The Overlap

by Lynn Costa

  “I’m still not sure about next weekend. I’m trying to get this draft of the report wrapped up by Friday morning so we don’t have to work next weekend and I can get at least a weekend at home with you.”

  Now I could feel the cold sweat break out but I was able to keep my voice calm.

  “Okay, just let me know,” I said evenly. Would he notice that I didn’t gush “Oh, Dustin, I hope you can! I miss you so much!” or anything like that? Probably not; even in the earlier days of our relationship, neither one of us was much for syrupy sentiments along those lines. Maybe it was because during the “charm school” portion of our firm’s training program down in Miami, they had drilled into us that above all else that we weren’t in college anymore and we had to be as professional as possible in all settings. Not just in our own offices and in those of our clients, but also at dinners, lunches, happy hours, taking clients to baseball games or football games... everywhere! For whatever reason, this mantra of “you’re not in college anymore, so act professional!” seemed to have enveloped our relationship where “professional” was probably the most appropriate description for how we related to one another, almost from the very beginning. Maybe that was because the first four weeks of us going out was while were still in the training program, under the watchful eye of the firm’s training managers? If so, it set the tone for how our relationship continued after we both got back to L.A.

  We weren’t “professional” everywhere; certainly not in the bedroom (or wherever else it might be that we were having sex at any given time). There were no politely stated requests of “may I remove your panties now?” or “would you care for me to go down on you?” or “could I offer you another orgasm?” In fact, sex was the one place where Dustin and I connected better and more intimately than any other aspect of our relationship, and his persona during sex was definitely more uninhibited than elsewhere. Out in public, he rarely held my hand as we walked along La Cienega Boulevard or the Santa Monica Pier or down on the beach; he rarely leaned across a table in a restaurant to kiss me for no particular reason. By the fifth or sixth month together we had certainly said “I love you” to one another, but that was it; the words were still offered, whenever we would cuddle and say goodnight or at the end of each phone call when we were apart, but the words seemed at least a little bit empty. There were no impromptu “I love you very much” texts from one of us to the other, the kind that when received in the midst of a typical stressful workday serve as reminder that the daily hell of much of our work lives is not life itself. Not anytime in the recent past, anyway.

  None of that was Dustin Pearson. It was me, though, and every so often around the midpoint of our relationship I would send one of those “I love you” texts to Dustin that included a trail of emoticon hearts or lips or cartoon figures holding hands underneath a pink heart, and I’d get back something like “love you 2 – in a meeting now” or “love you – trying to finish this report.” Translation: I hear you, and thank you, but I’ve got work to do; I’ll see you later, PLEASE do not distract me until then, okay?”

  Were we pretty close to being played out? Maybe Zack Buchanan was simply the catalyst to force me to consider that possibility, just as college graduation and Andrew Travers heading off to Philadelphia and Wharton was the catalyst to that relationship reaching its inevitable end.

  Even if our relationship was growing tired, I had supposed I could stay with Dustin for a while longer, though. Ironically, the setup we had been dealing with since summer, with us working in different cities and seeing each other only on weekends – and now, every couple of weekends – could easily extend the shelf life of this relationship. Seeing each other for two days at a time, with those days primarily consisting of some really great sex wasn’t all that bad, and until this very week I had never given a thought to wanting something more. I’m only twenty-three years old, starting my career; the setup was perfect for this stage of my life, was it not?

  Now though, after only one dinner with Zack Buchanan, all of my presumptions were being called into question. I had no idea where things would go with Zack... if things actually kept going, which I was certain would happen. Maybe Zack would be another Josh Chamberlain – a couple of epic and intense weeks with a hot guy, but nothing more than that – or maybe I would break things off with Dustin and then, after beginning a relationship with Zack, things with him would last as long as they had with Dustin... but no longer. Maybe after being with Zack for eleven months I would find myself standing on this very spot on Wilshire Boulevard after having dinner with some other new guy I had just met, thinking the same things about Zack that I was now thinking about Dustin.

