5
THE TO-GO MARGARITAShad been Lydia’s idea, grabbed at the Mexican restaurant around the corner from the office.
“Nothing says rest like tequila!” she toasted before popping her straw through the top of the plastic cup. The drinks sloshed in our hands as we walked across the Congress Street Bridge toward my apartment, navigating the usual sidewalk traffic that made up Boston’s crooked cobblestone streets on a Friday night.
“You don’t need to walk me home, you know,” I said with a raised brow to Lydia, who met my skeptical look with her own, enhancing it with a loud slurp of her drink.
“And you don’t need to tell me what to do,” she replied, booze-sass mode activated. “Technically you’re on a micro-sabbatical right this very second, remember?”
“What a terrible, made-up word.” My eyes rolled as I sucked up another ice-cold gulp, the tequila going down easy. “She should have called it a playcation, or something cute that actually makes you want to do it.”
“Wow, playcation.” Lydia nodded, giving me an approving look. “I like it. See? This time off is already doing you some good.”
“Shh, you sound too much like Amaya,” I said, and she let out a cackle. “I can still work even if I’m not in the office, you know. You’ve seen how much we have left to do for Alewife.”
“Clara, I know it’s hard to believe, but the pitch will survive without you for one week,” she said as we crossed the street in front of the Old State House building, lit up in all its ancient, redbrick glory. This time, there was not a trace of sarcasm in her voice.
“Maybe I can convince her to let this sabbatical thing wait until after the pitch,” I offered, a reasonable compromise. “I’m going to email her this weekend once she’s sobered up.”
“You already told Sam you were coming!” Lydia said.
“I’m sure she’d understand,” I reasoned. “She knows how important this job is to me.”
“I just don’t get what’s so bad about taking a break.” Lydia rarely let things get to her, but tonight her frustration with me was palpable.
I didn’t have words sharp enough to describe the sinking feeling that plagued my stomach at night, when it was just me and my thoughts, curled up together in bed. Work was my only distraction, and the thought of being without it to focus on was terrifying. Voicing those fears aloud was even worse.
“I just like being busy,” I said instead, and was met with an exasperated sigh as we rounded the corner to my apartment building.
“Oooh,” she admired, gazing up at the sleek, black facade, an endless wall of windows. “I can’t believe I still haven’t seen this place.”
“Don’t get too excited,” I said dryly, waving my fob in front of the keypad. “It’s more like a dorm for finance and biotech bros.”
I’d chosen this apartment without much thought, and I’d signed the lease while functioning with a post–breakup brain that was operating in survival mode. It was reasonably priced, close enough to work, and had a dishwasher. Worked for me.
Lydia laughed as the glass door swung open, welcoming us into the sterile lobby, with its pristine marble floors and bright neon lighting. “Shit, I see what you mean.”
“Right?” I said as she followed me over to the mailroom, where I unlocked my tiny silver box and pulled out a stack of what was surely junk mail.
“Dentist office waiting room chic,” she said, analyzing the large, ornate topiary in the corner. “But, like, a fancy dentist.”
It was an accurate assessment. This place had the personality of dried dog poop, but it had been easy—elevator building, gym on the top floor, and the apartment came partially furnished. All I’d had to do was move in. But enough time had passed that it felt like it should feel like home. And this was, well, not that.
The elevator chugged its way up to the twenty-fourth floor, and when I finally cracked open the door to my studio, she let out a cautious, “Okay.”
I tossed the mail onto the pile that had already taken shape on the tiny kitchen table and watched as she made her way around the room, stopping to pause in front of the windowsill.
“You murdered Richard!” She gasped, pinched the drooping, yellowed leaf of my snake plant—her holiday gift to me this past year—between two fingers, examining it with a grimace. “I have to hand it to you, Clara. This is, like, the hardest houseplant to kill, and yet somehow, you’ve done it.”
“Please don’t use that plant to make some sort of metaphor for the state of my life right now,” I warned, plopping my drink down on the table and scooting onto a chair.
“That plant had a name, Clara,” she corrected. “And I don’t need to say anything when Richard says it all, don’t you think? Farewell, sweet angel.”
I raised my margarita somberly. “May he rest in peace.”
She turned and walked toward me with a devious grin. “But seriously, you need to inject some sign of life into this place.”
“It’s basically just corporate housing,” I said quickly. I still mourned the loss of the South End apartment I’d shared with Charles, with its giant bay window that practically sucked in the sunshine, and the sliver of garden in the back that overflowed with lilacs each spring. It had felt like a living, breathing thing. This place felt like a funeral home.
At first it had seemed too permanent to decorate my new apartment, and I’d assumed I wouldn’t be here more than a couple of months. But two months turned into four, and then six. I pondered putting some art up on the walls, but every choice left me frozen with indecision. What did I—me, Clara, all on my own—even like? I had no clue. And so I did nothing.
Well, not absolutely nothing. I did kill Richard.
