Apart at the Seams

by Melissa Ford

  But, of course, I’m Rachel’s best friend. And this is what a best friend does. Plans out a bachelorette party for the second time.

  There is an October chill in the air underneath the last remnants of heat provided by the sun. I walk briskly toward the grocery store, calling Lisbeth one-handed while I maneuver the stroller.

  “I was thinking we need a theme for the night, and everything could reflect this theme: from dinner to the entertainment,” Lisbeth tells me.

  “That sounds really involved. Like it will take a lot of time to plan,” I admit. “Actually, a friend of a friend owns this restaurant called Voi. You can reserve the side room for parties and the activity is a cooking lesson. One stop shopping: dinner and entertainment rolled into one.”

  I can practically hear Lisbeth thinking inside the silence as I enter the store. “Oh, but there’s no theme then. Plus I don’t know if Rachel would like that. I mean, she already knows how to cook.”

  “I’ve been her best friend since we were eighteen,” I say coolly. “I think I would know exactly what Rachel would like.”

  I cringe, sliding a can of pinto beans into the bin that I use as a shopping cart underneath Beckett’s stroller. Truthfully, Rachel probably won’t love a cooking bachelorette party, but part of me doesn’t care. It’s simple; it will reduce the planning down to a single text to Noah to see if he can connect me with Paul. I can plan the whole thing from the grocery store and still have my afternoon nap time to sew.

  I can tell with only one or two more words, Lisbeth will fold. “I think she wanted to do something like this for her last birthday party but couldn’t find a place. Trust me. I can set the whole thing up this afternoon. Much classier than strippers and shots.”

  “Okay, we can do this Voi place,” Lisbeth sighs.

  I hang up with Lisbeth in the pasta aisle and quickly text Noah, hoping to take care of the whole thing before I check out. Need to plan a bachelorette party at Voi. Could you connect me with your friend Paul?

  I toss a can of tomato paste and a can of crushed tomatoes under the cart, and then bend down over the top of the stroller to tickle Beckett with the ends of my hair. “I know that was a shitty thing to do,” I whisper to him. “But I need my afternoon. I can’t have my whole life revolve around Rachel’s wedding.”

  Noah texts me back almost immediately. What date do you want to book the place? I have him on the phone.

  Oh my God, I love you, I type. October 15th? 7 pm? Four or five people?

  Right after I hit SEND, I throw my hand over my mouth. I wrote that I love him. It’s just a figure of speech; I say it all the time when I want the person to know how grateful I am. For two heart-stopping minutes, I wonder if he thinks that I’m in love with him, but all he texts back is five people, got it.

  I sigh and throw a few onions into a plastic bag and head over to the butcher to grab a shrink-wrapped tray of ground beef.

  It’s done. October 15th. 7 pm. I emailed you and Paul so you can figure out the details.

  Thank you thank you thank you, I text back quickly.

  Don’t worry about it. I’ve got an idea brewing, and I’m going to call in a favor from you soon.

  I twist the ends of my hair tightly around my finger, checking my list for a moment to make sure I have everything I need. Here at your beck and call, I write him back as I get in line. You’re a really good friend, Noah. Hopefully that makes things clear.

  Beckett makes a grab at the gum, and I maneuver his stroller at an angle so he can’t reach the low-lying candy display. I write Noah one last text, feeling oddly formal.

  Well, thank you for today. You just saved my afternoon work schedule. Cutting out a pattern for one of my designs.

  Then I’m doubly happy that I could help. Anything to get you designing time.

  I close the phone and slip it into my pocket so I can unload the cart beneath the stroller onto the conveyor belt. Beckett twists around in the stroller to watch me, and I bring my face close to his. “You are the only person I can have an easy conversation with lately, Becks.” And like he can understand me, he bobs his head, either in agreement or to the store’s Musak.

  Chapter Fourteen

  MY FACE BURNS as I read Rachel’s blog, twisting the end of my hair around my finger so tightly that it starts to cut off the circulation.

