“I didn’t know Brian Johnson was in town,” I kid. “Or is it Axl Rose?”
“Brian’s back.” With her handheld compact in one hand, Marian touches up her bright-red lipstick. “Impressed you’re on top of the rock world, Hals.”
“God knows I had to endure your selection of music back in college.” Nina and I have much more common ground in the music department than Marian and I, although I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that Marian and I can rock “Stairway to Heaven” on Guitar Hero better than anyone we know.
“So a concert date?” I guess, pouring myself a bowl of cereal. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
“I wish it was an AC/DC concert. Only dinner and drinks. Same-o.”
“And the guy? Is he from work?” That seems to be the trend. Is there anyone else left for Marian to date from her office?
“Not this one. He’s a doctor.” She waggles her eyebrows.
“Snap.”
“I know. He’s like fiftysomething, so . . .” She shrugs.
Marian casts wide in the pool of dating, but rarely, if ever, does she bring home arm candy old enough to call Dad.
“But he’s really sweet. And single,” Marian says, nonchalant.
“That’s important.” I immediately think of Marco.
“And he asked.” She leans over the breakfast bar countertop. “He so doesn’t look his age, Hals. He’s a marathoner.”
“Endurance is key.”
Marian cackles, then grabs her clutch. “Hey, a girl’s got to keep her social life alive. Speaking of social, got any plans of your own tonight?”
I pour soy milk over my cereal. “I have a date with a book.” I was going to work on my Copper article, but I forgot my laptop at the office.
“A book? A date that does not make.”
“You suggesting I go on a date? I’m still married, Marian.”
Marian and I have been over this before. Adam and I need a plan. Given the tension between us whenever we’re within three feet of each other, I don’t know where to begin. Agreeing on a timeline is scary. What happens when we reach the set time? Do we get back together? Do we . . . divorce? Does one of us concede his or her life’s wishes and we figure it out from there? As painful as it is to be away from Adam, to have so much negativity fill the space between, I much prefer the vague, unknown space of our future to a solid decision.
“I’m not suggesting that.”
“We were a disaster at Alice’s fair,” I tell Marian in defense of my not yet having figured out how this separation is to be productive. “Clearly we should keep our distance.”
“I guess it’s all about baby steps, huh?”
A spoon gripped in one hand, I drop my fists onto the counter and give Marian a crooked glance. “Any word but that, please.”
She gives a throaty laugh as she makes her way to the front door, her long, silky blonde ponytail swishing with each step.
“At least have some wine with that book.” She points toward the kitchen. “I picked up a Pinot Grigio on the way home. It’s chilling in the fridge, and it has your name on it.”
“I love you, Marian.”
She blows me a kiss before stepping out the door, on her way to her hot-older-doctor date. It’s a scene I’ve gotten quite used to since I moved in. I’m home, deciding between a book and work, cereal and takeout, calling Adam and hoping he calls me, Marian dressed to impress and living her wild social life. You’d think it’d get old, or at least that I’d get so fed up I’d switch things up a bit. But there’s a warm and fuzzy comfort to wearing my pajamas before night falls, to opening a bottle of wine and settling onto the sofa with a good read, and to having absolutely no responsibility to make dinner for anyone other than myself. To wait for Adam to come home. To see what Adam wants to do over the weekend. To coordinate, to plan, to be a partner.
Except I can’t help but notice there’s an emptiness in my life, a hole. It’s been there awhile, and I’ve chalked it up to Adam’s being gone. Although, as I consider Marian’s date tonight, and Nina’s upcoming ultrasound, and Charlotte’s busy calendar, I can’t help but feel that that hole is there because of something more than Adam’s absence. I know I don’t need a baby to fill the space or make me feel as if I have purpose. I don’t know what it is, or if this even does go beyond my missing Adam. I can’t help but wonder, though, even if Adam and I do reunite, if we do make our way back to where we were, will I find myself sitting on the sofa, a book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, the house peacefully all to myself before Adam comes home from work, and asking, “Is this it? Is this the life I want? Is this my purpose?”
