ME: SHOWED BRIE AROUND THE CITY A BIT. TOOK HER TO THAT THAI PLACE ON SPRING ST.
I decided to go with the cleanest, most scrubbed version of the truth.
A second later, my phone rings.
“Hey,” I say to Grant. “Everything okay?”
I cringe at the overt paranoia in my tone. He’s going to see through me.
“So,” Grant says. “I was texting with Brie a little bit ago. She told me all about her day … but not once did she mention she spent it with you.”
A heavy silence bridges the thousands of miles that span between us, and a lump settles in the back of my throat.
“Why do you think she’d leave that out?” he asks.
I clear my throat. “Your guess is as good as mine. You ready for Vegas?”
I change the subject. It’s a cheap move. Desperate too.
“Don’t you think that’s weird?” he asks. “Why wouldn’t she mention you?”
“Who the hell knows. You’re reading into it,” I say.
He hesitates. “Am I?”
I’m not sure if he’s asking the universe a rhetorical question …
Or if he’s asking me.
“That trip can’t come soon enough,” I tell him. “We’ve got to get her out of your system.”
The instant I speak, I know those words aren’t meant for him.
33
Brie
“The doctor says she’s dilated to a one. Been having contractions all weekend, but they’re still a ways apart. We’re thinking it’ll be any day now,” my mother says from her side of the phone Sunday afternoon as I’m leaving an adorable little uptown eatery called Cielo.
Paulina from work invited me for brunch earlier today, but it turned out all she wanted to do was vent about a couple of ladies from the marketing department. For two solid hours, I was nothing more than an earpiece, but at least I got a free meal out of it.
“You might want to pack a bag and start looking at plane tickets just in case,” she adds.
“Will do …” I take my time heading home, belly full of sugared sourdough French toast, sous vide egg bites, and Turkish coffee.
Ten minutes later, I’m less than two blocks from Cainan’s apartment.
I haven’t heard from him since yesterday, when we spent the majority of the day together before going our separate ways. Not that I should expect to hear from him …
He mentioned he was going out with some friends last night. He never got into specifics, and I tamped my intrigue into the ground as I told him I’d see him around.
I debate whether I should take an alternate route, irrationally convinced my thoughts are radiating off me like a nuclear cloud, when my phone distracts me with a text chime and I cross the intersection near his street.
CAINAN: ANY PLANS TODAY?
My heart whooshes in my ears, and a smile tugs at the corners of my lips.
ME: JUST HAD BRUNCH WITH A COLLEAGUE. WHAT’S UP?
CAINAN: THERE’S A VINTAGE BOOK FAIR IN SOHO. WAS THINKING OF HITTING IT UP. YOU INTERESTED?
My insides tangle with my somersaulting stomach.
I wasn’t even this excited when Grant proposed …
ME: WHAT TIME?
CAINAN: TWO. I’LL SWING YOUR WAY. WHAT’S YOUR ADDRESS?
I text him the address to Maya’s apartment and float home on a cloud, ignoring the voice in the back of my mind warning me not to play with fire, not to knot my heart around a man who can never be mine.
I want this—if only for today.
Maybe we can never be together, but I like the way I feel when we’re together; a tranquil warmth melts me from the inside out.
It’s much like going home.
Or being completely at peace and in the moment.
There’s no noise when I’m with him. No dithering confusion.
I’ve never had that with anyone else.
And who knows if I ever will again.
34
Cainan
“I’m flying home tomorrow,” she tells me as we head toward a little book market on Canal. “My sister, Alana, is about to have her baby.”
I didn’t intend to invite her along. Usually I hit these things alone, opting to browse in silence, a coffee in hand and the rest of the world leaving me the hell alone until it’s time to check out.
But then I found myself texting her.
And when she wrote back right away, I wasn’t turned off or annoyed as I would’ve been with anyone else.
“How long will you be there?” I ask.
“A few days.”
My question is multi-pronged. I’d like to know for my own information—but also because I want to know how much of that time is going to be spent in the same city as Grant. She’s made it clear she doesn’t want to marry him, but people change their minds every day.
I can’t count how many clients have backed out of divorces at the last minute, suddenly realizing they can’t live without one another for some asinine, unforeseen reason.
The fear of being alone is powerful.
That said, I don’t get the desperate-and-lonely vibes from Brie. She’s present without being clingy. She listens without being over-the-top laser-focused. She doesn’t try to impress me. Nor does she try to paint herself as perfect, the way some people do when they’re trying to come across as the ideal match for someone they’re into.
I shouldn’t waste my time worrying.
She was Grant’s first.
And she can never be mine.
But in this small moment, in these quiet afternoon hours with the city half-empty and the sunshine painting the tops of our heads as we stroll the city blocks … she is mine.
If I can’t touch her, if I can’t want her, at least I have this.
“How much you want to bet Grant will show up at the hospital with flowers?” she asks with a chuckle.
I slide my hands in my front pockets, a feeble move to quell the ache of not being able to slip my arm around her lithe shoulders or rest my palm on the small of her back.
