Chapter 20 Other People’s Happy Endings
Chapter 20
Other People’s Happy Endings
I could not believe after the weekend I’d had and whatever conversation or fight or situation that capped it all off that I had to get up on Monday morning and go to work, but that was being an adult. It felt like you rarely just got to sit home and weep along to sad show tunes, even when the situation called for it.
At work I chugged my iced espresso while getting through the emails from when I was out as well as everything that had come in from the East Coast since the day started. Working on Pacific time was beginning each day running a little late.
Phoebe leaned in, looking bright and well rested. “I’m sure you have plenty to get through too but I just wanted to say hi.”
I tried to gauge from her tone what she knew. “Hi. I feel like I need another full day of sleep, and you’re all … well, not looking half dead.”
“Oh, it’s because we have a kid and on nights we’re not doing anything, we all go to bed at like eight o’clock,” Phoebe said. “Last night I think it was closer to seven thirty. When I was young and considered myself cool, I used to roll my eyes when I heard people talking about kids and early bedtimes.”
“‘Early bedtimes? That’s for the straights!’”
I couldn’t believe I was making a joke like that to, even after the last couple months, my boss, but Phoebe cracked up.
“Exactly. Turns out early bedtimes come for us all. Anyway, I’ll see you in a bit in the weekly meeting. We might push it a few since I came in to the news that Celebration definitely wants to use us for Silly in Love , and I’d like to get a few initial tasks crossed off my list if possible.”
“Oh, great,” I said, opening my planner and jotting it down. “When’s the release date again? Early December?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Phoebe said casually, heading out of my office. “They decided not to use us for media planning. So you don’t need to worry about it. See you in a bit.”
Fuck. Her casual tone couldn’t actually match reality, could it? I was trying to make a case for expansion, and before I could even fully plead my case I was somehow losing business. Would it be a smarter move to just cancel that upcoming meeting, hang on to this gig as it was as long as I could, and think about what was next? My guidance counselor—who, sure, hadn’t been great at his job—had looked at my stellar math scores and told me to become an accountant. Was that the right move now?
“Hey, boss,” Tamarah said, stepping into my office with her hands hugging her mug of green tea. “How happy was Small Jesse Pinkman to see you? Or is he like my mom’s cat and had to snub you for a while first?”
“No snubbing, pure happiness,” I said. “Thanks again for helping out. Is it inappropriate I asked? Is it weird you know what my condo looks like? Or where it is? Or what kind of toilet paper I use?”
She gave me a look to suggest it was indeed very weird I’d asked that, so I laughed as if I’d been kidding about all of it.
“How was the wedding?” she asked.
“It was good,” I said.
“That’s very convincing,” she said with a laugh, and I shook my head.
“No, it was really lovely. Weddings aren’t always my thing, but it was a good one. It was just one of those long weekends and I guess the arrival back to reality’s hitting me a little harder than usual.”
“I feel that. My therapist says whenever you feel that way to try to take what you can from your vacation into your real life.”
I pictured Chloe singing at the top of her lungs in her car, holding me close as we danced, rolling her eyes about peppers, pushing me toward pleasure and then far past. All of that gone from my real life.
“But I’m also like, yeah, not sure if I can carry in all my favorite things from vacation to my real life,” Tamarah said. “If I got to lie on a beach every day and hang out nonstop with all my favorite people, I’d probably be great to begin with.”
“Seriously,” I said, feeling glad that even though I never would have breathed a word about therapy to a boss of mine—even now!—I liked that Tamarah knew that she could. Even if I was only half her boss, really, I liked what we’d forged here. If I had to ship off to become an accountant, I knew Tamarah would do well in whatever was next for her.
OK, I’d gone quickly from having some light concerns that expanding my department wasn’t the best idea directly to getting CPA-certified and finding a non-sinking ship for my brilliant assistant. There had to be a few steps in between. Right?
I glanced down at my phone to see that the group chat was as alive as usual—well, the modified one that CJ had created the other week so we wouldn’t bother Nina and Ari the week of their wedding and now their honeymoon. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected; I guessed maybe that it would have been so simple as Chloe texting the rest of the group without me, and it would be just one more group chat that others were fine seeing me fall off of. I went back to how it had been, though, before I’d felt like maybe they weren’t just Chloe’s friends, but mine too. I didn’t weigh in, I didn’t add anything unless I was explicitly asked, and I tried not to watch for Chloe’s messages too closely.