Enough introspection for one night. I pour myself a second glass of wine and decide Adam filling that gap is what I need to deal with first and foremost. We need a plan. It’s time to set a date. Our separation cannot go on forever.
I reach for my phone to send Adam a text. Even though tension erupts when we’re together, and I’ve repeatedly convinced myself that space is what we need, Marian’s right about seeing each other now and then. About staying in contact, checking in from time to time and trying to work things out on our own and together. Plus, we really need a plan.
How about we get lunch sometime next week? I punch out on my phone. My fingers are shaking at the thought of seeing Adam again, of having a date—of having to directly discuss our new marital status.
Adam responds almost immediately.
Lunch sounds great, he texts. Been to the new place on Fair Oaks? Pacific Café?
I haven’t even heard of it. So he says I should look at the menu and see if there’s anything that appeals to me, and if there is, he’ll reserve us a table.
I decide to look on Marian’s laptop. It’s easier than using my phone, which can get wonky opening apps, and she doesn’t mind my using it, though I rarely do, and not usually for anything more than placing takeout orders.
The screen comes to life, revealing a personal Facebook page. But it’s not just anyone’s page. It’s Cole Whittaker’s page. Like a moth drawn to flame, I can’t help myself. I begin scrolling through the page. I mean, it’s Cole Whittaker’s page! Why is Marian looking at this?
I click through some photos. Cole’s profile photo is of him with what I’m assuming is his dog. Although it could very well be the station dog, as it’s a Dalmatian, and evidently, as the second photo confirms, Cole Whittaker is a fireman. A very fine-looking Glendale Fire Department fireman. I can’t help but notice he’s much more . . . man than when I last saw him some ten-plus years ago. Clearly he’s older. He’s more muscular. His jaw, speckled with light hair, is less soft, his chin more pronounced. His eyes look kind of tired, or as if they’ve seen a lot, been through a lot. His smile is still charming, dimples and all. His sandy-blond hair, which once hung shaggy past his ears in college, always disheveled like some surfer boy’s, is now in a clean crew cut. He looks good. I could definitely see him in the annual fireman calendar.
I’ve clicked through what’s probably fifty photos now—Cole with the firehouse dog; Cole with another dog (his?); Cole with a bunch of very beefy firemen; Cole at a restaurant table covered with drinks, toasting with some friends; Cole at the beach; Cole with friends at the beach—when I remember I should be looking at a lunch menu. But as moths are apt to do when a shiny flame’s flickering, I can’t turn away.
I quickly check Cole’s bio details. His city of residency and career? Check, check. What about his relationship status? I scan three times and do not find Married or Single anywhere. No Interested in or Looking for. Nothing. And after a quick scan of a handful of photos, I don’t spy a one that suggests he’s involved with anyone. Sure, there are some women in a couple of the photos, but nothing that shouts, Lover!
I bite at the corner of my bottom lip, stumped. What is Marian doing looking up Cole Whittaker?
Cole and Marian have a history, and it’s a labyrinthine one. I never imagined, after all these years, Marian would have Cole’s Facebook page pulled
up on her computer screen. I never imagined she’d ever bother to look him up, given their past. I don’t want to be nosy, but it’s not as if I’m reading an e-mail between the two. His Facebook page is as public on her screen as it would be on mine, I note when I see that Marian is not Facebook friends with him. Still, given their history, I feel as if I’m eavesdropping. Why, after all this time, after what happened, would Marian be interested in looking at what Cole Whittaker’s up to?
Marian and Cole met freshman year in the hall of our coed dormitory. They were both looking at the bulletin board, interested in the twenty bucks you could make if you participated in a personality experiment in the Psychology Department. In the most perfect of meet cutes, they both reached for the same tearable paper slip hanging from the flier. Small talk ensued, and that night, at dinner in the cafeteria, Marian introduced Cole to our small circle of friends. He seamlessly joined our group.
