Chapter 29
29
Tatum
The grocery store had one last package of the break-and-bake cookies Carson and I love, and I’m pulling them out of the oven when Carson shows up at the cottage. These cookies have always been our comfort food. Whenever something bad happens in our life—a failed test in the school days, a bad day at work now, and on the rare occasion, like heartbreaks we can’t speak about—we bake them up and pick a movie to watch. Then we rot on the couch together until we feel a bit better.
As soon as Carson sees the tray of oozing chocolate chips, they back up, startled by their presence.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” they ask.
“She’s just scared,” I say. “I think if you explained to her how you feel, she’d come back. But until then, I figured we could couch rot.”
“What did she tell you?” Carson asks, uninterested in any of my solutions.
I explain what Eleanor said about their different lives, and how she’s got a whole world in New York, watching as each piece of information seems to devastate them anew. It’s agony, but I force myself to say it all. It’s better if they have every piece of information.
“I’ve seen the way she lives,” I say. “And I know she’s had a hard life. She doesn’t think she deserves someone as good as you. It’s not true, but it’s what she believes.”
Carson puts their head in their hands. “What am I going to do about it? Fly to New York and ask to live with her?”
“You could,” I say earnestly. Pitching this is a bold move considering the question I’ve been sitting on, but it’s always been easier for me to see someone else’s answers.
Carson gives me a look of disgust that’s so complete, so fully realized, it could be used to teach babies different expressions.
“That’s what people do in movies,” they tell me, committing to their role as the bitter cynic the same way I commit to Waitress Tatum. They need this performance, and it isn’t the time for me to tell them that’s all it is—an act. “I am not inside a movie. I barely have enough money to pay rent next week, because I still haven’t gotten the first advance check from the park district for the mural I’m going to do for them. This isn’t the time for me to be flying off and asking a woman I’ve known for a week to give me a real chance.”
They want me to think they’re unaffected by deep feelings and big gestures. But it isn’t true. Longing flows through their every action. I know, because when I was a kid I used to sneak into their room and read their journals. And I also know because it’s a trait we share—a desire to be loved with exclamation points.
I want so badly for them to be happy. I want them to get this chance at love, knowing full well they’ve never let themself get anywhere near this close to it before.
“I have to go,” they say abruptly.
“To the airport?” I ask, half joking, half serious. “I can drive you.”
Maybe this is the nudge I need to do the same thing. Maybe Carson and I can do it together.
“No, Tatum, I’m not going to the airport. I’m going home to stare at my wall for twelve hours. Then I’ll make myself some microwavable mac and cheese. Maybe I’ll get really fancy and pair it with the Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s that’s actually, like, five dollars now. Then I will rot in my bed for the next twelve hours. Then I will get up, and I will build a fucking chair or something, and eventually, everything will go back to the same nothing it’s always been.”
“Come on,” I say, gesturing to the living room. “You’ve never missed a couch session with me.”
“This is different.”
And in my heart, I know it is. This isn’t like when Carson asked a girl to the dance senior year, and the girl pretended to misunderstand them completely instead of rejecting them. Whatever Carson had with Eleanor was brief, but it seems like it was realer than anything they’ve had in a very long time.
I know because I’m right there with them. We’re in the same boat, side by side, much the way we’ve always been.
“At least take a cookie for the road,” I say, handing them the plate.
“I’m not hungry. But thank you.” They head for the door, leaving the same way Eleanor did, fast and wounded.
Maybe it’s not love. Maybe it can’t be love that fast. But the care they’ve built in my absence has turned into something much bigger than I’ve ever personally seen Carson experience.
I can rewrite this scenario for them, coming up with a hundred ways they get their happy ending. I wish Carson would be brave enough to let in the good. But wouldn’t that mean I’d have to do the exact same thing?
Maybe I need to show them. Maybe I can be brave first.
I get out my phone and call June.
“Hi,” she answers. Right away, her tone is wrong.
“Hey,” I say, infusing every ounce of warmth into my own voice in return, hoping she’s just had a bad day and I can help her through it. “Sorry it’s taken me a minute to call. The family stuff has been overwhelming.”
She already knows this. We’ve been texting, mostly updates about Laney. Pictures of Eleanor’s cats. All the exchanges she’s had with Dawn. We haven’t discussed her question, because it wasn’t a conversation for texting. I’d told her I’d call.
And here I am, calling.
She’s aware this moment is the big one. The decision.
“I’m sorry,” she says, tone still cool.
“How’s New York?” I ask, feeling stuck in these pleasantries like we’re back at Rita’s, incapable of admitting our real feelings.
“It’s good. I think I found an apartment.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ll send you pictures in a bit.”
It’s the perfect segue into what I’m about to say, and I take a breath, composing myself. In that silence, June says, “Tatum,” low and serious.
My whole body stiffens.
“I know I asked you to come live here with me,” she continues. “And I meant it. I really did. I want you here, because I want to be around you all the time. But I’ve had some time to think about it, and I know I also want you here because I’m afraid to be here by myself. I’m doing what I always do, rushing into this, making it way too serious too soon.”
“What happened to let’s just try?” I ask, my head still buzzing from what I was just going to do, the answer I was moments from giving before she pulled the rug out from under me. “What happened to run toward the unknown?”
“I know.”
“Don’t I get a voice?” I ask her. “I don’t have to live with you. You can have your own space. But what if I want to live there too?”
“Do you?” she asks. It’s flat. Not excited or hopeful. But not angry either. She’s not placing any expectation on it.
I am, though. I’m expecting an eager yes to fall out of my mouth. Instead all I can manage is, “I…might.”
“Your family,” she says, filling in the piece I haven’t yet said.
“They’d understand.” Because they would, in time. But I know that I can’t go running again. Not right now. I can’t leave in the middle of us figuring out how to actually be a family.
“Tatum.” She says my name so carefully, the way you’d talk to a wounded child. “This is for the best. We got out before it hurt too bad, just like you wanted.”
It’s not true. This still hurts just as much as it would’ve if we’d been together a year. A lifetime.
Maybe it hurts more, because we only got a week.
“Congratulations, June,” I say, meaning it. “I hope New York treats you well.”
It’s petty, and a bit irrational, but I hang up, unable to keep this conversation going a second longer.
All this time, I expected I would be the one to break June’s heart.
I never thought that June could break mine.