“Yeah, but you’re not corporate housing,” Lydia crowed, hands on hips. “You are better than this beige carpet and”—she wandered over to my fridge and let out a huff—“one pet adoption flier from six months ago.”
“I was thinking about getting a dog,” I explained with a shrug. “There’s no way, though. I’m too busy. I took it off my list.”
“Get the dog!” she said, her voice landing somewhere between amused and exasperated. “Slap some art on these walls! Stain this carpet!”
She jokingly tilted her cup, which was half full of strawberry margarita, toward the floor, and I yelped.
“Don’t! I want to get my deposit back.”
“I wouldn’t actually do it,” she said as she yanked out the chair across from me and sat down with a huff. “But can I be real with you?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“You’re an amazing boss. I know you’d go to bat for me, the same way you always show up for everyone at work. For Amaya. The same way I know you showed up for Charles too. But you need to start showing up for yourself.”
“You sound like one of those posters with the cat hanging from a tree branch,” I said, reaching forward and sliding the stack of mail toward me.
“I have no idea what that is,” she said.
“Are you kidding me?” I raised my brows at her, horrified.
“Excuse me if I don’t get all of your old-person references,” she scoffed back. “Seriously, though, Clara. You know how my dad died right at the beginning of my sophomore year in high school?”
I softened my expression, nodding. She’d told me about losing her dad in a car accident in bits and spurts, but I never pushed it, wanting to give her space to share her grief on her own terms.
“Well, after that I threw myself into building my art portfolio. My dad was a photographer, went to art school at RISD, moved to New York City, all that shit. So I thought that’s what I should do too. What I was supposed to do. And so it was all I did. Obsessively. For over two years I devoted all my time to art so I could follow in his exact footsteps.” She threw up her hands, making her point. “And you know what I didn’t do?”
I shook my head, not entirely sure where she was going with this.
“I didn’t deal with my grief,” she continued. “I didn’t do anything for myself that truly made me happy. I don’t even think I really wanted to go to art school. It was just what I felt like I should do, which is probably why RISD rejected me.”
“Well, I’m selfishly glad that you ended up at Northeastern, because it means you got to be my intern,” I said as I fiddled with the lid of my now-empty cup.
“That’s not the point of this story!” she scolded.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. Continue.” I waved her on.
“I want you to get out there and fucking live, that’s all!” Lydia smacked her palms on the table emphatically, leaning forward. “I think you’ve been doing what you’ve thought you should do for so long that you don’t even know what it is you want. And don’t make some dumb fucking dad joke about wanting pizza or something right now, to deflect from this conversation.”
I let out a snort of a laugh. “Am I that obvious?”
“Most of the time, yes.” She slumped back in her chair, like this talk had exhausted her.
“Thank you for sharing that,” I said, tilting my gaze to catch her eye. “Seriously.”
“But?” she asked, still wary.
“But,” I said as I slipped off my sneakers and curled my legs in my chair, “what if I go away for a week and nothing’s changed? Or what if I go, and I still screw things up with this Alewife pitch? It’s just not what I’m supposed to be doing right now.”
I’m supposed to land Alewife, run the account, and snag a promotion, I thought to myself, refocusing. I’d repeated these goals over the last few months like a mantra, written them over and over in my notebook, as if they could save me from that sinking feeling of dread that plagued me when my thoughts drifted to anything other than work.
And sometimes they actually did.
“Were you not just at the same office party I was at?” Lydia cracked, and I avoided what was surely a look of disbelief, turning my focus to the mail pile in front of me.
“Go to New Hampshire! See your friends. Relive your past,” she continued, leaning forward to tap me on the hand as I riffled through the stack of catalogs, yanking out the occasional bill. “Get out of here for a little bit. Go run naked through the woods.”
“Excuse me?” I paused and looked up, giving her a look. “What the hell kind of camp do you think I went to?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never been to sleepaway camp. I’ve only seen Wet Hot American Summer and both versions of The Parent Trap.”
“And you make fun of me for being a millennial,” I scoffed.
“What?!” She raised her hands defensively. “I stand by the Lindsay Lohan remake. It’s better than the original.”
“Well, I’m not sure streaking through a forest naked is going to fix my issues.” I pressed my lips together, holding back a laugh.
“Says you,” she snapped, never one to back down from a fiercely held opinion about something ridiculous. “Do you have anything to drink in here?”
She gave her chair a scoot back, hopping up with an expectant clap of her hands.
“I think there’s some wine in the…” I trailed off, my mouth dropping open at the sight of the letter I was about to toss in the junk pile. “Holy shit.”
That was enough to send Lydia backtracking. “What?” she asked, leaning a hand on the table as she peered over my shoulder.
“This is what Sam was talking about,” I said, tracing a thumb across my name, neatly printed across the front of the envelope. “Oh my god. I’d totally forgotten we did this.”
Sam had sent it to my old address on Tremont, scribbled in her messy cursive. But my name, written above it in those precise, familiar block letters—I’d recognize that handwriting anywhere.
It was my own.