Chapter XVII
XVII
Teddy
At the airport, I shut myself into a bathroom stall so I can cry and call Carter before boarding the flight I rebooked on the way here.
“I’ll meet you in New York. We’ll do this together.
” It’s simple when he says it, like getting an MRI scan to rule out any other tumors is what every guy in his late twenties does when he’s overdue for a catch-up with his best friend.
The flight feels eternal, the liminal space offering an unwelcome home for every doubt and fear.
The scene of Marin and me at Tivoli plays out in slow motion, on repeat.
Our time in Copenhagen, entrapped as if in a snow globe, always felt destined to shatter.
I know better than to think things could be as simple forever as they were for one perfect week.
But the back-to-back blows I’ve been dealt today are made all the more painful by the sense that I should have seen them both coming. “Devastated” isn’t a big enough word.
Maybe I can win her back , I think. After I’m healthy.
My face crumples, and I turn toward the plane window to hide it as I’m struck with the heart-shattering reality: She doesn’t love me enough to go through this alongside me.
Mar loves me when it’s convenient, those nights she’s alone in a new city or needs a ride or wants to be reminded of the life she’ll never let herself return to.
Hope fades into something closer to resentment, but not enough to stop me from scrolling through the dozens of photos I took of us on my phone until the pilot announces our landing.
Carter’s there, waiting at the gate, a suitcase of his own in one hand and a posterboard scrawled with “It’s going to be OK” in the other. “Sloane’s made you watch too many rom-coms, man.” I laugh for the first time since getting the news and pull him in for a hug.
He squeezes me tighter. “I figured if I put it on a fucking sign, maybe we’d find it easier to believe.”
At first, with the constant beeping of machinery as my only consistent companion, Marin is the lone thing on my mind.
I must waste hundreds of hospital cafeteria napkins penning letters to her I never send.
Their content ranges from “I’m sorry” to “How could you?” before circling back to “I miss you.”
The true road to recovery starts with an all-beige short-term rental apartment in Rochester, Minnesota.
Dr.Ng thinks keeping a degree of normalcy, a.k.a.
my own toaster oven, will be important to the success of the treatment.
Basking in my autonomy, trying to ignore the couple across the hall scream-fighting at six in the morning, I butter some sourdough before heading in for a regular appointment.
I’m at Mayo Clinic most days, and when I’m not, I’m here.
My entire life has shrunk down in size. Even the heartbreak, which seemed to take residence in every crevice of my brain, has contracted over the month I’ve been here.
I think about Marin when I’m falling asleep, longing mixing with anger, sadness with grief, and I imagine her here.
Not because it feels realistic. But because the thought of it brings me back to my happiest self, before any of this seemed real.
I was ready to let my love for her dictate the rest of my life.
I turn the thought over and over one night while falling asleep, practically marveling at it.
In the hours I’ve spent staring off into space under an IV, I’ve considered every possible excuse for her reaction.
None of them pass inspection. She forced my hand.
Moving forward can’t involve her. What’s next has to be with someone new, someone who loves me—even when it terrifies them.
I have grand visions of keeping my life—my real life—on ice through my treatment, but after going back and forth over email with the Head of People at FourVC, that bubble bursts.
I can take twelve weeks of medical leave, but their policy doesn’t leave room for working from Minnesota.
They offer to pay for weekly first-class flights to and from the city and hint at a substantial severance package as the alternative.
It’s obvious this is the moment to use the emergency fund I’ve been saving for almost a decade.
They’ll extend my health insurance through the end of the following year, and getting better can be my only focus.
I don’t know that I want to hear from Marin, but this makes it all the more likely that I won’t.
During the second month of treatment, everything starts to shift into some kind of new normal, in the way that life does.
Carter flies up every other weekend. My mom and dad stay in the spare bedroom when they can, or my sister does, visiting from the University of Wisconsin.
We play board games on Friday nights and try not to talk about upcoming scans.