“Is he still trying to get back into your good graces?” I ask.
“That’s the thing—he was never out of them. It’s not like there’s something he can do to magically make me fall in love with him,” she says. “I wish he’d understand that instead of … I don’t know … texting me about every little thing ten times a day. And he still calls me ‘babe.’ It’s almost like he’s trying to manipulate me into casually getting back together.” She turns to me, placing her hand on my forearm as she walks sideways. “He asked if he could stay with me when he’s back in town next week for work. Can you believe that?”
Yes. Yes I can.
“What’d you tell him?” My heart beats faster than it should.
“That I didn’t think it was a good idea …” She faces forward, chuffing under her breath. “Come on. You and I both know that if I give this man an inch, he’s going to expect a mile.”
I exhale, more relieved than I deserve to be.
“Maybe you should stop taking his calls,” I say before adding, “as much.”
“Yeah. I’ve thought about that,” I say. “But ghosting people isn’t my style. It’s so juvenile.”
“And harassing them into getting back together isn’t?”
Brie shoots me a look, though I don’t know that she realizes it. I can only assume she’s wondering where my loyalties lie and why I’m telling her to ignore my best friend whose heart she recently annihilated.
“Grant gets really fixated on things sometimes. Like a dog with a bone,” I say.
“So … I should just yank it out of his mouth and chuck it over the fence?”
I snort. “Something like that, yeah.”
We reach our destination—The SoHo Book Collector’s Expo—and stop outside a table layered in vinyl-wrapped classics.
“I don’t even know why he’s into me,” she says, tucking a dark strand behind one ear as she traces her fingertips over a copy of Anne of Green G
ables. “He’s always saying he’s never met anyone like me, that he’s crazy about me, loves my family, sees a future with me … but it never goes deeper than that, you know? It’s superficial. He has to feel it too, right? It can’t just be me. He’s got to be projecting some fantasy onto me or something. That’s the only explanation.”
She moves onto the next table, but I stay behind.
Now that she says it, I realize that I’ve witnessed the same thing. He tells me how wonderful she is and how wild he is about her—but he never says why. And while he looked at her with stars for eyes the first time I saw them together, I’ve seen divorcing couples more in sync than the two of them.
But if I’m being fair … love is one of the hardest things to put into words.
Sometimes it’s nothing more than a feeling.
Maybe he just looked at her and he knew.
“Do I have something in my teeth?” Brie laughs and points to her mouth. I realize now that she’d been talking to me, though I didn’t hear a word since I was lost in thought. When she smiles, I realize her front tooth has the tiniest chip in it.
Just like the dream.
“No. Sorry. What were you saying?” I ask.
“I said I think you’re right. I need to yank the bone out of his mouth,” she says. “When I see him this week, I’m going to tell him to stop contacting me. I think it’ll be for the best.”
There’s a glimmer in her bright green irises. Hope or sunlight, I’m not sure.
Moving onto the next table, she fastens her attention to a small paperback before whipping around to show me.
“Look, it’s our book,” she says, head tilted and beaming ear to ear as she displays a first edition of The Alchemist in all its gold and purple eighties glory.
Our book.
Something that’s ours and only ours.
One thing she’ll never share with Grant.
Wide-eyed and rising on her toes, she says, “I want to buy it for you.”
“You don’t have to do that …”
“Yeah, well I want to. So I am.” Brie winks before tucking it beneath one arm and sliding down to the next stack of books. A few minutes later, she chooses two more books—an unauthorized biography on Jackie O. and a Paula Fox tome, and she tells me she’s going to read them on the plane this week.
I peel my attention off the poor girl and grab a first edition of Franny and Zooey before following her to the check-out table.
It’s barely mid-afternoon when we’re done.
“What do you want to do next?” she asks. “Don’t suppose I could interest you in a matinee of Chicago?”
“I hope you’re joking,” I tease, though the truth is I’d suffer through All that Jazz a hundred times if it meant being next to her a little while longer.
“Actually, I am.” She sighs, shoulders turning slack as she subtly swings her canvas bag of books with each step. “I still need to buy my plane ticket for Phoenix, and more than likely I’ll be catching a red eye … which means I need to pack as soon as possible …”
Brie tilts her attention my way, offering an apologetic squint.
“No worries,” I say, hands sliding into my pockets, alive with the dissatisfaction of never knowing what her hair will feel like between my fingers.
I walk her home.
And I intentionally take us the long way.
When we get to her building, we linger outside near the front stoop.
“Are you always so quiet?” she asks.
“Would you rather me be an obnoxious loudmouth?” I tease.
Brie laughs under her breath. “I just feel like I do all the talking when we’re together. I hope you don’t think it’s annoying or anything …”
Annoying is the last thing I would ever call her.
But I don’t tell her that.
I also don’t tell her I’m going to miss her.
I don’t tell her good luck with Grant—because I want to leave him out of this moment.