  “Is everything alright?” I heard Dustin ask me over the phone and wondered how long I had actually been standing there without speaking, these thoughts racing through my mind. Probably no more than a couple of actual seconds – thought-time often moves at lightning speed – but from the other end of a long-distance phone call a couple of seconds of silence sometimes says a great deal.

  “Yes,” I answered matter-of-factly, willing some control into my voice to mask the confusion racing through my brain. “Good night, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Okay, goodnight Lindsey; I love you,” he shouted above an outbreak of clapping and cheering, probably because one of the Chicago teams must have scored a run.

  I hesitated.

  “Love you too,” I said before hanging up. No “I” as in “I love you too.” A signal, a warning shot, at least from my side; but probably one he wouldn’t catch onto, especially when straining to hear me over the noise in a Chicago sports bar.

  What I said wasn’t a total lie, I told myself as I began to stroll towards my apartment. I did love Dustin; sort of. I suppose I could always fall back on the old “I love you but I’m not in love with you” story line, but even that wasn’t quite accurate. I was in love with him, I guess, at least a little bit. But as of tonight, that little bit of love – and the good sex – was probably not going to be enough to keep me with him, at least in the same way we were now.

  Chapter 4

  Sunday, September 15th

  Ordinarily on a typical Sunday Dustin and I would sleep until around 8:00 and then spend another half hour or 45 minutes in bed. After brushing our teeth, using the bathroom, and all that, we’d be out the door of either his apartment or mine around 9:00 or 9:15 and walk to one of a couple different places for bagels and coffee.

  This was obviously not a typical Sunday.

  I gave up on sleep for good around 6:15, and had slept fitfully all night until then. My dreams the entire night were a jumbled mélange of scenarios and settings featuring a constantly-rotating cast of Zack, Dustin, Andrew, and other guys who seemed to be a composite of past boyfriends. In one I could recall when I woke up I was having dinner with Andrew somewhere in Philadelphia even though I knew I was in a relationship with Zack back in L.A. In another I was at a party back in college, maybe the one in which that girl had given me her “endorsement” of Andrew’s sexual abilities, but I had my eye on Zack who was across the room talking to Kensington; at least that’s who I think it was in the dream. Though it might have been my sister Lauren; or maybe it was both Kensie and Lauren rapidly switching places back and forth in a single role, just as Zack and Dustin had done in that one dream right after I met Zack.

  Anyway, it was one of those nights that paradoxically seemed to last for days because of the lucidity of the dreams – and so many of them – even though there were also long stretches where I definitely remember being awake, thinking. So around 6:15 I gave up and put on my sweats and running shoes and decided a nice long walk through Beverly Hills was what I needed.

  I grabbed a to-go coffee from a place that was actually open at that hour and for the next two and a half hours I just walked. I headed up into Laurel Canyon, a place I always found peaceful when I felt the need for a contemplative walk or run. I was on my way back right around 8:30 when my cell phone rang, and I saw
it was Kensington. So I talked to her for the last half hour of my walk and told her every little detail I could think of about my date with Zack as I vectored myself to a deli on Wilshire where she said she would meet me at 9:00.

  We had to wait about ten minutes for a table to open up and the whole time I kept up my narrative, filling in any little gaps about the previous night that I could think of. I lowered my voice when I told her about the “Trojans and ‘Cocks” story because of this old couple in their late sixties or early seventies sitting near us on the deli’s lobby benches, also waiting for a table. I figured Gramps might suddenly develop heart problems if he overheard a slightly flushed and overheated, attractive woman in her early twenties – okay, me – utter the words “Trojans” and “Cocks” on a Sunday morning in a Beverly Hills diner, and I didn’t want an emergency trip to Cedars Sinai on my conscience, you know?

  Anyway, I just finished that part of the story when the hostess came to get us, and as we were following her to our table Kensie whispered to me “...and after that you still didn’t sleep with him?” I had already told her on the phone when I was still walking that I had gone home alone, but had doing so had actually turned out to be a tough decision. I think Kensington half-expected me to blush and sheepishly say, “okay, I lied about not sleeping with him...” and then we could spend the next half hour whispering about the delicious details of what Zack and I did while we ate our blintzes or potato pancakes or whatever we would wind up getting.

