by S. Massery
He flinches.
“Did you think we wouldn’t notice? You’re like a fucking bull in a china shop,” I say. Now, he can’t look at me. In fact, his face is so red, he may implode. “Just give us our drinks.” He slides them toward me, still concentrating on the far wall.
I jump when Eve puts her hand on my shoulder. “That was fun,” she whispers. “Do you usually blow up at sleazy bartenders?”
“Just the ones who deserve it,” I say. In truth, the answer is, no way in hell.
“It’s getting late,” she says. “How about we down our drinks and head home?”
“Deal.” I try to look at all of her—not just what she’s presenting to strangers. She looks strong, and steady once more. I can’t believe she shared something so personal with me. “Eve,” I say, and turn toward her. She takes a sip of her drink and faces me. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.”
43
At the beginning of February, something clicks. Maybe it was the discussion I forced us to have. We both agreed to try harder. Living together didn’t mean that we could slack on the effort in our relationship.
Those were the words of my therapist, who I ended up calling and crying to one day. Dr. Sayer was glad to hear from me. I had dropped off the face of the earth once I started my second year of college. I had Georgia, I had a handle on feeling the need for a pill to make me feel better, and I had a life that I was happy about. It seemed natural to me, then, to end our sessions. When I talked to her a few days ago, she was so glad to hear that I was doing well. And, the most important thing, she talked me through my relationship and made me see a path to fix it.
By the time Avery gets home, I’ve been here for twenty minutes. Most of our dinner is prepared and ready to be cooked. My skills in the kitchen are not the best—Avery far outshines me in that area—but I am a great sous chef. He comes over and kisses me like he missed me.
A whimper slips out of me, and he pulls back long enough to grin. “I wish we could skip the movie,” he whispers. “And just spend the night naked.”
I cock my head. “You want to cancel our date?”
“If it means having sex, then, yes.”
I laugh and touch his cheek. “That’s cute. It’s Friday, we have all night.”
He rubs at the back of his neck, grimacing. “Well, Steve invited me to play golf tomorrow morning.”
My smile fades. “So, you don’t have all night.”
“Right.”
I look at his chest because I can’t meet his eyes anymore. I was looking forward to this movie. Instead of saying that, though, I start to undo the buttons of his jacket. He watches me push it off his shoulder and let it fall to the ground. He watches me undo his belt buckle. When my knuckles graze against the skin just above his waistband, he sucks in a sharp breath.
“Dinner can wait?” he breathes.
I nod, taking a step toward our bedroom.
It can all wait a little while.
44
I smooth my palms along my thighs when I realize that I’ve discovered something that was probably not meant for me to find.
A ring.
I silently berate myself as I stare at the opened box, nestled between two pairs of Avery’s underwear. If I didn’t have such a stupid compulsion to organize things when I get stressed, I wouldn’t have been folding his underwear, and I wouldn’t have been sorting them by color, and trying to tuck the dark grey ones between the black and the white pair—where the velvet box sits.
Bad habits die hard, I guess. With organizing comes snooping, of the unintentional variety.
Are you ready to marry him?
I shake my head, clearing away any doubts. If he’s all in, I can be all in. Simple. I tuck the ring away and close his drawer. There is a certain finality to the motion.
It’s Valentine’s Day, and we have reservations at a fancy restaurant. I’ve been firm that we will not be distracted by sex—which has happened three times this month. We just wind up in bed when we had other plans for a movie, dinner, or meeting friends.
I originally came into the bedroom to find my phone; I hadn’t received any texts from him. That led to an acute sense of paranoia, which led to anxiety, which had led to the organizing, and then my find.
Oh, god, I might throw up.
