Chapter 9
9
Tatum
What I thought might become a night of drunken debauchery—June and me downing expensive cocktails until we can’t remember our own names—has turned into us tucked into the back corner of a quiet bar, sipping on artisanal beers and splitting mozzarella sticks. It’s oddly peaceful in here, not at all what I expected from the New York I’d carved out in my imagination. I was under the impression this was a city that could swallow me up with its scale, way too big and bright for a small-town girl like myself. But this place reminds me of Rita’s. It’s intimate, with good drinks and great lighting. I feel contained here. Safe.
“Thanks again for coming out here with me,” June says, grinning at me over her drink. “Sorry it’s been such a chaotic start.”
“I’m used to chaos,” I tell her. “But really, thanks for letting me join you. I just hope you’re ready to share your wardrobe with me in the event my luggage never actually makes it here.”
“You can borrow anything of mine you want,” she says genuinely.
“Oh, I was kidding,” I tell her. “I can buy new clothes tomorrow if I have to.”
“What? You don’t want to sleep in my sheer paisley turtleneck and a corduroy overall minidress?”
She’s joking now too, but the thought of me in June’s clothes makes me blush too hard to maintain eye contact. I surrender to my phone for once, checking to see all the notifications that have piled up since my departure.
Carson: I know what you’re doing. Running all the way to New York to get away from this reunion. When were you planning on sharing that with the class?
There is a text from my mom too, who doesn’t yet know I’ve left.
Mom: Will you come over tomorrow morning and help me set up the front lawn? Your father somehow lost our folding chairs in the garage. We need to figure out another way to seat all our guests.
And from my dad.
Dad: Any chance you’ve seen the folding chairs? Looks like I’ve misplaced them somewhere.
He follows it with a series of embarrassed emojis, and even a GIF of someone banging their hand on their forehead.
Dad: And I don’t think the car thing worked. I’m sorry, sweetie, but you’re gonna have to show me again.
Laney has texted me too. It’s just a string of question marks. No words included. I know it means Carson’s told her I’ve left, and she’s wondering what the hell I’m doing.
The pressure of everyone’s different expectations, wanting answers or actions from me, makes my head ache. I rub my temples, staring at the wood grain of the table.
“Everything okay?” June asks.
I startle, letting go of my head. I’d forgotten myself. Lost my sense of place.
“All good,” I tell her. “Just been a long day.”
“C’mon,” she says. “What’s really going on?” This might be the first time she’s ever let me not get away with the pleasantries. It’s too monumental for me to attempt to deflect.
“It’s my family,” I admit. “I’m supposed to be at a reunion with them tomorrow.”
“Is that why you wanted to come on this trip?”
“Yes.” I pause, weighing the options. Telling her this pushes me firmly out of waitress territory and into something much more human for us both. It’s the kind of thing I’d never share during a shift at Rita’s. Which is precisely why I do it now. We don’t have the bubble of protection around us anymore. We have to figure out who we are without it.
We have to be real friends.
“My dad invited his son to it,” I continue. “The guy is older than me, but my dad just learned of his existence, and now he wants all of us to know him too, since he’s technically our brother.”
June’s jaw drops. “I had no idea what you were going to say, but it wasn’t that.”
“You thought I was finally going to tell you all of my real feelings on soup, didn’t you?”
“I was hoping you would.”
“Maybe someday.” I look off, gazing at the strangers scattered around us, caught inside their own little conversational bubbles. “I don’t really know what to do with the information. Having a secret brother is a little splashier than my usual drama. I need more time to process it.” It’s weird to speak all of this out loud. Freeing. “I don’t blame my new brother, obviously. I just don’t feel ready to know him. It changes so much for me, and I don’t want to put all that onto this stranger who doesn’t deserve it.”
“That’s valid. But you can’t not know him forever,” June says. “He didn’t ask to be born into this either. I’m sure he’s having a hard time too.”
None of my friends have been brave enough to empathize with my new brother. Ben. His name is Ben. And I should use it. I feel this surprising swell of affection for June because of it. I like that she cares about Ben’s feelings, that she’d fight for me to recognize his own struggles and humanize him. It’s the exact perspective check I need.