They all know I’m contending with something emotionally beyond this disease, but they don’t ask me to share.
I take great Midwestern comfort in their avoidance.
Marin
Violet and Sloane visit for spring break, and I plan an entirely new itinerary for their week with me, eliminating any stops that I test-drove with Teddy.
I keep us impossibly, exhaustingly busy, nervous that any downtime will invite conversation about what happened.
I plead with Violet to regale us with tales of undergrad antics and pepper Sloane with questions about the upcoming table read for the screenplay she finally finished.
I never once bring up my own emotional turmoil.
I don’t tell them that for the first time since the months that followed my dad dying, I wake up in the middle of every night drenched in cold sweat and unable to fall back asleep.
Dropping them off at the airport, I give Violet a Rolex watch, a smaller version of the one of my dad’s that I wear every day, as a graduation gift. “He would be so proud of you, V. I’m so proud of you.”
She pulls me in for a hug, one that says what we can’t, and when we step apart, she looks at Sloane, giving her the kind of sisterly nod that turns my stomach into an instant knot.
Sloane sighs, reaching a hand out for mine, but before she can make contact, I cross my arms.
“I’m sorry. About Teddy.” She forces eye contact. “It’s a really hard time for all of us, and I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I also know you’re not OK. I can’t—we can’t leave here without at least acknowledging it.”
I look away, toward the security line. We were so close to never addressing it, even if the tension was palpable every second of their visit.
“Sloane, I can’t—” I sigh, frustration overtaking me. I pull my mints from my bag. “Violet, head to your gate, OK? You don’t have to hear this, and you’re boarding soon anyway.”
I’m shocked to see Violet widen her stance, feet planted on the printed carpet. “You broke his heart, Mar.” Her indignant tone matches Sloane’s. “He’s sick. I don’t understand how you could do that.”
My eyes dart between both pairs of theirs, searching for something to anchor me.
“I... I... losing Dad almost killed me. I still carry it with me constantly, and it fills every crevice in my life that I don’t find a way to fill with something else.
I would do anything to avoid the hurt of that loss, and I have spent every day since trying to get further from it.
I can’t... I can’t go through that again. Not for Teddy, not for anyone.”
Sloane starts crying, quietly, her body pitching against Violet’s for support.
“He’s not anyone . Teddy is the love of your life, and that is so fucking obvious to everyone around you, and you’ll never get to know what that feels like as long as you’re scared to let anything happen beyond your control.
I love you. You’re my best friend. You know that. But I’m so disappointed in you.”
We stand in stunned silence as they wait for me to respond. When I don’t, Sloane kisses me on the cheek, then rests her palm on my jaw and locks eyes with mine like she’s trying to impart wisdom, strength, or both, before walking Violet to her gate.
Home, alone, without the warmth of playing slumber party with Sloane and Violet or the bliss of playing house with Teddy, my apartment feels pointless. What’s the meaning of all these artisanal dishes sitting empty in the cabinets? These beautiful throws I just want to hide under?
I distract myself with tidying, listening to “Nothing Compares 2 U” on repeat until the Bridget Jones vibes become too unbearable.
Changing my sheets, I notice one of Teddy’s threadbare Iowa T-shirts smashed between the mattress and the headboard.
The realization starts as a question, seeking any chink in the armor of my self-protection.
What if Sloane was right? What if the person who makes me forget that time exists, the person who has cataloged every single one of my emotions by how they present on my face, the person who shatters me with a single glance, is my way out of this hurt?
And what if the thing keeping me in this despair is me?
Maybe protecting myself from more heartbreak and any future grief is as pointless as pretending bad things don’t happen.
Folding the T-shirt, holding it against my chest, I let the revelation wash over me.
I’ve made a horrible mistake that I’ll never come back from, not as long as I care about Teddy enough to hope he can find the selfless partner he deserves.
I picture him in a hospital bed, and I don’t see my dad or think of myself.
