Chapter VI
VI
Marin
It’s hard to argue with Gabby as I lean into a pool stance with one hand on a whiskey soda and one eye on the cue ball. Josie’s is electric. And sticky. And she herself is stunning, backlit by the streetlights outside the window and smiling at me. As I lean in for a kiss, I hear my name. “Marin?”
My instinctual response to that voice: delight.
That’s before I have time to start a list of a hundred reasons why it can’t be him.
Because there’s no way he stayed in the city after school.
I’m sure he moved back to Iowa and has sent out save the dates for a wedding at the DesMoines Botanical Garden in late spring.
As my rational brain makes its case, Teddy McCarrel steps in front of me and skims his fingers along the green felt of the table.
It’s like I’m seeing him in Technicolor after years of black and white.
His posture. The hints of copper in his brown hair.
Just the sight of his hands makes me embarrassed to remember all the times I’ve thought about his tongue brushing against mine while I’ve touched myself.
I might have gotten off at the thought of him as recently as last week.
That kiss, the wave goodbye from the curb, all of it lives staunchly in the past tense.
When I think about him, about those two days, it’s like the memory is encased in a museum—untouchable, protected, and precious.
Teddy is a relic to me, and to see him here, in present tense, throws off my balance.
I shift from heel to toe in my loafers, and the flutter I feel in my stomach makes me realize it’s been three years since I last felt this sensation.
I watch him reach toward me in what we both expect to be a bear hug, but he changes his mind with his arms extended and places his hand on my shoulder.
The weight of him there is somehow more intimate than the press of our bodies would have been.
It takes me back to the bucket seats, the manual windows, the busted radio, the fears shared.
His hair’s a little longer, and he seems right at home in New York, something I could have never guessed for the bright-eyed boy who dropped me off uptown.
But I’m not the same as I was then either.
I’ve been back to Iowa a few times—weddings, holidays, my grandma’s funeral.
Every ticket to DSM a step backward and every return flight to JFK a reminder that my real life is here, where I’ve become the version of myself I dreamed of ever since my dad died.
I’m ironclad. I can take care of myself.
I don’t need more than I have. And now Teddy, appearing in front of me, reminds me of all the ways he makes me feel otherwise.
“Hi, Teddy.” I lean my pool stick upright, reaching a hand out to shake his. I’m feigning formality, but really, I want to feel the press of his palm against mine. Gabby watches with amusement.
“It’s been so long,” he says, his eyes tracing the planes of my face. “Or... how are you?”
I think about the way we left things—the way I left things—and how as much as I’ve lingered on my memories of Teddy, it never occurred to me that I would ever see him again.
At twenty-two, I was too naive to know that New York could feel like a small town.
The sort of place where you run into the guy you have sex dreams about at a bar you’ve never been to before.
But I’m older now, and somehow, I still hadn’t thought to imagine this.
“Oh, hi, I’m Teddy.” As he reaches out to shake Gabby’s hand, I brace for the interaction to reverberate with awkwardness.
But I’m not giving Teddy enough credit for what seems to be his spiritual gift: charging through uncomfortable conversations with a disarming smile and the kind of casual confidence that puts him at ease in any social situation. I forgot how attractive it is.
He clears his throat and turns back toward me. “Where in the city are you these days?” It’s a safe question, one you can ask a colleague.
“Nearby,” I offer, unwilling to give specifics. I was planning on ordering in and getting laid. But here I am cagily introducing my not-quite girlfriend to my not-quite friend.
“Me, too, actually.” His eyes spark, like a challenge. “By Washington Square Park. I can’t believe we’re just now bumping into each other.”
“How do you guys know—” Gabby’s trying to read us, I realize.
“Iowa, technically. But make no mistake, Marin and I were not friends. I simply escorted her to the city in my busted, hand-me-down Buick at Sloane’s insistence, and then Marin told me she never wanted to see me again.”
Is that what I said?
