m wrong.”
I was quiet.
“Did you ever wonder why Jackson wanted you to come over here and check up on me?” Paula asked.
“Not really,” I said. “I mean, he wanted me to make sure that you were all right. Being alone and everything.”
“I’m not alone though is the thing. I’m still his wife.”
“I know you are, but he’s in there, and you’re out here…”
“He wanted me to leave him. And he was using you to try to facilitate that.”
I stared at her. “Huh?”
“He finally admitted to it, the last time I went to see him. I didn’t think he would actually cop to it, but he did. I’m not mad at him, of course.”
“I’m not following,” I said, shaking my head. What was she talking about?
“He thought I’d decide I wanted to get it on with you and that would be the end of us.”
“He wanted me to sleep with you?” I thought back to the day Jackson brought it up, the way he said he had trusted me. There was no way that he sent me out here to sleep with his wife. That was crazy.
“Of course he did!” Paula grinned. “Don’t look so shocked! A good-looking guy like you. It’s not because you’re unattractive.”
“Why on earth would your husband want me to sleep with you? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, you’re right, in a way. What he wants is for me to want you. Or anyone, for that matter, so long as it isn’t him. He doesn’t want to think of me out here, all alone, wasting away, which absolutely isn’t happening. I seem to be doing all right, wouldn’t you say?”
“Of course,” I said quickly, though I didn’t really know. Was she all right? I saw her a few times here and there, but I really had no way of knowing what she did the rest of the time. What if after I left she was just going to go inside, close the blinds, and not leave the house for two weeks? What if she couldn’t sleep at night or went through the trouble of cooking a meal but never actually ate it? “I mean, you would tell me if things weren’t okay, wouldn’t you?”
She cracked a smile. “That sounds like something a friend would say. Or maybe a social worker.”
“I guess I’m just a little confused about this whole thing. Jackson had always led me to believe that things were good between the two of you.”
“Oh, they are; he’s right about the that. He’s putting me before himself, you see. Because I’ve told him all along that I’ll stand by his side, that I’ll be here waiting for him when he gets out. If he gets out. Because I love him. And love isn’t just what happens when it’s easy or fun or you’re lucky enough to still be in the honeymoon stage. Love is what happens after all that shit leaves and the hard stuff starts. That’s what true love is—the hard shit.”
I watched two butterflies flutter across the lawn, one after the other, as though they were playing tag. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for it, then,” I said.
Paula gave me a level stare. “Isn’t that a shame.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wren
“Do you think it’s totally weird if I go?” I asked Allison. I was having second thoughts about San Francisco. “I mean, really, if any of us were going to go to San Francisco, maybe it should it should be Ollie? Since Darren’s his brother?”
“Yeah, but it sounds like the two of you really hit it off. And if he’s cool with you going, why the hell not?”
We were sitting out on the deck, sneaking a glass of wine before Nigel and the kids got back from the movies. It had been a few weeks since I’d taken Allison to Boulder, and I was glad to see that she seemed totally fine, both physically and emotionally.
“You deserve it,” Allison continued. “You deserve a little get away, even if it was supposed to be the two of you. You’ll still have a good time. Nigel and I went to San Francisco once, pre-kids, and it was awesome.”
I swirled the wine around in the glass, imagining myself sitting at chic restaurants by myself. “It just sucks. I’m trying not to mope about it, I’m really not, but the whole thing sucks. I want to see him, but I can’t.”
“Some guys just don’t realize a good thing when they have it. Because trust me, Wren, you’re a catch, and any guy would be lucky to have you. Maybe you just need to give him time. He’ll realize he made a huge fucking mistake.”
I smiled wanly. I knew she was trying to be supportive, but it wasn’t making me feel better.
“That article’s not still getting published, is it?” she asked.
“Oh, shit.” I set my glass down and buried my face in my hands. “I completely forgot about that. I don’t know if it is, I haven’t talked to Hunter in a while. I actually totally forgot about that stupid article.”
“Can you call him and tell him?”
“Yeah, I’m going to have to. There’s no way they can publish that article about how fate brought us back together and now we’re living this dream life. Ha ha ha. What a fucking joke.” I stood up. “I need to go find my phone. I’m calling him right now.” I found my phone on the kitchen counter.
“You can’t publish the article,” I said when he picked up.
“What do you mean? It came out great! I think you’re going to be really pleased when you see—”
“We broke up.”
“What?” I could hear the surprise in his voice. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“But…wow. The two of you seemed like such a great couple. You two were really…in love.”
My stomach clenched. “I guess things aren’t always how they appear.”
“I’m sorry, Wren.” Hunter coughed. “That was insensitive to say. It’s just… You two really did seem to have chemistry. I’ll stop, though. I’m not trying to make you feel bad.”
“I feel bad enough as it is—I don’t think it could get much worse. Consider this free rein to say whatever you want.”
