“Oh. Is Brad going to be okay?”
“Mia said that she’s in love with someone else.” He rubbed a hand over his face as I asked, “You? She’s in love with you?”
“I don’t know, Delaney.”
I nodded and patted his shoulder, glad, for once, that he had no feelings for me. He was in enough trouble. I said, “I’m calling Ursula. She drove in last night, and I think she can give me a ride back. You stay.”
“You sure? You can stay if you want.”
“Nah, I need to get back,” I said. “And I don’t want to be in the way.”
I packed and made my way down the back, spiraling staircase, bumping my suitcase on the stairs. At the last thunk, I lifted my head and came face to face with Rita, Mother of Oliver, Hater of Me. She was holding a tumbler of something clear and clearly alcoholic, even though it was barely past ten in the morning. She took a sip of it as she watched me. “You’re leaving,” she said.
“I wanted to let your family deal with, uh, family business,” I said as I lifted my heels up and down to burn off my nervous energy.
“I don’t expect I’ll see you again,” she said.
“Maybe when you visit Oliver? We live across from each other.”
“That place is a dump. I don’t know why he lives there,” she said, slurring her words.
“It has low rent. And it has these nice built-in bookshelves,” I said, my cheeks heating as Rita continued to glare at me.
“Yes, well. He seems fond of lots of things with no redeeming qualities.” She raised her eyebrows. “Thankfully he also appears to have a short attention span.”
“Mother,” Oliver said from behind me, wrapping his hand around my suitcase handle. “I know this day is terrible, but really.” He walked over and pried the glass out of her hand, putting it on the table beside her.
“Oliver,” Rita said in a tone slightly warmer than she’d used with me. She wasn’t at absolute zero. Maybe two degrees Kelvin. “I was saying goodbye to Delaney.” She gave me an icy smile.
I nodded slightly and said, “Thank you again for your hospitality, Mrs. Webber.”
“Dr. Webber,” she corrected again.
“It’s scary, not impressive, when an alcoholic says it,” Oliver said. “And for the record, my apartment is cheap, I have med school loans—”
“—that I would pay off—”
“—that I want to pay off myself, and it’s close to the hospital, and I have a nice neighbor. Several nice neighbors. That’s why I live there.”
“You wouldn’t have so many med school loans if you didn’t give all that money to your brother,” Rita said pointedly.
“I’d still have loans. It wasn’t nearly enough money for the mountain of debt I’m under.”
“I’ll help you.”
“No. I like to fix my own problems. But you were right about one thing. Delaney’s my best friend, so no, you won’t see her again. I won’t let you.” He rolled my suitcase past Rita and off of the veranda, into the warm September air.
Oliver unceremoniously dumped my bag into the trunk of Michael’s car and then said, “There,” and stalked off, his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. I didn’t even get to say thank you.
In the car a few minutes later, I recounted the details of the Drs. Webber showdown to Ursula and Michael. “Wow, Oliver usually just ignores his mother.”
“That or he deals by going out and getting drunk and finding an inappropriate woman,” Michael said.
“This is officially creeping me out,” I said, sitting back in the seat.
“Not like that. He doesn’t have an Oedipus complex or anything. His family life is just frigid, and so he goes out and finds…”
“Non-frigid women?” Ursula supplied.
“Yes. Very, very non-frigid women,” I said. “I have seen some of the warmest women on the landing outside my apartment.”
“So, are you going to spill the gossip on the wedding?” Ursula said.
I sat in the back seat of Michael’s Volvo, staring at his and Ursula’s fingers entwined over the console and I didn’t know how to answer Ursula’s question without selling out Oliver, so I gave them the briefest version of the truth.
“Mia’s in love with someone else? Doesn’t she care about Brad at all? Who is this guy? Is she with him? I mean, really!”
“I don’t know, Urs.” Michael glanced back at me nervously, and then stared straight ahead. I knew he knew more than he was letting on.