Marian is outgoing, social, and always up for meeting new people and making new friends. Cole was the stark opposite. The sweetest guy, and super quiet, he had been homeschooled all throughout high school and arrived on campus not knowing a single person, unlike some of us, who made the transition from high school to college with familiar faces among us. He was a lone wolf, to say nothing of the social skills he’d missed out on honing by not attending a traditional high school. Cole wasn’t a student athlete like Marian and me, who had easy opportunities to meet people and make new friends before classes even started. And Cole wasn’t the type who felt comfortable showing up, party of one, at a free lunch put on by one of the departments or an informational meeting about intramural sports. Introverted Cole needed a friend, and Marian was just the girl.
If you asked any of our mutual friends back then who Marian’s best friend was, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if Cole and I tied, or if Cole even took the title. As Marian told me once, Cole was like that boy neighbor you grew up with your whole life, whom you built a tree house with, ate Pop Rocks with in your bathing suits on the lawn as the sprinklers sprayed, and maybe even went to the school dance with. It didn’t matter that you had boy-girl sleepovers or even went to the school dance together, because you were just friends. The best of friends.
Come junior year, Cole had come more into his own. He had his own group of friends and was more comfortable in social settings. Marian’s extroversion had had that effect. However, Cole hadn’t quite mastered the girlfriend thing. Marian, on the other hand, dated around the clock (some things never seem to change with Marian). She couldn’t manage to pin one guy down for longer than a couple of months, but in the middle of junior year she came out of a breakup with a cheating Sigma Pi. The relationship hadn’t been serious, although it had lasted for almost three months, which was nearly an eternity for Marian, but it crushed her.
It was during this breakup period that Marian learned that Cole was still a virgin. It wasn’t a big surprise, seeing as how he’d never had a girlfriend. Marian was the only woman he truly felt comfortable around. She was down about her breakup, and Cole confessed his embarrassment at being twenty-one, his college graduation around the corner, and still a virgin. The next thing either of them knew, they were having sex. Marian told me right after it happened. She referred to it as mutual sympathy sex. She said they’d agreed to do it as friends. He could put away his anxiety about his first time, and she, ever the loyal one, willing to literally bend over backward for her friends, stepped up to the plate.
I still don’t understand how the arrangement worked, how both agreed it was a good idea. Though my first time wasn’t exactly special in the way that sex would later be with someone I loved, it was still a big deal, with my first serious boyfriend in college. I wanted to share that experience with him. Doing that with a friend? And for the first time? I don’t know how you can do that and then come away with still only a friendship. Maybe that’s just because I’ve never had such a friendship with a man, the way Marian did with Cole.
In any event, they had their moment, and it was strange how it changed Cole, practically overnight. It could’ve been all in my head, since I was the only one, aside from Nina, who knew about the onetime friends-with-benefits move, but Cole gained significant confidence, particularly with women. He had a positivity about him we couldn’t explain. (Well, I could.) A week later Cole asked a rather emo drama major out, and before any of us knew it, he had a girlfriend. Marian, by that point, had already landed herself a new frat boy to call her main squeeze, and in the bizarro way the universe seems to work, Marian and Cole carried on with their friendship as if no romp in the sheets had ever happened. One hell of a friendship, you could say.
It was at the start of senior year that that meet cute at the bulletin board actually became the classic romantic prelude. Cole and Marian became more than just friends, and not friends with benefits, onetime or otherwise. Cole had broken up with his girlfriend over the summer, because he’d realized his deeper feelings for Marian. He wanted to be with her, she was the One, and that was that. At first Marian thought it was weird. Naturally. I mean, all this time as friends and now they were supposed to . . . date?
Marian was hesitant. Countless nights we sat on our kitchen counter, sharing a bottle of cheap wine, talking about the pros and cons of her shifting from a friendship to a relationship with Cole. Before we ran low on bottles and had to break into our even cheaper backup box—an emergency party replenishment—Marian decided she owed it to Cole and herself to give a relationship a try. She loved her time with him, and she’d missed him over the summer. He’d done an internship in San Diego, so unlike during the previous summers, they hadn’t gotten to spend much time together. Her summer had been filled with fast and loose dates, which she’d enjoyed, but the quality time she spent with Cole was missing. Maybe dating your best friend was the ideal answer. The best of both worlds.