I imagine being with him for this impossible, terrifying next thing.
The idea of him facing those endless appointments and complicated decisions and me being here sends me into a fresh bout of tears. That I ruined any chance of that.
I wash three sets of espresso cups, three forks, and three plates in the sink, aware of my loneliness, and commit to at least making amends with everyone I’ve been pushing away.
I write Sloane an apology email without proofreading it.
I leave Violet a voicemail telling her I’m going to start back up with therapy and saying sorry for not sharing what I’ve been going through.
For not being the sister she actually deserves by being one who opens up to her the way she does to me.
I call my mom. It’s been weeks since we last talked, and I’m nervous as the line rings. “Hello, Marin?” Just the sound of her voice undoes me. “Mom,” I whimper, curling into a corner. “I messed up.”
I haven’t come to her with a problem since middle school.
I always told myself it was because I didn’t want to give her anything else to deal with while I watched her buckle under the weight of her own grief, but I wonder if it might be because I didn’t want to need her.
Didn’t want to rely on a parent when I knew how abruptly they could be ripped away.
She listens as I sob into the phone, and she repeats that it’s going to be OK over and over again.
After a few minutes, I steady myself enough to ask if she knew my dad was the one, a conversation I’ve always meant to have with her.
“From the minute I saw him, doing donuts in his car in the snowy parking lot.” Her voice takes on a softer tone, the nostalgia making the conversation between us more tender than usual.
“And it terrified me at first, loving someone so much.” I wait, catching my breath from the crying.
“I waited for it to dissolve. But that fear, that never really went away. I just carried it with the love, and I still do, with you and Violet.”
She sends me to bed with the promise to call the next day—“just a quick hi, so I know you’re still with us”—and I hang up feeling if not better, exactly, then not entirely hopeless.
The next morning, I put off catching up on work and start drafting Teddy a letter. I’m rewriting it for the ninth time over lunch when I see Carter’s name flashing on my phone. I feel stuck on an inhale.
“Is he OK?” I answer. My relationship with Carter has always been mediated through Sloane, our shared connection with Teddy rarely acknowledged.
Carter clears his throat. I start pacing.
We’ve never spoken on the phone before, and the unfamiliarity of it puts me even more on edge.
“He will be. Marin, it’s a lot, everything with Teddy, and I wanted to ask you for something, and I know it’s awkward and probably doesn’t seem like my place, but it is my place because he’s my best friend, and—” Carter pauses, stumbling over his words, and I am desperate for him to just spit it out.
My mind is spinning with the possibilities of what he’s going to ask. Does Teddy need money? An organ?
“If you were thinking about it at all, and I don’t know if you were, but either way... please don’t reach out to him. Please let him heal on his own. You almost broke him in Copenhagen, and he needs every ounce of strength he can muster right now.”
All the regret and sadness I’ve been carrying throughout my body consolidates in a tight ball at the pit of my stomach.
“I know that... and I know how selfish I was. And I want to apologize to him.”
“He doesn’t want that right now.”
“He doesn’t want that, or you don’t?”
“He doesn’t.” Carter clears his throat again. “He told me.” A deep shame washes over me. I respond immediately. “Of course, Carter. I’m so sorry.” I start sobbing, the irreparable damage I’ve done setting in, and I don’t try to hide it.
Carter softens. “Mar, Sloane will make sure you hear if anything... big happens with him. We know you love him.”
I gasp for air. “Just please take care of him.”
I hang up without saying goodbye and force myself into the shower. As if I can pretend the tears aren’t pouring out of me if there’s water flowing over me too.
Wrapped in a robe, I turn back to my computer to delete the email I’ve been drafting to Teddy, but even I have to acknowledge that the level of emotion I’ve laid bare in text is something of a personal first. Instead of erasing it, I reach for a little hand-painted notebook I bought when I took Sloane and Violet to Etiket.
Cracking it open, I copy down every word, if only so I can have a record of how it feels to love someone like this.