“Me either.” I shrugged and stared out the window, and I tuned out Michael and Ursula’s discussion for a while, until I heard them arguing about the color of a sofa.
“You’re going to get sick of an orange sofa. We’re not getting one,” Michael said.
“I don’t think you understand. Your apartment is entirely brown. I am not living in a poo-colored apartment,” Ursula said.
Michael frowned and said, “It’s not poo-colored.”
“Wait, are you two moving in together?” I asked and Michael’s frown turned into a huge grin as he nodded. “Yeah, I just asked her.”
“Wow. Wow,” I said. “I need details, Ursula.”
“Details?”
“When are you moving? Are you two getting married? Does Emily know?” My phone vibrated and I saw the caller ID. “Wait, you’re going to answer all of my questions after I take this phone call.” I pressed “answer” and said, “Hi.”
Cliff’s voice came through, muffled by the background noise. “Lane. Hi.”
“What’s up?” I said, trying to sound casual so Ursula wouldn’t know who I was talking to. I knew she’d wrestle the phone out of my hand and start swearing at Cliff otherwise.
“I miss you,” he said, and then there was a loud crash behind him. “Sorry. I’m on set, and the new prop guy is a noob.
“I was wondering if you changed your mind about moving back. Did you know that Kelsey has a new job? She’s not going to be on Next Door anymore. She’s working on a teen vampire drama now.”
“Oh. Good for her,” I said, but I thought, poor Kelsey. She was likely still hopelessly in love with Cliff.
“So?” he asked.
“So…what?”
“So, have you changed your mind? I swear, I won’t talk to Kelsey, or look at Kelsey, or think about Kelsey. I already don’t. And we can go to therapy, like you mentioned before. And I was talking to this guy at a party, and he knows someone who knows someone who could get you a great job, I think.”
“Cliff, we already talked about this,” I said with a sigh, and Ursula’s head whipped around at my words, her eyes narrowing into slits.
“You’re talking to Cliff? Cliff?” she screeched. “Give me that phone!”
I covered the mouth piece. “Urs, it’s fine. He’s just calling to say hello.”
“Right. Let me say hello too,” she said, and Cliff asked, “Is that Ursula?”
“Yeah, I’m in the car with her and her boyfriend.” Ursula was holding out her hand, still glaring at me. “She wants to talk to you,” I said, and then I handed her my phone.
“Cliff? Yeah, listen. I don’t want you to call her. Well, that’s too bad. You should have thought of that before you fucked that coat hanger of a woman. Fine. Goodbye.” She hung up and handed me my phone, refusing to meet my eyes, her unusual anger obvious in her expression.
“I wasn’t finished speaking with him, Ursula,” I said.
“Yes, you were,” she said. “I’ve known that jackhole just as long as you, and I know what he’s thinking.”
“What’s he thinking?” Michael asked.
“He’s thinking that he’s never going to find anyone better than Delaney, and he’s not going to stop trying to get her back,” she said.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“It is. I know because that’s what he told me,” she said. “He said he wouldn’t stop unless you fell in love with someone else. He’s convinced it’s not going to happen, because he
thinks you still love him.”
“Huh,” Michael said. “Do you?” He glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
When I didn’t say anything for a long moment, Ursula asked, too. “Do you?”
When I thought about love, there was only one person I was picturing, and it wasn’t Cliff. “No,” I said. “I don’t.”
Oliver
Brad lifted his suitcase into the trunk of my Prius and closed it. “Thanks for giving me a lift to the train station,” he said.
“It was the least I could do,” I said. “For my brother, I mean. On his wedding day. Former wedding day, I mean.” I tapped my fingers nervously against the door of the car.
“Sure,” he said.
“You don’t seem too upset, considering,” I said when we were on the road.
“Well, that would be the denial. I’m sure the anger stage will kick in soon. I just wish I knew who this buffoon she was in love with was. I would beat him to a pulp.”