  I mean, what do we even mean when we say that we look for honesty in a potential partner? No one really wants complete bluntness, and we welcome the kind lie, the sort that saves another person’s feelings. Like when my brother tells me that my salsa is the best he’s ever tasted even though the tomatoes are mushy and I’ve scraped out all of the jalapeno seeds so it has no heat whatsoever.

  What we really mean is that we want to make sure that the person we date wouldn’t have an affair and break our heart.

  And even the nicest, most unassuming, loyal people, it turns out, have affairs.

  She’s talking about me. I mean, why else would she write this? She wouldn’t be moving ahead with remarrying Adam if she thought he was cheating on her.

  I was furious enough when she privately accused me of having an affair, but to publicly state it on her blog? Fine, I know that no one—maybe not even Ethan—will guess that she’s talking about me. But I know that she’s talking about me.

  Still, it only takes me a few seconds before I start to second-guess her intentions. Maybe she’s just responding to something she saw on a reality television show, or something she read in a magazine. After all, half the time, she still writes about divorce. Dating is sort of on-topic.

  She ends the post by mentioning a book reading tonight in Tribeca. I scroll through some of the comments, waiting to see my name pop up—does she discuss me with her blogging friends behind my back?—but person after person rhapsodizes about honesty and relationships, and finally I grow bored reading about how awful cheaters are and close her blog with an angry mouse click.

  Of course she was talking about me. She mentioned Ethan as her sweet salsa-lying brother, fibbing out of the kindness of his heart. And she positioned that example right next to the conniving asshole who would cheat on an innocent soul.

  I give Beckett a long, cuddling hug good-bye when I hear Martina arrive along with the other baby that she watches with Beckett, and I walk over to work, distracted and hurt without any way of getting a straight answer about what she means because I’m never going to ask. Not even when I see her tonight at her bachelorette party. On the off-chance that Rachel did just secretly accuse me of an affair, I’m glad that I didn’t waste my afternoon a few weeks ago planning something more involved than dinner and cooking lessons.

  I’m almost to the loft when my shoe catches between two squares of pavement and the heel snaps off. I stumble, catching myself by planting two hands on a nearby garbage can and stare back at the carnage in horror. My toes point up at an odd angle, and my gorgeous Sam Edelman heel stands at attention in the concrete gap like an urban flower.

  I pluck it out of the ground and limp my way up to the office, my jeans tucked over my broken shoe in embarrassment. This, of course, would be my luck. I fight back frustrated tears and go to see Francesca about borrowing a pair of heels to get through the rest of the day. I calm myself by staring at the sample Manolo Blahniks that we have models wear when we’re creating hemlines.

  “My heel broke,” I tell her, feeling my hip ache from the discrepancy in heel height. She looks down at my feet and sighs.

  “How terrible,” she comments.

  “Any chance I could borrow shoes for the day so I don’t have to go home?”

  “Of course,” Francesca says, starting towards her office. “You’re a size eight?” She comes out of the room carrying a pair of rain boots. I stare at them, trying to dislodge the image of the Manolo Blahniks out of my mind. “I keep these in my office in case it r
ains.”

  I slip off my shoes and put on Francesca’s clunky, yellow, rubber boots. I close my eyes, trying to center myself and then head over to look at the work board.

  “Nice boots,” Tabitha jokes as she passes me holding an armful of tulle.

  I spend the entire morning trying to finish off the beadwork surrounding the neck of a top so Tabitha can attach the sleeves. Except that I need to keep pulling off the sequins and starting over when I mess up the pattern.

  “What the hell is wrong with you today?” Tabitha asks when she sees me yanking out the thread again.

  “I can’t concentrate,” I mutter, rethreading my needle. “I think I’m going to cut out of here after this and take the rest of the afternoon for myself.”

  “Don’t you have Rachel’s bachelorette party tonight?” she questions.

  “Yes,” I snap. I look over at the sound system, where someone’s iPod is blaring out Madonna. “Can someone change the music? I can’t even think.”