  Alas, there had been no sex so there would be no sex-talk... at least not this Sunday morning. We ordered but before we got back to the subject of Zack and my date with him, I asked Kensington how her brother was doing. Her face clouded as I asked that question.

  “He’s okay now, I guess,” she said, looking down at the table as she fiddled with her fork. “I mean, he’s actually a mess but for the moment he’s acting somewhat... I don’t know, I guess you could say ‘normal’ if that applies to him. But anyway, I think the crisis has passed. At least this one, who knows when the next one will happen.”

  “So anyway,” Kensington shifted the conversation back to my date, “have you had a chance to think through what you should do about Dustin?” The whole time I had been walking to the deli and talking to Kensie I had concentrated on the details of the date itself and other than telling her that I had talked to Dustin briefly right after the date ended, I hadn’t headed into that part of the situation.

  I shrugged, looked away, and then back at her.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I really like Zack and definitely want to go out with him again, but I’m not sure whether that means that Dustin and I are through or not. It just doesn’t feel like the right time to break up with him. I’ve only been out with Zack once and...”

  “And you want to have a backup in case things don’t work out with him?” Kensie interrupted.

  I pondered the question for a few seconds.

  “Not exactly,” I replied with a touch of hesitation in my voice. “I suppose that if last night hadn’t gone well I would just keep things going with Dustin like last night had never happened.” I gave Kensie an abridged version of my college summer date with the one guy in San Francisco when I was still with Andrew.

  I contemplated her question for a few more seconds while the waitress returned to pour more coffee for each of us.

  “I guess rather than just cut things off with Dustin, if that’s what happens, I want to have... I don’t know, a smooth transition or soft landing or whatever. I mean, things with Dustin start slowing down, especially with him out of town while things with Zack get going. And at some point things with Dustin will just end smoothly, just about the time things really got going with Zack.”

  Kensington actually snorted.

  “Lindsey,” she looked at me, half-laughing as she spoke, “if you can pull that off you should write a how-to book for girls everywhere, or start a ‘how to break up the easy way’ blog, or whatever. It’s an interesting idea and I suppose it could actually turn out that way, especially with Dustin two thousand miles away in Chicago, even over most weekends.”

  She took a sip of her coffee before continuing.

  “But somehow I don’t see things going that smoothly. It sounds like you’ve decided you really want Zack so if I were you, I would just do the Band-Aid move with Dustin. You know, one rip and it’s done.”

  “I don’t know, maybe,” I replied somewhat morosely. The giddy, elated feeling from last night was rapidly evaporating. Truthfully, I just wanted to luxuriate in the afterglow of every scrumptious moment of the date: not just dinner and the accompanying conversation but that first special kiss on the Wilshire Boulevard sidewalk; how I just about floated home, heels and all (at least after I had made my obligatory call to Dustin, that is); and even as I was fantasizing about Zack after I got home and in bed and...

  “We’ll see, I guess,” I added as our breakfasts made their way to the table. I did my best to focus on enjoying my cheese blintzes as I did what almost any girl would do: I went over the highlights from last night’s date with Kensie for yet a second time.

  * * *

  The rest of Sunday passed in a sort of haze. I talked with Dustin twice, the second time for an uncomfortably long fifteen minutes. The first time he called was while I was walking back home from the deli, and he was only calling to tell me that he was on his way in to the client’s site for an unanticipated two- or three-hour long review of our firm’s work so far so he only had a few minutes to talk right then; you know, the “I’m calling to say I don’t have time for a real call, but I know you expect me to call so I’m calling” call, right? Dustin and his team had a big half-day meeting Monday morning to go over the exact same stuff with a couple of the top executives at the client, so the manager at their client who they worked most closely with wanted to do a dress rehearsal and review before our guys presented to his boss’s boss’s bosses, or however their corporate pecking order went. Essentially, this was another one of those things I had become accustomed to in my year of professional life: “the meeting to prepare for the meeting.” Of course, unlike Dustin at this moment, I hadn’t had to spend an entire Sunday afternoon, beginning at 12 noon Chicago time, doing one of those... yet.