“Why him? Isn’t it just as much her fault?” I said.
“No. It’s not just as much her fault,” he said, and I nodded warily, keeping my eyes straight ahead, trying to stop my hands from shaking by gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles were white. “It’s entirely this guy’s fault,” Brad said.
“Okay, but to play devil’s advocate, maybe Mia threw herself at this guy. Maybe this guy never even touched her. Maybe he didn’t do anything more than hold her hand and talk to her, and she fell for him. Maybe it’s not as sinister as it sounds.”
He sighed and put his hand on the dash. “Listen, I know you’re not with Delaney, but I saw how you looked at her. I know you have feelings for her, even though she has a boyfriend.”
“I don’t.”
He looked at me with an absurd expression and then said, “You’re an idiot, O, you know that?”
“Why? Because I think Mia might be innocent?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Never mind. Just picture this. There’s a beautiful woman you love. She makes everything about your life better. When you’re having a shitty day, you just sit on the sofa next to her with a bowl of popcorn and watch movies, and just being near her makes things better. When you have news, she’s the first one you tell. You want to take care of her, even though she doesn’t need it. You want to keep her happy, and when something upsets her, you want to fix it, even if there is no fixing it. There’s almost never any fixing it, by the way. There’s just life.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Okay?”
“Now imagine another guy doing that for her. Sitting next to her on the sofa, rubbing the skin between her fingers, making things better for her. Who cares if they never did anything more than that? Sex isn’t the only kind of intimacy, Oliver. It doesn’t matter if Mia just talked to this guy.” He let out a long breath as I pulled to the curb of the train station, and I sat there silent, taking in all of his words.
“Maybe,” I said as he was opening the car door, “maybe this guy and Mia aren’t really in love. Maybe they’re just confused and she’ll come back to you.”
He looked at me seriously and said, “I don’t know, Oliver. I don’t know if she was ever with me.”
Twenty One
Delaney
I opened up the cooler on the roof of Ursula and Michael’s new apartment building on an unseasonably warm October evening and tried not to panic about climate change and how the earth was going to be scorched and barren for the sins of enjoying a warm fall evening.
I sat down in a lawn chair, waiting for the party to begin. I had arrived early to help Ursula set up for the party, only to be cornered by Michael in their apartment after he sent Ursula out on an errand to get paper plates, claiming he’d forgotten them.
“Paper plates are tacky, baby,” she said, “so it’s fortuitous.”
“Uh, I also forgot beer. And wine,” Michael said, his eyes wide with panic.
“What? WHAT?” Ursula said, and after some threatening and bargaining which involved bedroom things that I pretended very hard not to hear, she went to the liquor store to obtain the booze.
A few minutes after she’d left, Michael said, “I need to ask you something.” He pulled a small red velvet box out of his pocket and popped it open, revealing an emerald solitaire, surrounded by tiny diamonds on a white-gold band. “Do you think she’d like this ring?”
“Michael. I…is this…do you…I mean…” I kept staring down at the ring, and then up at the tiny pinpricks of light it cast around the white walls of the apartment.
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s just so sudden,” I said. “Do you think you’re both ready for that?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since Mia and Brad’s wedding. Or non-wedding, or whatever it was. They were together for eight years before that. I kept wondering how they could wait that long, because I’ve been going out of my skin waiting to propose to Ursula. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I don’t want to be without her ever again.”
Just then, the apartment door swung open, Michael closed the box and shoved it in his pocket, stepping away from me quickly as Oliver strode into the room, carrying a platter. “Hey guys,” he said, looking curiously between me and Michael.
Heat crept up my face as I said, “Oh, hey, Oliver. Hey. Hi.”
“Did I interrupt something?” he said with a fake chuckle, but suspicion settled into his face. I glanced at Michael, who shook his head very slightly, and then went to the kitchen and yelled, “I’m going to get the chips and salsa out.”
