Chapter 7
The rest of the weekend is an effort to stay distracted, which proves much more difficult than anticipated.
A few years ago it would have been easy; I would’ve picked up the phone and called Travis to meet me downtown for a movie, or Jillian, so she could drag me to a museum.
I would force Josh to go to yoga with me or Maggie to a thrift store.
Maybe I would even collect all of them and spend the day abusing the bottomless mimosa policy at Lucky Cheng’s brunch cabaret like we had so many times before.
But there’s no one to call now. No one just a few subway stops away, to come and offer me respite from my own thoughts.
So instead I turn on an old episode of The Real Housewives of New York City and hope the women’s ill-fated getaway to the Berkshires will keep my loneliness at bay.
Then I go to yoga alone, check emails, do more yoga, complete the next three weeks’ worth of case law reading assignments, and wait for Monday when I can go to school and be distracted by that instead.
Which is exactly why I’m dressed and walking out the door at seven o’clock Monday morning.
My public policy seminar isn’t until ten, but in the meantime, there is a pile of assignments I need to grade and about a million emails from Frank’s students, wondering what will happen while he’s out on medical leave.
All very boring, very monotonous, and very good for keeping my brain occupied.
Unfortunately, for the entire subway ride downtown, my brain refuses to comply.
By the time I climb the steps up to West Fourth Street, the memory of Friday night is like a new favorite toy, one I keep coming back to, pondering the different ways it could have played out, what could have happened if—
The dull sound of ringing breaks my train of thought. I don’t slow my steps as I reach into the various pockets of my bag, pulling my phone out and clumsily bringing it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Hey, what’s up?” Jill’s voice stops me in the middle of the sidewalk.
Fuuuuuuck , I mouth to the sky, causing an old man to pause and stare in horror at me before he continues down the street.
I should have looked at my phone before answering, given myself a moment before being completely ambushed.
But now I have been cornered and the only answer I can think of is: “What?”
“Bea?” Jillian says, as if our crystal-clear connection might be bad.
“Oh, hey, Jills,” I reply lamely.
“Hey. Sorry, I was avoiding my phone all weekend, trying to forget about the divorce for more than five minutes, so I only just got your message. You okay?”
“Yeah, yes.” I continue walking, trying to slow my drumming pulse. “I’m great. Totally great.” I am not great. “I just… wanted to check in.”
“Nothing to report, really. Same old, same old.”
“Well, that’s good,” I say, and wince because of course that’s not good. The same old is awful. But my brain isn’t functioning properly, and the fact that I’m aware of this only makes it go more haywire.
Jillian laughs as if there’s an implied joke in my reply. “So, what’s going on with you? Your message said you had to tell me something.”
“Oh, right. Well… It’s nothing really.” I take a deep breath. “There was just this event thing on Friday.”
“Okay,” she says, then pauses. “Did something happen?”
“No. Why?”
“Because your voice sounds weird.”
“It doesn’t sound weird.” It does, in fact, sound weird.
“Bea.”
I cringe. “Okay. So, Nathan Asher was there.”
Jillian groans. “Is he going to get a restraining order or something?”
“No?” I reply, only realizing after I say it that I’m not entirely sure.
“Why did you say that like it was a question?”
I laugh. It sounds absolutely maniacal. “It was fine! I’m fine!”
“Are you sure?”
This is the moment I could tell her about the kiss.
I could tell her everything. But the words get caught in my throat, wrapped up in how much pain it will cause, how she’ll see it as another betrayal, maybe the final one that will fracture our small group beyond repair.
So I follow Maggie’s advice and swallow the words back.
Whether Jillian knows or not won’t change anything.
It’s done and it’s never happening again.
“I just… I wanted you to know that I saw him and we talked and everything is fine.”
“Well, as long as it was fine,” she says. I can hear her smile in the words. “Listen, I was going to call you today anyway. I have a favor to ask you.”
The light changes and I cross the street, ignoring the blaring horn of the taxi that tried to beat me to the corner. The kernel of guilt in my stomach is distracting me, and I know it doesn’t matter what she asks—I will absolutely do it. “Sure, what do you need?”
“Can you pick up something from the apartment?”
The tension in my body is replaced by a familiar dread. “I thought we got everything.”
“I thought we did, too, but Josh emailed me last night. I guess the cabinet above the fridge still has all my bakeware in it.”
“Jills, I’ve never seen you bake anything in your entire life.”
“It’s all my grandma’s vintage Pyrex. You know, the white with the blue-and-orange designs on the side?”
“I thought you were trying to convince me.”
“Bea,” she says with a sigh. She already knows I’m going to say yes. She knew before she called because I would kill her before I’d let her go to that apartment again. Even the idea of her having to see Josh, talk to him… I can already feel the embers of my anger poking at my chest.
“Okay,” I mutter. “I’m downtown, so I’ll head there and grab it now.”
“You’re already at school?”
“I’m researching how much it would cost to hire a hit man to break Josh’s legs and it’s safer to do it on the school’s network.”
She laughs. “Well, thank you. For the dishes, not the hit man.”
“You’re welcome.”
“It shouldn’t be too much, just one box.”
“What do you want me to do with it once I get it?” I ask, readjusting my bag as I turn the corner. The wind whips down Sixth Avenue, sending leaves and debris and my curls into the air.
“Just hold on to it until the next time I see you.”
And when will that be? I want to ask. But I don’t. Because we don’t discuss it, the slow erosion of those norms that only a few years ago had felt so solid.
“Okay,” I reply.
“Oh, and Bea?”
“Yeah?”