And I don’t tell her that while no one’s ever accused me of talking too much, the reason I’m particularly quiet around her … is because my head is full of all the things I want to say to her—but can’t.
“It’s weird, actually. I’m usually pretty quiet around most people. And then when I get around you, I can’t shut up for two seconds.” She rolls her eyes and brushes a strand of hair off her forehead.
“You worry too much,” I tell her.
Brie snorts. “You’ve clearly been talking to my sister, Carly.”
My gaze narrows.
“She’s always on my case about how I worry about everything and how I always play things safe and gravitate toward the familiar …” Brie’s words scatter into the autumn breeze that encircles us.
Does she feel it too?
The otherworldly familiarity that draws us together like an invisible thread?
“I had this dream.” The sentence leaves my mouth before I can stop it. “After my accident, I had this dream. There was this woman in it. She looked just like you, and—”
“—I’m so sorry.” Brie digs into the bottom of her bag, and I realize now her phone is ringing. “It’s my mom. It’s probably about my sister. I’m so, so sorry to cut you off … give me one sec.”
She takes the call by a park bench several feet away, one finger pressed into her free ear as a firetruck blares a few blocks over.
My heart ricochets and my skin is hot.
The sidewalk slopes.
Or maybe it’s just the world, tilting on its axis.
What if I tell her about the dream and she thinks I’m crazy? What if she looks at me the way Claire and Luke did? What if she chalks it up to the accident and brushes it off as a meaningless coincidence?
Mental gibberish.
“Okay, I really hate to do this, but my sister is officially in labor, and I really need to book that flight, so I’m going to head in,” Brie says when she returns. Climbing the front steps, she turns back. “I want to hear all about that dream when I get back though.”
She leaves me to bask in the remains of her soft voice, exuberant smile, and lively emerald eyes before disappearing inside her building.
I walk home with a single thought looping through my mind—if I tell her about the dream, it won’t change the fact that we can never be together.
So maybe I’m better off keeping it to myself.
Why make things more complicated?
35
Brie
“Oh, my goodness, Alana … he’s adorable!” I cradle my sister’s newborn son, Bodhi Cassius, in my arms, soaking in how perfect he looks, from his pink skin to the tufts of blond hair on top of his head, to his button nose. “I don’t know where all this blond hair came from.”
Alana and her exhausted husband, Tucker, exchange weary-eyed yet proud grins.
Their first four came out with full heads of thick, dark hair, pointy noses, and triple chins.
But not this guy.
“The last ones always like to surprise us, don’t they?” My mother winks at me from across the room.
My mother had no idea she was pregnant with twins until Kari came out and the doctor told her there was one more behind her …
My chest tightens when I think of Kari missing this moment.
She was there for all of Carly’s births. The first three of Alana’s. But she never met Alana’s fourth and she’ll never meet little Bodhi.
Without waking the baby, I slide my phone from my pocket, snap a picture, and send it to a group of girlfriends. When I’m done, I also send it to Cainan, because even now, in this moment thousands of miles from New York, this moment that has absolutely nothing to do with him … I can’t help but wish he were here.
“Okay, stop hogging. My turn.” Megan rubs her hands together before reaching toward us.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask, handing him off.
“He ran to grab the pizza,” Tucker says.
Ah, yes. The pizza. It’s a White family trad
ition. Any time a sister has a baby, their first meal is always pizza from the little place in Scottsdale where Mom and Dad had their first date four decades ago. Once the manager casually mentioned to my father he was thinking of shuttering the doors so he could retire—which is when my dad promptly made a phone call and found a buyer on the spot.
“Knock, knock …” A man stands in the doorway, obscured by a massive floral arrangement chock full of every kind of blue flower in existence. Hydrangea. Hyacinth. Forget-me-nots. Morning glories. Cornflowers …
As soon as he lowers it, my mood sinks.
“Grant!” Mom rises from her chair and throws her arms around him, like she hasn’t seen him in decades. “So glad you could make it!”
“The big guy called a little bit ago and gave me the news,” he says. “I was in the area, so I thought I’d stop by for a bit.”
The big guy.
So it was my dad who spilled the beans …
My dad who also knew that I was here.
“Brie, hi.” He pulls away from my mother, gaze fixed on me as if he’s seeing me for the first time all over again. “Wasn’t sure if you’d be here or not.”
Right …
I stand and give him a hug because everyone’s watching and I’m not about to make Alana’s moment about me in any way, shape, or form.
“So good to see you, babe.” Grant squeezes me tight, and for longer than necessary. “Looking amazing. As always.”
Now I know that isn’t true.
I literally hopped off the plane, found a crowded restroom on the other side of security, tied my greasy hair back, and freshened up before ordering an Uber and making a beeline for the hospital.
“Thanks for the flowers, Grant,” Alana says from the bed. “So thoughtful of you.”
“Here, take my chair.” Megan stands, Bodhi still cradled in her arms, and offers Grant her chair before handing my nephew off to his mother.
The Best Man Page 15