The only person who was participating less than I was, though, was Chloe.
Because life apparently had not given up disappointing me today, I got a couple of red alerts from Greg and decided it would be less annoying to just drive up after work than to face his responses if I tried to bail now.
Since it was quiet at work for a Monday—and I tried desperately not to see that as some further proof of my imminent failure—I slipped out a bit early and headed up the 5, parking myself at a Chili’s a little ahead of schedule. On Instagram I saw that I’d been tagged in at least a half dozen posts from the weekend, and because I apparently liked rubbing salt into wounds, I tapped through the posts from Bianca, Sofia, CJ, and even from a few people I’d only met over the weekend. In photos I looked like that new person I’d felt like when I was alone with Chloe, brimming over with laughter and conversation, a smile that reached my eyes and beyond.
And maybe I was a little out of my head with—well, whatever one feels when one has ended things with one’s fake girlfriend, but I couldn’t ignore Chloe in the photos too, especially Chloe in photos with me. Her eyes on me like I was the most interesting thing in the room, maybe in the world.
That part hadn’t been fake too, right? We hadn’t actually been that good at faking. I wanted to be sure of that, surer than I was.
My phone buzzed with a notification from Slack, and instead of some agency meme someone was sharing on the #general thread, it was killjoy Aubrey sharing a link to an article about how ad agencies were adjusting to changing landscapes. There was no way there would be anything in there that was going to make me feel better, so I managed to head right back to Instagram. There weren’t any additional tagged photos when I refreshed, but the picture at the top of my feed was of Fiona and Hailey at Club Tee Gee, our old regular bar when the three of us had low-level gigs and only frequented spots with decent happy hours. So happy this bar and the two of us are still standing after all these years!
I knew that I hadn’t exactly tried with the two of them lately—not since Chloe and her friends entered the picture, really, but back before that to my breakup and maybe even a little once the breakup became that thing in the back of my mind that I couldn’t let go of. Back before talk of babies and futures that felt radically different from mine. Still, if plans were so hard to make these days—and I genuinely knew that they were, and that maybe I should have tried a little harder to be accommodating—they’d managed to do it. Just not with me.
Greg walked in and sat down across from me. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“She’s not—honestly, she’s not my girlfriend anymore.”
I watched him for his reaction, but he only picked up his menu.
“Hi, Greg, it’s nice to see you too.”
He grunted out some kind of greeting. “I always get the Crispy Chicken Crispers. Glad they’re still making them.”
I laughed, deciding I might as well live and let live. “That’s a bizarrely redundant name.”
He gave me a look, so I turned to my menu as well, even though I knew I was getting Baby Back Ribs. When in Rome and all.
“She was gonna bring those Korean things,” Greg said. “For the potluck buffet. Can you get those somewhere else?”
“Really?” Maybe living and letting live wasn’t going to work for me after all. “You find out we broke up and that’s what you’re asking me? Sure, Greg. I will fill the kimbap void.”
“They just sounded really good,” he mumbled.
“Yeah,” I said. “They would have been. What else do we need to discuss?”
“Hang on, Marisol gave me a list.” He leaned back and reached into his pocket. “She wanted to come but Lulu’s got a cold and we can’t ask Mom and Dad or Marisol’s parents to keep an eye on them.”
“Is Lulu OK?” I asked.
“It’s a cold,” he said. “It’s not like when you feel sick. If you had kids you’d understand they just get sick all the time. Walking germ machines. No big deal.”
“Yeah, I know people with kids,” I said. “I understand kids get sick, I just wanted to make sure my niece was OK. You don’t need to use everything I say as an excuse to make some kind of dig, you know. I’m having a shitty day and this has real this-could-have-been-an-email-not-a-meeting vibes.”
Greg handed me the list, written in Marisol’s perfect cursive. “I hate email.”
“I wasn’t being literal,” I said. “Well—not entirely. Does it always have to be like this?”