  Two hours later, I take my bad mood with me out of the loft and head toward the Film Forum still wearing Francesca’s yellow boots. What I need is a little Hitchcock retrospective to steel myself for tonight. Except that my phone starts buzzing when I’m a block from the subway.

  Can you meet me at Jill Storey’s near Union Square in a little bit?

  Noah wants me to meet him at Jill Storey’s? Jill Storey’s is an attempt to bring back designer jewelry to lower Manhattan, which was the birthplace of stores like Tiffany’s & Co. before they moved themselves uptown. The popularity of jewelry sold in the Greenmarket paved the way for Jill Storey to set up shop near the Whole Foods. Tabitha and I went to her opening, gawking at the precious gemstones and silverwork, which were just as much art as functional pieces of decoration. Jill Storey’s is serious business with a serious price tag. I can’t imagine that he’s purchasing jewelry for a Nightly sketch.

  Which means that he’s purchasing jewelry for a person.

  My heart starts pounding as I think about the time when Gael bought Rachel a lobster pin from Tiffany’s, leaving it inside that iconic robin-egg blue box so that Rachel thought he was about to propose. He was testing her, of course, trying to gauge her reaction. Could Noah be testing me?

  Sure, I’ll meet you at Jill Storey’s in 45 minutes.

  Suddenly thinking about this crush just became a lot scarier. It’s one thing to wonder in my head what life would be like with Noah when I’m annoyed with Ethan; it’s quite another to talk about it with Noah. What if he asks me to decide between him and Ethan?

  The not-so-simple answer is that maybe Ethan and I don’t really have a chance, at least, not for the long run. Maybe we’re too different, and we’ll never be able to find that middle ground where we’re both happy. Ethan is a free spirit, and I’m sensible to the core. And that doesn’t make for an easy couplehood.

  So would it be better to end things now, before we get too far down this road? Before he’s embossed in Beckett’s memory? Could I make myself fall in love with Noah, knowing how much we have in common? I mean, he’s really thoughtful. And he’s funny. And he’s gotten cuter since we first met.

  But one thought makes my eyes start watering as I step into the subway car: he’s not Ethan.

  He would never sweetly make me eggs like Ethan or make me laugh like Ethan or turn me on like Ethan. And Ethan has been honest all along, telling me not so subtly that if I want to be with him, I need to let go of a certain amount of control over my life and let adventures happen. He never hid any of that from me; I certainly knew all this about him before we started dating. We’ve both been trying to make each other into someone we’re not. He isn’t a nine-to-five-workday, happy-at-home kind of guy.

  But I am a twelve-hour-workday, happy-at-home sort of girl.

  I wipe at my eyes when I notice that people are staring at me and stoically fix my gaze on an advertisement for night school running along the top of the train car.

  This was hard enough to deal with when it was just a hypothetical question. Is today really the day when I’m going to be asked to make a choice?

  I squeeze my way out of the packed subway car and head toward the surface. Losing Ethan means losing Rachel, too. The only way I could ever hang on to her is if I could get Ethan to break up with me. Then she’d have to take my side, as long as I let enough time pass before I started dating Noah for real.

  I start praying that this trip to Jill Storey’s has nothing to do with me. That it’s research for his book or a Nightly sketch; that it is anything but having him declare his undying love for me.

  This is all Rachel’s fault for making me confront my crush on Noah in my head.

  Noah is leaning against the wall outside the store, reading something on his phone as I walk up to him, my eyes on the curvy script font over the doorway, silver writing spelling out the name “Jill Storey” in the marble, instead of on his long legs, casually crossed at the ankle. “Fancy jewelry store for a Nightly costume,” I say, pausing in front of him. He snaps off his phone and smiles at me. His eyes flicker down to Francesca’s bright yellow boots.

  “It’s not for the Nightly.”

  “It’s not for the Nightly,” I repeat. “Oh.”