“Well…I can’t pull the article. It’s too late.”
My stomach unclenched enough for it to flip, a wave a nausea rolling over me. “Wouldn’t you know—I feel worse.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He really did feel sorry; I could hear it in his tone. But it didn’t matter how sorry he felt for me because that wasn’t going to make Ollie want to get back together, and it wasn’t even going to prevent the article from being published.
If completely losing my shit and bawling hysterically might have changed the outcome, I would have considered it, but I knew that the article was going to be published regardless of what I said or did. So, I just thanked Hunter (for what, exactly, I didn’t know), and then got off the phone. For theatrics, I threw it across the room, which momentarily did make me feel a tiny bit better.
Allison looked at me expectantly as I made my way back onto the deck and to my chair. “Well…how’d that go?”
“I don’t have good news to report,” I said grimly, reaching for the wine bottle. “It’s too late. Cue public humiliation.” Fuck the wine glass; I just pulled the cork out and took a big swig straight from the bottle. “Can someone just put me out of my misery now? Please? I’m aware I might sound a little overly dramatic, but an article, about me and my now ex-boyfriend, is about to be published in a national magazine.”
“What do you mean it’s too late? I thought these things took forever to come out.”
“I think they usually do, but this is different. They were already scrambling to fill the slot where the original article was going to
be, so this was kind of a last-minute thing. If they pull this one, there’s going to be a big blank spot. Or at least that’s the way Hunter made it sound.”
“Oh.” Allison was quiet, looking into her empty wineglass as though some sort of answer might appear there. “Shit, Wren. I’m sorry.” She held her hand out for the bottle, which I gave to her after taking another swig. She put her glass down and drank straight from the bottle, too. “Then I think the best thing you can do for yourself is to get out of town for a little while. This trip to San Francisco isn’t just something for fun—at this point, it seems necessary. You sure as shit deserve it, and trust me when I say that if I could go with you, I would in a heartbeat.”
And just hearing her say it like that made me think that it was the right thing to do, and perhaps what everyone said about things happening for a reason was correct.
I decided it would behoove me to schedule one more appointment with Dr. Mike before I was to leave for San Francisco. I wanted to hear him say that he thought I was doing the right thing, that a visit out there would be healing, that when I came back I’d feel so much better.
Instead, he said, “Do you think you’re running away from your feelings?”
“No,” I said, even though that’s exactly what it was. Was that really such a problem? We lived in a small town and even though I might not ever actually see Ollie again (though chances of that were unlikely; I’d eventually run into him or see him drive by or something), it was like I could feel his presence; I could sense it. Even now as I sat there on the couch, watching Dr. Mike write something on that yellow legal pad of his, it was like I had a little radar in me that was tuned to Ollie and knew that he was not all that far away, going about his business. “I mean, maybe it is a little. But I was just broken up with. I feel like I need the space to regroup. Does that make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“So, you think it’s a good idea?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“Why did you start coming to therapy in the first place, Wren?”
“I started because I wanted to stop using men for sex. I didn’t want to be sleeping around the way I was, and I thought maybe talking about it would help get to the underlying cause.”
“Which we determined was because you wanted to feel in control. You wanted to take back the control you felt you didn’t have the night you were attacked. And often, when a relationship ends when we don’t want it to, there is a feeling of a loss of control.”
“Right,” I said. “He broke up with me, and no, that’s not what I wanted.”
“I would just hate to see you regress back to your old ways during your trip to San Francisco.”
“I’m not going to start sleeping around out there,” I said indignantly. “If that’s what you’re implying. And really—San Francisco is the perfect place for me to go because it’s full of gay guys.”
Dr. Mike wrinkled his nose in an expression of distaste.
“That wasn’t a homophobic comment, by the way,” I added. “I’m just saying, if I wanted to go somewhere just to sleep around, San Francisco would not be my first choice. Lena thinks that San Francisco is basically a mecca for crazy people, which we also know is completely not true, either. It just seems like a place people can go if they don’t want to be judged for liking whatever it is they like. Somewhere you can go and not have to feel guilty about things.”
“Do you feel guilty?”
“Of course I do!” I said. “But we already know that! I feel guilty about everything, at least in regards to Ollie. I don’t think we need to go over all that again, though! I mean, don’t you have it all written down on that yellow pad of yours?”
“We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about.”
I leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of what he’d written. He tilted the pad back so my view was blocked.
“Seriously,” I said. “What are you writing on there?”
“Just taking notes. I do that with all of my clients.”
I sat back on the couch. “It’d be funny if you were really just doodling on there or something.”
“I assure you, I’m not.”
“Well, it’d be funny if you were.”
“Is this really what you want to be discussing right now?”
“I thought you just said we could talk about whatever I wanted to.”
He sighed. “We can.”