“Be nice.”
My sneakers crunch along the last remnants of snow on the sidewalk as I make my way down through the Village to Barrow Street.
I used to love this walk to Josh and Jillian’s apartment, each block crowded by looming oak trees, their bare branches softening the city’s hard edges.
The further west you walk, the more intricate the architecture, turrets and windows, and carefully curated stoops that make it feel like you’re suddenly on a movie set.
Now, as I continue forward, hugging my pathetically thin coat tight around my body, the street doesn’t have the same veneer anymore; it feels desaturated. Stale.
Per usual, the front door of the building is unlocked, so I don’t bother buzzing up to the second-floor apartment.
I let myself in and climb the steps to the front door with the familiar welcome sign still hanging on it.
I could knock. Normally, I would. But I see the brass button for the doorbell just there on the wall.
It looks brand-new because it is. Jillian installed it to play Beethoven’s Fifth every time it’s rung, and I also know Josh absolutely hates it, which is why I press it.
Then I press it again.
I press again and again until I hear footsteps inside coming closer. The door flies open and I see Tex first, tongue out and tail wagging like he’s happy to see me. And there beside him is a person who is decidedly not.
Josh’s dark hair is mussed, his tall frame is clad in sweats, and for a moment the scene reminds me of so many mornings when I would grab him for class.
For breakfast. Just to talk. But now it’s obvious he didn’t bother to look through the peephole, because the minute he sees me his shoulders slump and his head falls back.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
Josh has always been good-looking, the kind of guy you look at and just know was voted prom king in high school and regularly dressed up as Clark Kent for Halloween.
But right now, that person seems like a faint memory.
This Josh is thin, which accentuates the stubble on his square chin.
He needs a haircut, too; his black locks are long and flat like they haven’t been washed in a while. The divorce is taking its toll.
I push the concern away and offer him a saccharine smile. “Hello to you, too.”
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Picking up Jill’s baking stuff.”
He murmurs something under his breath and turns back inside, with Tex following close behind.
I follow him, too, sweeping my gaze across the living room.
It looks hollow, even more so than when we left with Jill’s things the week before.
There’s no art on the walls now, no rug on the hardwood floor.
It even smells different, the sharp odor of stale Chinese food mixes with the lingering tinge of that vanilla candle Jillian used to burn.
The scene would be incredibly sad if I allowed myself to feel sorry for him.
I stay in step behind Josh until we reach the kitchen.
It’s just as empty, but at least there’s evidence that someone is living here.
The dining table is still in the center of the room, but Jill’s mid-century chairs have been replaced by a lone metal folding one set up in front of a laptop and an array of Chinese take-out containers.
Tex’s bed is still under the table, too.
He’s already collapsed into it, with his legs sticking out the sides.
“Where’s Jillian?” Josh asks, leaning a hip against the table and crossing his arms over his chest.
“I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to ask that anymore.”
There’s disappointment in his expression. I recognize it even though his eyes are still sharp and staring daggers at me. Then he nods to a box on the floor by the kitchen doorway.
I kneel down to pick it up. It’s heavy and he hasn’t bothered to wrap any of the delicate dishes in paper, so they clink together, a warning of their fragility as I struggle to maintain my grip.
Josh watches me, not moving to help. “I heard you went to see my lawyer.”
I shift my weight, resting the heavy box against one hip as I raise my chin and pray my expression is blank. “Is that what you heard?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Well, he also said that you deserve alimony for doing absolutely nothing, so let’s take his word with a grain of salt, shall we?”
He scoffs, like he’s disgusted. “Why do you have to be such a bitch all the time, Bea?”
My expression hardens and I shrug. My arms are starting to burn with the weight of the box, but I don’t dare let it show. “Probably because you deserve it.”
“But what else is there?”
My eyebrows knit together. “What?”
“I mean, when you finally decide to stop being a bitch, what’s left?
You’ve spent so much time getting angry on behalf of everybody else, expelling so much fucking energy trying to keep our little group together, because you don’t have anything else.
And you still failed. So after this is done and we’re all off living our own lives without you, I’m wondering what’s left for you besides just being a bitch. ”
I stare back at him, meeting his narrowed gaze.
The morning sun frames him in a warm glow, softening the hard planes of his face, the vicious line of his jaw.
His expression is filled with such vitriol, but in this light there’s a sudden hint of the man he was eleven years ago.
Back when we met during our first week at Fordham.
The memory comes roaring back now: how he tried to kiss me at an off-campus party but I told him to fuck off, only to have him show up again a couple of hours later, right as a guy I didn’t know was trying to force me to leave with him.
I had been so afraid and overwhelmed, and then there was Josh, appearing like some tall, preppy, semi-drunk guardian angel.
He ended up punching the guy so hard he knocked him out.
And just like that, we were inseparable—the big brother I never had.
He would come to my dorm room at all hours, and we’d talk about school and life and what the hell we were doing about any of it.
He had been there to hold me when I got the call from a Pittsburgh hospital that my grandmother had died.
He listened to every rant about my mom’s numerous divorces.
I was there when he got injured in that football game against Dartmouth, to yell at him when he forced himself back onto the team too soon afterward, just to keep his scholarship.
And I helped him when he struggled with the painkillers long after his ruptured Achilles had healed.
Along the way we picked up the rest of our crew—Jillian and Maggie and Travis—but to me Josh was always that guy from freshman year, a boy trying so hard to act tough, when really, he was just as scared as the rest of us.
But now, he’s a stranger.
“Have a nice life, Josh,” I say. And then I turn around and walk out the front door.