Within weeks of dating, Cole had told Marian he loved her. That he had always loved her. Marian was officially swept off her feet. She’d never been told I love you, and she’d never said those words herself, until then. And just like that, Marian and Cole were a serious item. Marian’s final spring break was not spent on some beach, drunk, getting tattooed and collecting phone numbers. She spent it with Cole, they went to the beach, and right there, as the sun was setting over the Santa Monica Pier, Cole proposed, Marian said yes, and the wedding planning commenced.
Like any bride-to-be, Marian experienced a wide gamut of emotions, from elation to surprise, from nervousness to anxiety. Then downright fear. Terror, even. When fear arrived on the scene, Marian knew she was no longer like most blushing brides. Yes, plenty of women ask themselves before their wedding, some even as they’re walking down the aisle, if this is what they should be doing. How many are overcome by the urge to run in the opposite direction? That thought, that notion to bail, gave Marian serious pause. Because even when you’re feeling a surge of complex, mixed emotions on your wedding day, terrifying, gripping, overwhelming fear should not be among them. It certainly shouldn’t be the most prominent.
Marian had confessed to me, drunk and loose lipped, during her bachelorette party, that she wasn’t 100 percent sure about marrying Cole. It was the first time she’d ever voiced her doubt. Was marrying the man you’d spent more time with as best friends such a good idea? Were they more friends than lovers? Better suited to being BFFs than married partners?
I was shocked at her uncertainty and could only offer the advice that I’d want were I in her position: make sure you’re absolutely, 100 percent certain before you commit. Like the way I was with Adam. I knew without any shred of doubt that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, as his wife. How can a person be so sure? That, I couldn’t tell Marian. She’d have to look deep into her heart, and search her soul, and answer for herself.
Well, she did. On the day of her wedding, Marian Kroeber was a real-life runaway bride. It may have been cute when Julia Roberts did it, but the Marian-and-Cole version was a disaster. Before the church door
s opened, revealing a bride at one end of the aisle and an groom waiting at the other, Marian tore out of there like a bat out of hell. She fled toward her awaiting limousine as I chased after her. When I finally caught up, she reached out for me, wild eyed, and the grip she had on my forearm was intense.
“Hals, please,” Marian cried, barefoot, heels in hand, her veil askew. “Please tell Cole I’m so incredibly sorry, but I just—just—I just can’t go through with it!”
As you can imagine, it was the most awkward social situation Cole, I, or any of us had found ourselves in.
The entire audience turned to watch me charge down the aisle, my head low as if that were going to make the moment somehow surreptitious or less embarrassing. I whispered to a confused and eagerly awaiting Cole what felt like half a dozen times under my breath what had happened. At long last, with a glazed and dubious expression, Cole managed to utter, “She what?” And then we just stared at each other, in all the awkward glory of the moment.
Then, as he staggered down the aisle, a hundred-plus heads following his every move, I stepped in front of the mic. In the most gracious and upbeat tone I could affect, I announced, “Change of plans.” I giggled half-heartedly and paused for laughter that never came. “The wedding’s been postponed,” I announced before turning to the officiant and shrugging (I still don’t know why I did that), and, like Marian, like Cole, I bailed.
Marian was nowhere to be found until the following morning, when she showed up on my doorstep, fresh from Cole’s, hungover and in tears. She’d spent the night in her honeymoon hotel suite emptying the minibar and watching television. Once dawn broke, she went to Cole’s, to the apartment they had shared since graduation and were set to call home as Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker. She apologized to him profusely and explained that she realized, however stupidly late, that marriage meant one man forever. And that one man was more friend to her than lover or partner. Cole was her best friend, and that wasn’t enough. I’ve never been sure if Marian just threw the line at Cole—“I only see you as a friend”—to ensure a breakup; I’ve never been sure that she wasn’t attracted to him in the way a wife should be to her husband.
Everything the Heart Wants Page 14