“Maybe that’s what I want to discuss.”
“It doesn’t seem overly productive.”
I looked up at the ceiling, wondering how many minutes, how many hours, I’d spent sitting in this office, talking about my feelings. Had it helped? Was I just telling myself it had because I’d spent the money on it? “Maybe none of this is that productive. I mean, am I just supposed to keep coming to see you forever? I still feel exactly the same about everything. I don’t think this has changed a thing.”
Dr. Mike put his pen down. “Wren, no one is forcing you to come talk to me. If you feel that it would be appropriate to end your sessions—for the second time—then we can do that.”
I felt very claustrophobic all of the sudden, like the walls were closing in, but not just the walls in this office, this whole town. Its smallness, which I’d always liked, was now something that was trying to drown me, and I had to get out. I needed to get away, and suddenly, going to San Francisco seemed like an absolute necessity, not a choice.
This was a journey of firsts for me. I’d never been on a plane before, and the feeling during takeoff was both exhilarating and completely terrifying. I had the window seat, and I peered out of that little rectangle as the ground got further and further away, disappearing completely as the plane was enveloped in a cloud.
“Wow,” I breathed.
The woman next to me looked over. “First time on a plane?” she asked.
“That obvious?”
She smiled a little, an act that her face didn’t seem entirely comfortable making. “I don’t fly often, either,” she said. “The last time I flew, in fact, I was a young person. And I remember it being quite the novelty.”
“It is. But it’s also kind of strange, when you think about it.”
“I try not to. Because if I did, I’d probably have some sort of anxiety attack.”
I nodded, unsure of what else to say. She did not seem to be the sociable type of person who would just strike up a conversation with someone because they were sitting next to them, but I was also getting the feeling that she wanted to talk, too. Maybe it quelled the anxiety she had about flying.
I took the magazine out of my purse and started to flip through the pages.
“Do you live in San Francisco?” the woman asked.
I closed my magazine and smiled, pleased that she would mistake me for someone who lived in the city. Then, I remembered what Lena had said, thinking that it was just a place for crazy artist types. I know I certainly didn’t look artistic, so did that mean I was looking a little crazy? I guess that wouldn’t be that surprising.
“No, I’m just going to visit,” I said. “Really, a much-needed vacation. I’ve never been there before. Are you? Going to visit?”
“Yes.” She pressed her lips together in a thin line, looking decidedly uncomfortable about the whole thing. I got the feeling that this was not any sort of vacation for her. I was going to go back to my magazine because it didn’t really seem like she wanted to continue the conversation, but then she suddenly said, “I’m going to visit my son. Who is living as a woman.”
“Oh,” I said.
“This is the first time I’ve seen him…her…in almost fifteen years. My husband refused to come, even though I know he misses him.”
“I think it’s good that you’re going out there, though,” I said. “I’m sure your son…er…daughter…I’m sure she will be happy to see you.”
The woman blanched at the pronoun, but took a deep breath and smoothed her short, gr
aying hair down. “I appreciate your kind words. I’m trying to keep my expectations low. I know that probably sounds horrible, but I’ve found that if I lower my expectations—with all things, not just this—that I am disappointed far less. So, even if I go out there and he…she refuses to see me, or it goes horribly, or… I don’t know, something happens, even if that’s the case, I won’t be disappointed, because I’m not expecting it to be great.”
I nodded slowly, thinking about this. It honestly sounded depressing as hell, but maybe she was onto something.
“I wish you the best of luck,” I said. “I hope it exceeds your expectations.”
The woman smiled dryly. “It won’t take much for that to happen.”
I’d told Darren that I would take a taxi wherever I needed to once I landed, but he insisted on coming down there to pick me up.
“It’ll give me an excuse to get the car out of the garage,” he’d said.
It was quite a car. I’d been nervous that I might not recognize him, or that maybe he wouldn’t show up, but as I walked through the automatic sliding glass doors, pulling my little suitcase behind me like a dutiful pet, he was right there, sitting in the driver’s seat of a sleek-looking black BMW convertible. He waved.
“Hey!” he said, a big smile stretching across his face. “I would’ve come in to meet you, but they want us to keep moving!” He nodded in the direction of a police officer who was waving another car on. “I popped the trunk, just throw your bag in the back.”
I did as he said and then I went around to the passenger side. For a second I considered bypassing opening the door and just hopping over and in, but then I figured I’d end up failing spectacularly, so I opened the door and got in like a normal person would. Darren leaned over and hugged me with one arm.
“Great to see you,” he said. “And I’m really glad you still came out here. Even if it was supposed to be the two of you.”
I buckled my seatbelt. “Well, I appreciate you having me.”
He put the car in first gear, and the car zipped off. It was probably the most luxurious car I’d ever been in, and it felt more like we were hovering over the ground as we left the airport.