“Sorry, who’s Sloane?” Gabby turns to me now, and it hits me. I’ve never mentioned my best friend to her in the four months we’ve been quasi together. Gabby doesn’t know the most important person in my life’s first name.
“Uh, my college roommate, sorry. I’m sure I’ve brought her up.
I haven’t seen her in a long time.” I try to downplay the relationship to soften the blow, but then I feel like an asshole for acting like Sloane means anything less to me than she does.
“She set up—not, like, romantically—she set up me and Teddy to drive here on graduation day.”
I try my best to look totally unfazed by the mess I’m making with this run-in and how I’ll have to clean it up later.
Teddy’s eyes search for mine, and I make an effort to avoid his gaze. The appropriate thing would be to actually introduce Gabby and tell him we’re dating, but I can’t bring myself to. “Nice catching up with you,” I say instead, reaching for my pool cue.
He laughs, like he’s genuinely charmed by my dismissiveness. “Is that what we just did? Well, hope to do it again soon.”
I tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear, and he tracks the movement, bites his lip, and turns back toward his group.
Determined to prove to myself and to Gabby that the Teddy run-in was in fact innocuous, I finish the game, grab her hand, and drag her to the musty bathroom.
“Who is that puppy dog of a man, and what did you do to him?” she asks as I slip off her jacket and sling it over the sink.
I laugh, kissing the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, but I’m finding it hard to focus.
“Teddy was my long-haul Uber driver. He was obsessed with Sloane.” I’m on my knees, pulling at Gabby’s jeans, desperate for her, trying not to correlate the sudden need I feel with the man I just saw.
I am reckless, untethered. It was that call with Sloane earlier , I tell myself.
It has nothing to do with seeing the ghost of Teddy Past.
“Hey—” She plays with my braid. “Can this wait until we’re back at yours?
” She’s trying to let me down gently. She’s seen me hungry but never.
.. depraved. Never with all caution and cleanliness abandoned.
“Come on,” she says, reaching for my elbow.
“I’ll get you a real drink somewhere with proper lighting. ”
As we settle into a bar down the street with twenty-dollar cocktails, I take in Gabby.
She is the most beautiful person here, easy.
And yet, I am angled toward the street, straightening my back at the sight of anyone who looks remotely like Teddy walking by.
I refuse to try to determine whether it’s something I’m avoiding or all I’m hoping for.
Gabby takes a work call outside, and I join her to smoke.
The ancient cigarette at the bottom of my bag’s a pretty lame excuse to scan the other side of the street.
Her face hardens on the phone, one hand blocking the other ear.
“It’s kind of important.” She rolls her eyes.
“I have to deal with it. But it’ll just be a few hours.
Finish your drink. I’ll meet you back at yours. ”
I don’t know what time it is, but I nod. I kiss the corner of her mouth goodbye.
Living in the city feels like a fact of my life, as natural as the weather.
But nursing a Manhattan alone at a bar on a Wednesday night is exactly the type of scenario that reminds me of the wonder and improbability of it all.
I pay the tab and walk the sidewalks the same way I used to when I first got here.
I try to push Teddy into the recesses of my subconscious in the same way I used to when I first got here.
All I’ve programmed myself to care about is work, my sister, my mom, and Sloane.
Realizing I never told Gabby about Sloane, let alone my dad, makes my stomach turn.
I can’t land on a reasonable explanation.
I decide to keep wandering while my feelings crystallize.
The farther I inch my way uptown, the clearer my desires become.
I might not know exactly what my next move is, but I am sure of one thing: There’s only one way to end this night.
Teddy
Of course the first time I see Marin in three years, she’s making out with the second-most beautiful woman in Josie’s.
My instinct was to run onto the street, call Carter, tell him that not only do I think about Marin every day but that I just saw her, in the flesh, as if his call conjured her.
But instead I stayed put, because it meant that I could watch her, even if only out of my peripheral vision, even if it was to see her slip into the bathroom with someone else. She’s still Marin. I’m still me.