“I know he didn’t,” I say. “I just have a hard time with change. I kind of panic. Because what I don’t know is scarier to me than what’s familiar, even if what’s familiar isn’t great. At least I know I can survive it.”
“Ah yes, fear of the great unknown,” June says. “Like you and me.”
I school my face to remain composed, even though every alarm bell within me has been tripped by this statement. Is June about to relate what I’ve said to how I turned her down? Of course not , I assure myself. You’re projecting.
“I was thinking about us last night before we left,” she continues cryptically. “You and I have known each other for a while now, but we don’t really know each other. Like, I have no idea what you do with your time outside the diner.”
“Nothing exciting,” I hedge, still burning with something like nervous embarrassment. “All my friends moved out of Trove Hills, so I spend most nights watching TV with my parents or forcing Carson to hang out with me.”
“You don’t have any local friends?”
“Just Carson. And the other people who work at the diner, whenever they invite me out to a trivia night at the bar or something. I mostly like to stay inside and read. Or if I’m feeling really adventurous, I’ll surf the Great Wide Web.”
“How dangerous,” June says, playing along. “You dare to dabble in the dot-com?”
“In moderation, of course. My screen time is a comfortable eight hours a day.”
“That’s it? Personally, I strive for anywhere between twelve and fourteen.”
“Wow,” I say, biting back my laugh. “What can’t you do?”
“Get you to go out with me,” she says without breaking.
Now I’m really on fire, every limb sparking as I thrash about in my seat. “Oh, I…” I fumble for something to say. An explanation. Anything. “Like I said, it wouldn’t be a good idea,” I remind her again, echoing what I told her that day in the diner.
“I’m kidding. I know we’re only friends,” she says with an easy smile, no trace of the nerves that are threatening to turn me feral. “But I have learned some new things about you today.”
“Like what?” She’s moved us toward the danger zone and right back out of it with such fluidity that I’m actually a little dizzy.
“For one, you’re courageous,” she says.
“Courageous,” I echo, caught between laughter and confusion. “No one has ever said that about me.”
“They should,” she insists. “You said nothing to me about being afraid of the plane taking off. You just sat there and handled your business on your own.”
“That was more an act of embarrassment than of bravery, I promise you.”
“It’s not embarrassing to know how to hold yourself through something hard.”
What is it? I want to ask, but I’m afraid the answer won’t be one I like. Because it’s probably sad. That’s the real truth.
“You lost your luggage and you didn’t raise your voice at that employee,” she continues. “That’s a feat. You just got the solutions from her and kept it moving. You walked into an apartment that smelled like garbage and pitched going to this bar to save it all. You admitted to writing my breakup text while I was embarrassing myself by crying over it. And you have possibly the strangest side job I have ever heard of. But I like that about you. You’re just yourself, no matter what.”
“Thank you,” I say. It’s a compliment tornado, and I’m swept up in it, blown away by how kind her lens is on me. “The cooks at Rita’s will be thrilled to hear that the radical honesty they’ve taught me has led somewhere positive.”
“I hope you didn’t show them the perfume I made you,” June says. “I got home and sprayed the rest of the sample. It smelled terrible.”
“It was…interesting,” I gamble.
“I don’t know what happened!” She lights up in defense of herself. It’s the kind of impassioned reaction that makes me want to stoke the fire, see her come alive even more. “I promise you I’m good at what I do!”
“I know you are,” I assure her. “You always smell like a dream. And you were very courageous today too.”
“Now, now. Don’t you start trying to turn this back around on me. Take the compliments, Tatum.”
I salute her. “Consider them received.”
“I think something was rotten in the batch,” she says. “I don’t know how else to describe it. Or I couldn’t smell it anymore after working on it for so long. I’ve made individual perfumes before, and this has never happened. I promise I’ve got about a dozen people who can tell you I’ve made them something unforgettable.”
A dozen? That’s good. I can tell my parents that when I see them again. How special can I be if she’s done this a dozen other times?
“What do you like so much about perfumes?” I ask, hand on my cheek. It’s fun to watch her like this, hearing her speak with such liveliness about the details of her life that always remained a little hazy during our diner chats.
“I like to smell good,” she says.
“You always do,” I remind her again.