  My heart pounds harder as he holds open the door, making me feel lightheaded. I wonder if I’m going to faint in the middle of Jill Storey’s quiet interior. It’s mostly empty for a Friday afternoon, tourists milling about on the square outside and businesspeople trying to head out of the office before nightfall. I aim my body for the soft-looking throw rug in the center of the store. If I’m going to faint, I want it to be over something that will break my fall.

  But Noah gently takes my shoulders and steers me toward a case of white gold rings dotted with precious stones. “This is what I wanted you to look at. What do you think of these?”

  Judging them without any meaning attached? They’re gorgeous. They’re stunning pieces of art. The metal curves like liquid, like a continual loop of water. The stones are eye-catching, the cuts unusual. But this isn’t the type of ring you buy your friend. It isn’t something you pick up for your mother for her birthday. This is a piece of jewelry that says I care about you. I love you.

  “They’re beautiful,” I say softly.

  “Will you try on this sapphire one?” He motions to a saleswoman who comes over to open the case, sliding out a solitaire sapphire that catches the light and shines out shades of blue and brilliant white. I can’t speak. My throat is so tight that it feels as if someone has started a ball of rubber bands around it, snapping them tighter and tighter into a lump at the base of my throat. It bounces gently every time I try to swallow. “It looks great on you.”

  I close my hand in a fist, twisting my wrist so we can both see it at all angles. Instead of my past flashing before my eyes as it’s said to do before death, I see a possible future passing by in snippets. My eponymous fashion house humming along while Noah helps out at home; David Lear’s wife wearing one of my creations to the Met Gala; Rachel and Ethan, out to dinner without me; Beckett reaching for Ethan and not finding him there; Google-stalking Ethan as he traverses the globe because I never stop being in love with him . . .

  I know my answer.

  “Noah,” I say firmly, twisting the ring on my finger. “I like you very much as a friend. But I’m sorry. I’m dating Ethan.”

  “I know that,” Noah says, wrinkling his brow. “This ring is for Bee. I wanted you to try it on because you have the same bone structure. Do you think she would like this?”

  “Who the hell is Bee?” I ask.

  I’m aware that my voice is louder than I intended. Even the saleswoman takes a step back from me, wondering what she has involved herself in by taking the ring out of the case. I tug it off my finger, getting it caught on the knuckle in my haste.

  “Uh, Bee from work.
We got together a few weeks ago. Sort of thanks to you. Seeing her in that gown made me see her in a totally different light. I’ve been working with her for years, but I never really noticed her.”

  He looks at me as if this news made the New York Times, though considering they’re two Emmy Award-winning writers, maybe it did, for all I know. The saleswoman takes the ring back from me and is about to put it back on the ring stand in the case when Noah stops her. “Actually, can I have that wrapped? I’d like to purchase it.”

  I watch the woman put the ring in a black velvet ring box, and then slip that box inside a white paper box that she secures closed with a thin black ribbon. She places this tiny box inside an enormous white glossy paper bag splashed with a matching “Jill Storey” like the font outside the store. And then she stands for a moment, hesitating, unsure of which one of us will take the present, of whether we’re joking through this whole exchange. Noah reaches for it, and then takes the tiny box from the bag, slipping it into his coat pocket. He leaves the paper bag on the counter, and I pick it up without thinking, folding it as I walk behind him out of the store. She gets the ring. I get the empty bag.

  I’m supposed to be relieved. There was never any choice to make. Life will go on as usual. So I don’t know why I pause on the street corner and start crying in public, a loud, angry wail that starts at the rubber band ball in my throat and comes out the top of my head, like steam from a teapot. I’ve never fallen apart like this, especially not publicly.

  Noah was supposed to profess his undying love for me. I was supposed to be walking out of there knowing that I chose the right person. Noah was supposed to fight for me, make me change my mind, give me an option that fits me like that ring. I’m supposed to be with someone who makes me feel creative, makes me feel like a very important pre-corpse even when I feel like there is nothing special about me. And Noah was supposed to provide all of that, on bended knee, begging me to choose him over Ethan, pointing out all the ways that Ethan doesn’t get me. I was supposed to reject him, not the other way around.