8. Anya’s Party, October 2016
“Let’s hope we don’t lose Kristie to Mumbai next,” Sarah said as she opened a packet of colorful party napkins. “I feel like we just got her back from L.A.”
“Well, I can’t fault her taste in men. The new guy is gorgeous and has three hundred thousand followers on Instagram.
And speaking of, Ren is as beautiful as ever, I assume?
” Anya ran a hand through her long blond hair.
Her fashion sense had turned more practical since becoming a mother: she had moved from flowing white dresses to flowing embroidered shirts over jeans.
“Oh yes, still stunning. And he…” Sarah took a breath. “He kissed me and then announced that we should definitely not sleep together and left.”
Anya paused in the middle of pouring a bowl of chips to stare at her.
“Or maybe, more accurately, I threw myself at Ren and he turned me down.” Sarah busied herself with the napkins.
“Oh my God.” Anya blinked. “Oh my God, Sarah.”
Sarah shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“Is it?” A long moment passed.
“Here’s what bothers me,” Sarah admitted at last. “I saw him leaving the hotel room of some redhead the morning I arrived. He met her during Paul’s bachelor party and slept with her, apparently, but then somehow he couldn’t possibly bring himself to sleep with me.”
“Well, he’s always been weird about you.”
“But why? I mean, he literally went through my whole friend group…I don’t mean…I don’t mean, like, he went through you all.”
Anya laughed. “God, he was so hot and so uninterested in an actual relationship. You know what he told me to get me into bed? That philosophically, I owed it to myself to explore my sexuality. Like sleeping with him was something I should do for myself, like treating myself to a manicure.”
Sarah gave a weak smile.
“Okay so…” Anya considered her. “What exactly happened?”
“Well, we were flirting, I guess. I mean his divorce had just been finalized, which I hadn’t even known about until I got there.
But we seemed to be flirting. And then he came to my hotel room, and we were kissing, and I admitted to having been kind of in love with him at university and he said we had to stop. ”
“Oh,” Anya said. “Okay. That makes sense.”
“And just to be clear, I didn’t say I loved him or expected a relationship. He lives in Nevada.”
“No, but that makes sense. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years, but at McGill he was…you know, he was Ren. The hot intellectual who had a two-week shelf life as a boyfriend. But with you, he was this other person.”
“Because he wasn’t attracted to me.”
“No. That’s a very you thing to say, Sarah, but no. You may not realize this, but Ren used to talk about you when you weren’t there. Like, ‘Sarah would hate that.’ Or ‘Sarah loves that book.’ It drove Kristie crazy.”
“He just thought I was a big nerd.”
“It wasn’t just about nerdy stuff. It was everything. Like, ‘Hey, what movie should we put on?’ ‘Let’s ask Sarah when she gets back.’ Kristie was convinced he was in love with you, which is one reason she split with him. She thought you were going to get together. She never told you this?”
“No.”
Anya shrugged. “She probably didn’t want to get your hopes up.
And then he didn’t ask you, and you started dating Ivan like three weeks later.
But my point is… He wasn’t necessarily in love with you, but it was like you were the only person whose opinion mattered.
” Anya shrugged. “So maybe when he found out you liked him, he realized he could have had a real relationship the whole time and it freaked him out.”
“He said that I was only attracted to assholes, so I must have liked him because he was one.”
Anya raised her eyebrows. “I mean…”
“It’s not true, though. I didn’t know Ivan was an asshole when I started dating him. I thought he was a sensitive guy who was in touch with his feelings.”
“Oh, he was,” Anya agreed with a grin. “It was everybody else’s feelings that he struggled with.”
Sarah sighed, feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness. “It just hurt.”
“Men that handsome are nightmares,” Anya said. “Because they can get away with it. But you know what? I’m going to introduce you to some nice, normal guys at this party. There are at least two single men coming.”
“Oh, no. No way.”
“Just meet them,” Anya said. “Have a normal date with a normal human being. It’s the best way to get over what happened. Trust me.”
Anya was as good as her word. As soon as the guests arrived, Anya introduced Sarah to Danny, a personable actor in his early thirties who was a puppeteer and had just been hired to run the weekend programming at Anya’s theater.
Danny explained that he had agreed to perform a free puppet show for the children at Anya’s party in exchange for a six-pack of his favorite beer.
“I take the big offers where I can get them,” he joked.
“So does your agent get ten percent of the beer?” Sarah asked.
“That’s the problem with an acting career. Once you pay your agent and manager, there’s not much left of the six-pack.”
Danny wasn’t precisely handsome, but he had the kind of face that you liked immediately: soft brown eyes, round nose, freckled cheeks. He asked for her number at the end of the night, and within three weeks, they had been on six dates and already felt like a couple.
Everything about Danny felt safe. The biggest difference between him and her previous boyfriends was that he so clearly wanted to be with her.
Sarah had never been with anyone so eager for things to work out, so eager to get married.
He talked about having kids within weeks of dating her—not as a definite thing, but as a hypothetical that he was excited about.
He loved her baby photo series, he admitted, because he loved babies.
Having a guy who was serious about their future changed the whole dynamic of the relationship, Sarah discovered.
It meant that they were both willing to make compromises.
It meant that he listened to her concerns and apologized more often.
By November, they were already making plans for him to come home for Christmas to meet her mother.
Danny’s mother had died when he was a teenager and his father wasn’t in the picture, so he was eager to experience Christmas morning in Sarah’s tiny house in the woods.
On Sarah’s birthday in November, three days after she and Danny had booked their flights to Newfoundland, she received a text from Ren.
Happy birthday Sarah. I am sorry I went silent.
I know I owe you a huge apology. Jandro will be visiting his grandparents in Mexico City for Christmas and I was planning a short trip to Toronto then.
I wondered if I could meet up with you while I’m in town.
I want to talk to you and apologize in person.
I’m really sorry, she wrote back. I will be in Newfoundland for Christmas. My boyfriend Danny and I are visiting my mother. I am sorry to miss you in Toronto. Maybe we can talk by phone.
Half an hour later, he replied. Good to hear that things are going well for you.
Thanks. I hope they are going well for you, too, she said.
He didn’t text her again, not about Christmas or anything else.
She texted him to wish him a happy birthday the following summer, and he wrote back a polite ‘Thank you, Sarah. I hope you are well.’ She was already married.
The wedding ceremony with Danny happened in the spring of 2017 near Sarah’s hometown in Newfoundland.
It was a simple affair: Sarah and Danny didn’t have much money, and they were both in their thirties and ready to start trying for kids.
They booked a restaurant overlooking the water in St. John’s, and Anya, Winnie, and Kristie made the trip out.
Sarah’s high school friend Marie got drunk and gave an amusing impromptu speech about their escapades in high school theater and why everyone should have known that Sarah would marry a puppeteer, and Paul made a cheerful speech about how Sarah had always been there for other people and it was nice to have someone who would be there for her.
Paul’s father had recently passed away, so Paul got a little emotional during the speech.
He was still doing improv but dealing with his mother’s escalating emotional demands, exactly as Sarah had feared.
Trish didn’t make the wedding because she was on some kind of a documentary shoot.
When Sarah and Danny flew home to Toronto, Sarah felt like her real life was finally starting.
She had the career she had always wanted as a photographer and was still paying her rent with the continued success of her Existential Innocence series.
She had good friends, went to fun parties, and had a lifetime commitment from a man who adored her and wanted to start a family.
And that should have been her happy ending.
And it almost was.
It almost wasn’t a disaster.