  Anyway, before he hung up that first time he gave me a brief rundown of the rest of his Saturday night after we had talked... which consisted of a couple more beers and watching highlights on ESPN of the baseball pennant race games he had just finished watching at that sports bar. I tried to whip up feelings of frustration with him. You know: boyfriend out of town on business, spending a Saturday night at a sports bar with the boys swilling beer until after midnight; all of that. But given how I had spent my Saturday night, the outright hypocrisy of trying to be angry with Dustin shut down that idea right away.

  So I spent Sunday afternoon talking to my parents for a while after I had showered, and then trying to call my sister Lauren to basically repeat everything I had just talked to Kensington about. Lauren didn’t answer so I left a voicemail message for her, and then decided to take a nap since I hadn’t slept well. Ordinarily I’m not much of a napper, but the combination of lack of sleep (or at least quality sleep) plus walking for probably eight miles this morning, plus my cheese blintzes all combined to make me pretty sleepy around 1:00.

  I was dead to the world (as my Dad liked to say when I was younger and he was having trouble waking either Lauren or me); so out of it that I don’t remember dreaming at all. Suddenly I woke up with my cell phone in my hand and I was talking! I mean, actually in the middle of a conversation! And – “best” of all (not), I was in the middle of a conversation with Dustin!

  OMG, what in the world had I said? I shut my mouth immediately, waiting for some sort of reaction from Dustin to indicate what exactly I had said when I was sleep-talking, or whatever they call it. Had I mentioned Zack? Had I said something about going out last night for dinner on a date, but not mentioned Zack’s name? What in the world
had I said???

  “Hey Lindsey, you still there?” came Dustin’s voice; somewhat detached but definitely not showing any signs of concern or anger or anything like that.

  “Um, yeah,” I replied.

  “You okay?” he asked. “I mean, you’re not really making any sense.”

  Okay Lindsey; stay calm, I told myself.

  “Sorry, you woke me up when you called and I actually answered the phone in my sleep. I must have been dreaming so I’m not sure... I mean, what did I say?”

  Pay close attention Lindsey, I told myself. If I did say something I shouldn’t have, maybe I can get away with it by saying it was part of whatever I was dreaming when he called.

  “Nothing really,” came Dustin’s reply. “I asked what you had done today and you immediately mumbled you had blintzes; that was about it.”

  Saved!

  “Yeah, didn’t I mention that earlier?” I said, totally alert now. “I met Kensington for brunch at that one deli, and I had blintzes. You know, they’re pretty good.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, and I could sense the detachment in his voice. He then went on to tell me at length about his afternoon with (as I recalled from earlier) his boss’s boss’s bosses, and how much “fun” he and everyone on his team had as those bosses ripped through pretty much every one of the slides Dustin and his team had spent days putting together. When it was all said and done, all of the changes were more cosmetic than of substance; apparently these guys weren’t actually the real bosses or whatever, and they were a bunch of nervous types who wanted to make sure that when Dustin and his team presented to the Great and Powerful Wizard or whoever the final person was, all of the colors were just right and all the boxes lined up on the slides just the way the Wizard liked to see them. Or something like that. I honestly felt sorry for Dustin; not only having to waste his time on such nonsense but to have to do so on a Sunday afternoon way out in Chicago in the middle of a weeks-long trip of endless hours. Of course our firm loved this; they were billing the client for each and every hour that Dustin and our guys out there with him wound up putting in, which meant that their horrendous schedule turned into just about pure profit to the firm. Consultants like us don’t get overtime or anything; about the best we can hope for, I had come to learn in my first year here, was a couple extra dollars in an end-of-year bonus and a few “atta-boys” (or in my case, “atta-girls”) to encourage us to stick around long enough to try to make partner.