Chapter 1 Divorced Zaddies at Ruth’s Chris #3
“Stop falling asleep to murder podcasts,” I demand, pulling up my work email on my desktop. “It’s not good for you.”
“Speaking of my gruesome murder…I have something to tell you, and I don’t want you to kill me.” I inwardly shudder—I don’t possess the mental fortitude to be braced for a murderous revelation before I’ve finished my second beverage of the morning.
“What a windup,” I say simply to lighten the mood, but then she doesn’t say anything. She lets her pause swell into something stiff and surprisingly heavy.
She wouldn’t be confessing something truly awful, would she? Not over FaceTime while she’s perched on the hood of her car and I’m at work, fully visible to all my coworkers. With all we’ve been through together, she wouldn’t do that to me. Would she?
“I’m actually headed up north…to see Petey.”
That makes me sit up straight in my roller chair.
Petey. One of our oldest friends and Laurel’s most stubborn situationship manages a hockey summer camp so far north that it’s practically Canada. He must be between sessions. She must be looking to backslide.
Laurel’s relationship with Petey is recognizable to anyone who went through a messy phase in their twenties.
In college, they were combustible. Innocuous conversations about pizza toppings would erupt into incomprehensible, relationship-ending fights.
She broke up with him so many times that she stopped telling friends when they reconciled, as absolutely no person with a functioning cerebral cortex could pretend it was anything other than a terrible idea to get back together with the guy she’d dumped twice on a single three-hour Mississippi River cruise.
I love Petey, I do. I’ve known him as long as I’ve known Ethan.
He coaches youth hockey and always asks how my grandparents are doing and bought a truck because he genuinely enjoys helping his friends move.
Petey on his own? An absolute sweetheart who’s seemingly unburdened by the stressors of life and responsibility.
But Laurel and Petey? Together? Total trainwreck.
“You didn’t tell me you guys were in touch. Was the last time you saw him at my wedding?”
“A few times after,” she says, obfuscating.
“We picked things up after everything happened with you and Rich. We were just talking, but still, I didn’t want to…
Oh, no. Your nostril got all sad,” she says, because apparently she’s still watching me on FaceTime.
“If you’re not okay today, I can…I’ll figure something out. ”
“I’m fine,” I groan, though the words are more of a reflex than an honest assessment of my well-being.
But this whole scheme is classic Laurel, and if she wants a foolhardy and misguided case of sexual déjà vu, far be it from me to stand in her way.
“We’ve drawn out this divorce so long, I’ve basically forgotten Rich existed. Today will be just any other day.”
“Really? I’m so relieved. I’ve been dreading telling you about the proposal.”
“He proposed?” My voice cracks. Three sets of heads belonging to paralegals swing in my direction. I put on my best wobbly smile. Nothing to see here.
“Of course not. He won’t even date me without a real commitment on my end,” she says, correcting me. “ I am. I’m driving up today to propose.”
Dread clenches my gut. After my divorce and our parents’ shitshow of a marriage, how could she even contemplate getting married? And to Peter Eriksson-Thao? A man with Microsoft Clippy tattooed on his inner bicep? This has to be a mistake.
I swivel my chair toward the window for the illusion of privacy. “This all feels a little…impulsive. What if you—”
“Look,” Laurel commands. “The timing, it’s…bad—I’m sorry—but it has to be now. It has to be today. Or I might lose him for good.”
“See? That. ” I point my finger at her nose on-screen. “ That is what I’m talking about. That’s panic talking. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’ve never been more clearheaded in my life.
” She laughs. She actually has the audacity to laugh in a moment like this.
“He leaves for his camping trip tomorrow, and I can’t let two whole weeks go by without telling him I want to spend the rest of my life with him.
He needs a gesture. It has to be big, and it has to be a real commitment this time.
” Her voice is resolute. I’m not talking her out of this on FaceTime, that’s for sure. “But if you really need me today…”
If you need me, I’ll sacrifice my own happiness in exchange for lifelong resentment toward you. That’s what her silence is saying.
The next quiet thought belongs to me.
They’ll never stay together long enough to make it down the aisle.
It’s a cruel, ungenerous opinion I’m not proud of, but it allows me to muster the strength to say, “I’m fine. I’m so happy for you.”
I hear her sigh with relief. “Thank god. I can’t tell you how worried I was. If you could see my boob sweat. Actually…” She starts to move the camera to her underboob, but thankfully, another car needs the charging station and I’m spared the indignity of FaceTiming my sister’s dampened tits.
After we end the call, I pick the Ruth’s Chris gift card out of the empty trash can because, suddenly, an expired fifty dollars’ worth of steak doesn’t seem so pathetic.
She won’t get married. I know this. Though Laurel’s never lonely, she’s always on her own.
Hookups, relationships, and situationships flow in and out of Laurel’s life like sticks on a river.
They can never quite handle her current, and that’s how she likes it.
Between Laurel and the madness that is the wedding-industrial complex, this marriage will never come to fruition. I won’t even have to be the bad guy.
She’s fine. I’m fine. Today is like any other day, and it will be just fine .