She fights a grin as she continues. “Scent ties so strongly to memory. Like how Eleanor’s apartment smelled. We’re never going to forget that. If we’re ever, I don’t know, thrown into a dumpster, we will instantly remember walking into Eleanor’s apartment tonight, and exactly how we felt when that happened. Which isn’t something we want to remember, but we will. Because you don’t forget the way things smell. I love that through my perfumes, I can play a role in someone else’s life without actively having to participate. That’s an ideal scenario for me.”
“That’s how I feel about ghostwriting,” I tell her. “Or I used to, before I broke you and your girlfriend up.” She laughs, and it fills me with relief. Maybe I didn’t completely ruin her impression of me with my strange little side gig. “I’m good with words, and I know how to use them to help other people. As for myself? I think the less I say, the better off I am. I tend to talk myself into corners.”
“I don’t know, you’re doing pretty all right.” She steals a long glance.
“By the way, the ghostwriting isn’t really one of my jobs,” I tell her, needing, for some reason, to make that clear. “I don’t get paid for it.”
“So you spend all this time writing other people’s messages…for free?”
“Yeah,” I say with a weak smile. “I love to write, but I’m afraid of what people would think if I actually did it. You know? This way, I get all of the reward with none of the risk. It’s perfect.”
“You are actually doing it, though. It doesn’t make it any less of a job just because you’ve decided not to profit from it.”
This challenge is strangely thrilling, like she’s pressing on parts of me that everyone else instinctually knows to leave alone, and instead of feeling defensive about it, I feel invigorated by her boldness. Either she doesn’t yet know me enough to see the caution tape I’ve placed over these things, or she does, and she knows that it’s just that—a flimsy barrier, meant to scare people away from everything I consider difficult.
“Why aren’t you good at being alone?” I ask, attempting to challenge her right back.
June crosses both her arms and legs in the same moment, as closed off as one person can be. The flow had been effortless between us. Even playful. But the walls we’d shed go right back up, maybe even higher than before.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I say.
“It’s okay,” she tells me, still stiff.
It doesn’t seem to be okay, but I don’t have enough time to come up with a way to solve it before she’s talking again.
“I wish I had a real answer,” she says. “Sometimes I panic when there are too many people around me. I can’t block out my awareness of their presence. It’s like seven hundred different radio stations all playing at once, and I drown in the noise. It helps when I’m out with someone who knows me. Who can do things for me, I guess. I don’t know. That’s how Vanessa used to explain it when we’d fight. She’d say I rely too much on other people to get me out of spots I can’t get out of myself, basically.”
“That’s fucked,” I tell her. “Everybody needs help.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just, I guess I’m always dating someone. Always doing something with someone else. Even this. I let you come with me on this trip, and like we just said, we don’t even really know each other. But I was too afraid to come somewhere as daunting as New York all by myself. It’s exactly what Vanessa said about me. I’ll use anyone if I’m desperate enough. I want Vanessa to know I can be independent. It bothers me that she’s right. And I want to prove it to myself too. That I can be alone.”
“If she felt okay sending off my completely insensitive text message to break up with you, Vanessa’s not the kind of person who really cared about you in the right way anyway,” I say.
“I’d tell you I can’t believe she did that, but honestly, I can,” June says. “She told me once she’d let someone else brush her teeth for her if it meant she didn’t have to walk to the bathroom one more time than necessary. It wouldn’t have mattered what you said. She just wanted someone else to do the thinking for her.”
“And she’s the one who says you rely on other people too much?”
June cocks her head as she takes a sip of her drink. “It would blow her mind to know I made it here after all. I bet she thinks I’m in my bed crying. But no, I’m in New York City . And I didn’t even get overwhelmed at the airport like I thought I might.”
“She doesn’t have to know I’m here,” I offer.
“What do you mean?”
“We could make her think you’re alone,” I say. “She still follows you online I assume?”
“Of course. She wouldn’t waste the time clicking ‘Unfollow.’ Maybe you could do it for her.”
We share a smile. “Let’s create the illusion of a solo trip.”
“How do we do that?”
“Oh, June,” I say, returning to a familiar shade of Waitress Tatum—the one who reminds her to put on a coat when it’s cold. Who brings an extra lemon slice for the last dregs of her tea, knowing she wants every last sip to be tart.