How is he going to do it? He knows that I’m not a fan of romance, as annoyed as that makes him. Will we go on a road trip, and he’ll propose somewhere with a good view? Or maybe it will happen at dinner one night, just out of the blue, or when we go up to my parents’ house later this year. Or maybe it’ll be when we fly to his parents’ house for Easter, which we briefly discussed a few days ago. Hopefully he won’t make a spectacle of it. But then, we’d have to find time to sit down to discuss the wedding, and that would turn into an argument itself.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
Meet me in the lobby? Be there in 10.
I put my shoes on and head down the stairs. I’m still nervous about the ring. I want to run back and double check if I closed the drawer all the way, or if I left the box exactly as it was. I force myself not to turn around. It’s probably fine.
Avery is already in the lobby when I get down there. I guess he overestimated how quickly he would arrive? I see that he’s not alone. He’s talking to a girl who looks vaguely familiar. Something about her hair and the way she’s standing…
I shake my head. I must be imagining things.
The girl touches his arm once, briefly, and then leaves. She looks like grace incarnate, walking with a floating stride. He stares after her for a long moment. I have half a mind to be jealous, but then Avery turns and he smiles when he sees me. His eyes are troubled, although he tries to hide it.
“Are you okay?” I touch his arm where I can picture her handprint branded into his clothes. He smiles larger and tries to hide the barest of flinches. It takes a lot of effort to keep from making a face at him, but I don’t. I’m curious, although I doubt he’d give me any answers. He is a locked box sometimes, and I never have the right key.
“I’m fine! Sorry I’m so late. We had a meeting, and then my boss wanted to talk to me about a possible promotion. Steve is leaving, so…”
As he trails off, I nod like I don’t notice anything amiss. “A promotion would be exciting,” I manage.
He takes my hand, pressing a kiss to my palm. I run my fingers down his cheek. His stubble is almost too much. If he is as predictable as I think he is, he’ll shave tomorrow morning. It’s too bad—he looks good with the five o’clock shadow.
We head back out onto the street. “You don’t have to go get anything from the apartment?”
I’m a half step behind him, so I watch his profile and the back of his head as he shakes it. “No, I would’ve asked you to bring it down if I did. I have an Uber waiting for us.”
Right.
We get into the car.
A ring. The design wasn’t exactly my style, but it wasn’t ugly. It looked like it was passed down in his family: one big diamond front and center with a gold band, and four gold prongs hold the diamond in place. It could be his grandmother’s ring, for all I know.
You’re supposed to not care about the ring. It’s just the person. But you wear the ring for the rest of your life, practically. No, if I was picking, it would’ve been something drastically different.
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself again. Love is supposed to outshine any diamond.
I watch the city flash by our car windows and marvel at such a thing as two people being joined together forever. Avery’s hand is heavy on my thigh, his thumb rubbing in small circles that drives me crazy. Sometimes good crazy, like yes, touch me more and sometimes, please for the love of god that irritates me, stop. Which crazy is this?
Right now, I can’t decide.
45
“You have the worst timing,” I tell Jared. The phone is pinched between my ear and shoulder as I put
on my jeans. I’m supposed to meet Avery at the Museum of Fine Arts—the MFA—for lunch.
“Hello, Charlie,” Jared’s mother says.
I drop the phone. It thumps on the carpet, and I dive after it. “Sorry, Mrs. Brown… Uh…”
I’m stumped. I have no idea why she’s calling me from Jared’s cell.
“I’m sorry to catch you unaware.” She’s always been so nice. So different from my own mother. When it came down to it, though, Julianne was a tough-love mother. “Jared is at physical therapy, and he left his phone in the car.” She sighs like she can’t believe he would do something so forgetful. “How are you, dear?”
“Are you just calling to check up on me?”
“Perhaps that isn’t my only motive. Jared mentioned a few weeks ago that he had talked to you a few times. As a concerned mother, I wanted to check and see… what exactly was happening.”
I scowl as I finish getting dressed. She’s calling to snoop? That’s a new one.
“I’m not sure what you want me to tell you, Mrs. Brown,” I say.