“What’d you bring to the festivities?” I asked Oliver, pointing to his foil-covered tray. He lifted up a corner and I peeked at the seven layer dip. “Ah, it has layers, just like you.”
“Metaphors,” he said. Then he lowered his voice. “What was that between you and Michael?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feigning ignorance, and then I took the tray from him. “I’ll take this up to the roof.”
Oliver
Emily sat next to me on the bench, sipping a glass of white wine. “Delaney looks nice in that skirt, doesn’t she? I’m slowly trying to convince her to be bravely tights-less. At least around friends.”
My eyes had barely left Delaney, who was standing up and laughing with Ursula, wearing a dotted white skirt, an electric blue shirt and a mismatching dark cardigan that was falling off her shoulders. We were having unseasonably warm weather for early October, and she was bare-legged, something I hadn’t from her seen since the rehearsal dinner. The skirt fell above her knees, on her smooth, tan thighs, and I had to look away for a minute, counting to ten to remember my name.
“Oliver?”
“Hmm?”
“I was asking about Delaney,” she said with a smirk. “Who you’ve been staring at for hours.”
“Days,” I corrected her. “Maybe weeks.”
“You still agree to not hurt her?”
“Isn’t Cliff still calling her?” I said, ignoring her question. Delaney seemed oblivious to how much I wanted to rip Cliff’s trachea out every time she mentioned his name, and blithely told me about his life whenever we had dinner, or ran together, or when I sat on her sofa watching TV and eating popcorn or dessert with her, which was often.
“I think he calls her every day,” Emily said, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.
“Why does she answer him? I don’t get it,” I said.
“Jealous much?” Ursula said, coming up behind us. I watched Delaney cross the roof and bend over, the wind picking up her skirt and pressing into her legs. She was so beautiful I had to look away.
“I want to ask her out,” I said, just as Ursula and Emily said, “No.”
“You’re right. Never mind. I won’t. I can’t date Delaney,” I said. “I like her too much.” A slow smile crept across Emily’s face and her eyes lit up as she said, “Oh? She said she hasn’t seen a woman at your apartment in a while.”
“So? I’m taking a break. I don’t
have a quota to fulfill, you know.”
“Could have fooled me,” she said. I scanned the crowd again, but Delaney was gone.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, standing up abruptly. When I was back in the apartment, I found Michael and Delaney, both with their heads down, whispering to each other.
“Oh, you,” Michael said when I knocked on the wall to alert them to my presence, and Delaney gave me a shifty smile.
“What are you two up to?” I asked, and Delaney nudged Michael and said, “I think you should tell him. He deserves to know.”
She gave me her wide-eyed owl look as I said, “Deserves to know what?” I looked between them, both looking guilty, and I wanted to throw up. Michael and Delaney had been whispering, and Ursula had been weirdly distant. Maybe Delaney was going back to LA. Maybe this was it. Cliff had won her back. I sucked in a breath.
“Oliver?” Delaney said, grabbing my elbow. “You look green.” She guided me to a chair and sat on the arm, rubbing my back in small circles. I closed my eyes, trying to refocus.
“Oliver, I have something to tell you. A secret,” Michael said, sitting across from me, nervously folding and unfolding a napkin.
“Just tell me. Quickly.”
“I’m going to ask Ursula to marry me,” he said, and a bubble of laughter escaped my lips. “What?” I said.
“You don’t have to laugh at me,” Michael said with a frown.
“No, I think it’s great. This is great,” I said, clapping my hands together. I got up and put my hands on Michael’s shoulders, shaking him. “This is so great!”
“It is? But you were chewing me out over me and Ursula moving—”
“I was wrong! I was so wrong!” I said with another laugh.
“Wrong about what?” Ursula asked, coming down the stairwell from the roof.
“There won’t be enough seven layer dip,” Delaney said quickly, and walked to the kitchen. “I’ll check the fridge for some more food. People are scavenging up there!”
“Wait for me!” I said, and followed her.
Delaney
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