“Like what?” he asked, as a server showed up to get our drink order. As good as a giant chain restaurant cocktail actually sounded, between my energy level and the drive back, I went with a Diet Coke.
“What were you talking about?” Greg asked. “Emails or something?”
“Yep, that’s it. Anyway, let’s sort out everything remaining. It sounds like almost everyone RSVP’d and Dad’s weird former coworker won’t end up spoiling the surprise?”
Greg actually laughed at that. “Yeah, Jerry’s wife texted me, don’t worry, Jerry’s not going to say anything! Like three days in a row.”
“Honestly, that makes me feel like he’s going to even more,” I said with a sigh, and Greg laughed even harder.
“He means well.”
“I guess,” I said. “This is why I try not to make friends at work, honestly. Keeping the Jerrys out of my life.”
I thought of Phoebe, kind of my friend despite how hard I’d fought it. Tamarah, who I’d trusted enough with my home and my kitten. Chloe, who would have never entered my life without a work party. Were they my Jerrys?
“Who knows,” Greg said. “Dad loves golfing with Jerry.”
Maybe I’d just had a rough few days, but somehow that was the most insightful thing I’d ever heard my brother say.
Something had clearly happened by the time I got home from Chili’s, because the regular-minus-the-brides group chat had quieted, and a new one had popped up. Regular, minus the brides, minus Chloe.
Clementine, I just wanted to touch base and make sure you’re OK. Or not OK! I guess I just wanted to touch base, and I’m sorry I didn’t know at work today or I would have been slightly more useful than telling you about early bedtimes. Or at least I like to think I would have been.
If you’re free tonight and want something to do, Sofia and I could make you dinner or meet you wherever.
I’m still your most annoying friend, just a reminder.
Sofia says I should mention that it doesn’t have to be tonight, just text one of us and we’ll make plans this week. Or later on. No expiration date.
In lieu of responding, I burst into tears and took to my bed with my kitten and a queer romance novel. What had Chloe told them? She clearly hadn’t made me a villain or I wouldn’t have that flood of very sweet messages. Still, I couldn’t imagine what she’d said about our breakup, how she’d made it look from her point of view.
I did my best not to think about any of that and opened the book instead. I knew that in a universe where things made sense, reading about adorable couples who got happy endings should probably make me feel even worse. They’d just never worked like that for me, though. Even during those sleepless nights next to Will, wondering how I could get what I wanted without throwing a grenade right into the center of my life, preordained happily-ever-afters made me feel hopeful. If fictional people could get everything they wanted, surely I could manage at least a little, right?
It was weird to look back on that time now, though, because Will had literally moved out . I had to put all the utility bills in my name only, and I had to remember all the stuff I apparently only did because another human was there as a reminder. My rolled-up yoga mat was still next to my bed, like nothing had changed, except the fine layer of dust it had gathered in its time off from its actual purpose. I couldn’t imagine doing yoga, or eating a dinner that didn’t arrive thanks to Grubhub or Caviar or Uber Eats. In fact, Will would have gently urged me to pick the delivery app I used the most and to stop paying for the others. Will definitely hadn’t seen the full person I was, I knew, and I didn’t wish him back into my life, but he’d been a good roommate. In so many ways he’d helped me be the person I wanted to be. That grenade I’d thrown had blown a Will-sized hole out of my world.
But somehow the removal of Chloe Lee from my life, not even my real girlfriend, barely even five feet tall, had blasted a crater-size chunk out of everything . It was the kind of thing I knew I couldn’t confess to anyone. I felt like Taylor Swift, singing more songs about that dirtbag she’d spent a few months with than the guy everyone thought she’d end up marrying. Will and I had nearly two decades, a real relationship. And Chloe had ended things terribly! She’d been mean and unfair and—I hoped, desperately—dishonest.
Still, what I thought about was the way her eyes crinkled up when she laughed, the way she sang off-key at the top of her lungs, the way she’d always been ready to come to my defense.
I buried my face in Small Jesse Pinkman’s fur and breathed along with his purrs. Before long he got distracted by a piece of lint on the floor and sprang away into action, and I went back to the book. Maybe I was destined to only read about other people’s happy endings, but for now that sounded better than a world without them at all.