“Charlie, dear, you’re old enough to call me Julianne.” Her voice goes hoarse when she says, “He doesn’t talk to us. I just wanted to see if you knew… how he was doing?” She sniffles.
I think back on our conversations. “Mrs. Brown—Julianne—I’m… I’m sorry. We…” Dang, it’s hard to admit that I suddenly had an epiphany about how selfish I am. “I’m afraid we mostly talked about me.”
She chuckles. “I wasn’t expecting different.”
That makes me wince, because, ouch.
“Not—I’m not saying you’re a selfish person, dear. Jared just has a way of deflecting. He learned it at a young age.”
No, he couldn’t have. He never deflected with me. I knew his darkest secrets—I pried them out of him—and he knew mine, in return. Maybe she means he learned it in therapy. Dr. Sayer, my therapist, is a great deflector.
“I’m sorry.” I don’t know why I feel the need to apologize, but I do. “Our last call… I was upset with him. I haven’t talked to him in over a month.”
“Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. I was actually just pissed that he never brought up Macie.” I squeeze the bridge of my nose. Why am I telling her this? “It isn’t like I don’t know she’s around with a baby. My mom told me at our party two years ago that she was pregnant. He made it sound like he was all alone, but he only called me at night. What about her?”
“Oh, Charlotte,” Julianne says on another sigh. “You should really talk to Jared again. It isn’t my place to share his secrets. He’s an adult, you know.”
I don’t like secrets, even though I have plenty of my own. I glance toward Avery’s dresser.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I tell her. “I have to go.”
“Of course,” she answers. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
My mind whirls as I head toward the museum. I knew that Jared wasn’t telling me much. I hadn’t really bothered to ask, besides about his health. It makes my stomach flip. Maybe I should call Jared.
When I see Avery, I try to smile.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. He kisses my cheek, and I pull him into a hug.
“Oh, nothing,” I sigh. He snorts. “You don’t believe me?”
“You’re a shit liar, Charlotte.”
“An old friend called me a few months ago. They were in a bad accident, and the recovery has been really slow going. And just now, I got a phone call from their mom.” I realize, belatedly, that I’m using pronouns as to not give away Jared’s gender.
Avery looks sympathetic. His eyebrows dip together. “Maybe you should go visit her.”
“Yeah.” I swallow my guilt. “I’ll think about it. Work is busy and all.”
But then, I do think about it. I think about going home, seeing my parents, getting away from Avery and the ring that seems to suck the air out of our bedroom whenever I remember it. Sometimes, I remember the ring in the middle of the night. My eyes shoot open, and I can’t breathe for a second. Other times, I remember it while we’re eating dinner, or when we’re having sex. It sparks some fear. It alights some feeling of relief that I won’t be alone forever. A ring, superglued to my finger for eternity. It will follow me into death.
That is both thrilling and terrifying.
So, after we get lunch at the MFA and wander around the exhibits, I tell Avery, “I think I am going to go home next weekend.”
“Okay,” he says. He kisses my temple. “To see your friend?”
I nod. “Yeah, and to see my parents.”
“Are you going to tell them about the jobs you’re applying for?”
I hide my wince with a cough. No, I won’t, because I’ve been procrastinating actually applying. I don’t tell Avery that. Instead, I force a smile and say, “Probably!”
“Good,” he says. “Ready to go home?”
“Absolutely.”
We walk hand in hand, enjoying the unusually warm weather. In my experience, we still have at least two more snowstorms before spring officially starts.
“Are you all set for getting the time off for Easter?” he asks me. It seems like it’s been a while since we talked about flying to California to visit his parents. “I need to book our tickets.”
“I can let you know tomorrow,” I offer. I straighten my shirt. “They’ll like me, right?”
He grins. “Of course they will, Charlotte. They’ll be excited to see where your life is heading, too.”
A stone drops into my belly.
It always comes back to my imperfections, doesn’t it?