Everything she’d dislodged earlier, telling me my writing is a real job, pushing the buttons about her asking me out, gets stitched right back up again, neat and contained.
“The internet is designed for this kind of con,” I continue. “If we take pictures of you alone everywhere we go, they can look like selfies you’ve set up yourself. Caption them all about your newfound independence. Shit like ‘Nothing tastes as good as having a slice of New York pizza all to myself.’ I’ll orchestrate the whole thing from the sidelines, never to be seen. I’m very good at that. It’s basically one long variation of my other…job.” I give her a little look here, a concession. “We write your own breakup response through the internet. We will make her think that not only do you not need her or miss her, she’s completely misread you. You can be alone just fine.”
“But I’ll still be doing everything she said I always do,” June says. “I’ll be using you to help me.”
“We can’t change that part, now, can we? I’m not about to fly home after one day. I’m here with you in New York regardless, and I might as well be useful in the process, seeing as I’m the one who got us into this mess in the first place. What’s important is Vanessa doesn’t know I’m here. We have to take our wins where we can, don’t we?”
“Okay,” June agrees. “It’s a little unhinged, but I can get behind it. I’m always up for some chaotic good. What can I do to pay you back, though? If you’re going to do all of this for me, there has to be something I can help you with too. And don’t say increasing your screen time.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I say. She has, rather unfortunately, read me like a book with the screen time joke. That’s exactly what I would’ve said if she didn’t call me on it first.
“You better.” She touches my arm, and my whole body heats at the gesture. “I’m serious.”
Looking at her, it’s clear that she is, in fact, very serious. She’s giving me the same focused intensity I recognize from her days in the back corner at Rita’s, working on her laptop. She expects me to have an answer for her.
“I’m gonna get us another drink.” She slides off her stool to head over to the bar.
Watching her lean over the counter, smiling lazily at the bartender as she orders, I give myself permission to imagine, for only a moment, what it was like to be Vanessa—the person June used to come home to at the end of each night.
She must have been excited. Proud, even. Watching June from a distance must have given her constant butterflies. How could she ever say all those cruel things about her?
A familiar sourness starts to churn up in my gut.
In the end, she still broke up with June. She still hurt her.
I can spot the problems in someone else’s relationship without even needing to squint. June and Vanessa probably didn’t last because they were never very deep with each other in a real way. No truly meaningful relationship could ever be ended by a stranger ghostwriting a breakup text. If Vanessa’s view of June was that shallowly cruel, she’d never really seen her in the first place.
That’s not my problem. I know June likes Rita’s because it’s small and quiet. More than once she’s left when we’ve gotten a little busier than usual, and it doesn’t surprise me to have her contextualize that as anxiety. As for the being-alone thing, she started dating Vanessa not long after she asked me out, so that’s not new information either. If I think it through even further, she probably likes to look put together so she feels put together, doing whatever she can not to give space to all the things that make her overwhelmed. Smells comfort her because she can transport herself to a happier memory through a single spritz of perfume.
I have always seen her, and I’ve never once been put off by what she views as her weaknesses.
What I still don’t understand, after twenty-nine whole years on earth, is why that isn’t enough. Because my dad knows my mom. She knows him back. They’ve always been patient with each other’s struggles, sensitive to their individual wants and dreams. But no amount of couples counseling or date nights have eliminated the simmering bitterness between them—Mom resentful that Dad cheated, Dad resentful that Mom hasn’t let it go. Everything they’ve done on paper looks like a perfect recipe for repairing a broken relationship. And still.
It must be possible. I’ve filled my bookshelves with countless stories that tell me it is. Back in Trove Hills, I’d convinced myself I didn’t need to experience it for myself to believe it exists. Some people never find romance—some people don’t even want it—and that’s okay.
Being here, watching June at the bar, I know I do want it. Into my bones I know. I need it, really. I need to know I’m more than my history, more than the oldest daughter carrying the family on her shoulders, more than the one who can’t handle conflict. Who can’t do hard things.
I need to know I can break their cycle. Break my own cycle too.
So while June is learning how to be independent, this trip has to be something very different for me. This is the safest place to experiment, because I’m so far from home that whatever I do here won’t reach Trove Hills. I will dedicate this time to the hardest thing I’ve ever done—learning how to open myself up to real romance.
With anyone but June.