46
Past
The therapist from hell, Dr. Susan Sayer, asked me to read from my journal. I had been dutifully scribbling in it for the past two weeks with more and more frequency. I dug it out of my backpack and flipped to the most recent page.
“Where do you want me to start?” I asked. Most recently, my voice had lost all of its inflection. I was robotizing myself. It made me feel like I had a speck of control over my situation.
Dr. Sayer blinked at me. “Wherever you think you should.”
I scowled and opened to the one I had written two days ago.
I read, “I am angry at myself for digging through my mom’s purse for Advil. I’m angry that I snuck into their bathroom searching for something stronger than Advil. I hate that they don’t trust me, and that my mother caught me with my hand in her purse. I lied and told her I was looking for money. She automatically assumed it was for drugs, anyway.
“This limbo I’m in sucks. It sucks. It SUCKS.” I stopped and sighed. I had written it in all capital letters, nearly ripping the paper in my haste to underline it. I didn’t give away that anger now, though. I held it tight and remembered. I continued, “It humiliated me—the way she looked at me like I had kicked a puppy. I hate having to write this because I’d rather not. I hate this journal, I hate Dr. Sayer for making me write this,” –I winced— “and I hate myself for what I’ve turned into.”
Dr. Sayer didn’t react to my insult. Instead, she smiled.
“Why are you smiling?”
“I noticed that you showed empathy for some statements you had written. For example, you sounded guilty when you talked about your mother. You physically winced when you mentioned me.”
I shrugged. Sometimes, there was so much guilt inside of me that I didn’t know what to do with it all. I knew I would eventually drown under it. It was buried under layers of anger. When my mother saw me, her face fell. We weren’t in a place that we once lived in; we didn’t know how to find our way back to a comfortable way of coexisting. Instead, my parents tiptoed around me. Because I had been sent to the hospital, there was now a large sign marked fragile following me.
Don’t say the bad thing, you’ll send Charlotte on a bender.
Don’t criticize her Physics grade, she’ll relapse or run away.
Don’t mention Colby, or else she’ll seek out the next av
ailable destructive boy.
“There’s hope, Charlie, don’t you see? We work through the anger, and then the world will look bright for you again.”
47
The car is the best place to think, because it is isolating. Everyone on the road is in their own little bubble, their own world. Mine has music playing: “Don’t Wanna Be Your Girl” by Wet. I find myself humming along and sympathizing with the singer. Sometimes I wish Avery and I lived on different planets. I still crave his touch. I still want him to kiss me. I just can’t help that I change my mind at the last minute. We were so struck by each other in the beginning. It was the perfect set up to believe that fate played a part in our relationship. I can’t separate the threads of my emotions. When I look at it, I try to pick out those feelings of love. I can’t help but think I’m getting it confused with contentment. Complacency. Comfort.
Did I ever love Avery?
Or, like Colby, did he trick my emotions?
I shake my head. No, he wasn’t like Colby. Comparing him to Colby would be doing a disservice to Avery’s whole being. Avery is good. Avery is kind. It isn’t his fault if I misinterpreted how I feel.
When my music switches to “Wait” by Maroon 5, it makes me think of Jared.
Jared.
The very person I’m driving to see. I need to apologize to him, just as Adam Levine sings.
God, the last time I saw him was almost two years ago. More than two years ago? It was at the party in September, right after I met Avery in New York City. I do the math in my head, and realize it was two and a half years ago. Macie—her name is burned into my head from our last phone conversation—wasn’t even showing her pregnancy. It isn’t the kind of thing I would have immediately noticed; maybe she was showing and I missed it.
Now, I’m headed back to my parents’ house, and Jared will be living across the street. Burned. It could’ve been the way we turned out when we were nine. He could’ve been in the house when it was on fire; he could’ve been hurt. Then, maybe his nightmares—and mine—would’ve been more justified. Our friendship was everything to me. He was everything to me, from the time I was nine years old up until he left for boarding school when I was fifteen. Heck, he was my only friend!
