Chapter 19
Natalie had been trying all through the reception to get some time alone with Gabby to catch up. (She’d been trying to do this, rather unsuccessfully, ever since Christina was born.) The list of things they needed to talk about grew longer by the day, plus there was the matter of the favor that Natalie had been turning over in her mind.
Each time Natalie spotted her across the room, another relative swooped in to grab Gabby’s attention. That, or an old friend intercepted Natalie, asking when she was going to publish another book (which was Natalie’s favorite question, thank you so much!) or when she and that nice Jeff guy were going to get married and start having babies themselves (which was Natalie’s second-favorite question, thank you so much!).
Finally, Gabby stood alone in the corner, Christina fussing and pawing at her shirt. Natalie began to walk over, until a hand on her arm stopped her. Angus.
“Natalie!” he said, and then, in a stage whisper, “I hope it’s okay, but Gabby told me about Tyler Yeo.”
Of course Gabby had, though Natalie had asked her not to tell anybody. Natalie herself had only told Gabby, Jeff, and her mother. And now Rob and Zuri, which she probably should not have done. But it had been irresistible, unfightable, the urge to let Rob know that she’d had a hand in something you could buy at an airport bookstore.
“I just want to say, wow!” Angus said at his normal volume, then caught himself and returned to the stage whisper. Natalie supposed she should resign herself to the fact that anything she told Gabby, Gabby would tell Angus, and Angus would—inadvertently—tell everyone else. “Sorry. I’ll be discreet. But I’m happy for you.”
“Well, thanks,” Natalie said, her voice tight. “It was a great opportunity.” She cast about for an excuse to end the conversation and head to Gabby’s side.
Angus squinted at her. “I hope it wasn’t too hard, though.”
“Tyler isn’t always the most eloquent, but he’s very nice, so he makes up for it.”
“No, I mean…watching somebody else get your achievement.”
Natalie looked at him, momentarily at a loss for words, and he continued. “Sorry, did that come out wrong? Blabbermouth over here. I just mean that you have what it takes to be a writer, so it must be strange to have somebody else get the big book release instead. I wouldn’t be surprised if you felt a little sad about it as well as proud, that’s all.”
“I…”
“Sorry! Forget I said anything besides ‘Congratulations!’?”
“No, that was…” Strangely perceptive? “You’re right. I do feel mixed-up about it all.”
“Yup,” he said, and patted her arm in a brotherly way. Then his eyes slid to the side, his father trying to get his attention. “Oh, shoot. Got to keep helping with this futon!”
Natalie stared after him for a moment as he walked away, then shook her head and ran to catch up with Gabby, now ascending the stairs to the second floor with a crying Christina. “Hey! Where are you going?”
“She’s getting hungry,” Gabby said. “I’m going to go feed her. Nobody here besides Angus needs to see my breasts.”
“I could see your breasts. Can I come with?”
“Okay, perv,” Gabby said, and led the way to her childhood bedroom.
As Gabby sat down on her twin bed with its princessy canopy and unfastened her buttons, Natalie cast a glance around the room, which she’d visited a few times with Gabby in college, sleeping in the trundle bed underneath the one they sat on now. The walls were hung with some of Gabby’s original watercolors and old posters from their teenage years. Mostly inspiring women—Venus and Serena Williams, Frida Kahlo, all giving Gabby something to strive toward. But—Natalie opened up the closet to check if her memory was correct—yes, Gabby had plastered the inside of her closet door with pictures of heartthrobs. Natalie bit back a smile as she looked over them all, hidden out of sight of Mr.Alvarez, who would not have approved. Next to Freddie Prinze Jr. and Orlando Bloom, there was a poster of Tyler Yeo from his Portal Makers days, holding up a glowing cube and considering it with his shirt slightly unbuttoned. (Natalie knew that Tyler had posed for photos with his shirt fully unbuttoned too, but Gabby had stuck to this one just in case her strict father went into her closet after all.)
Iman had put her in for the ghostwriting job, feeling bad about the failure of her second book. Tyler was repped by someone at the same agency, so a semi-depressed Natalie dutifully submitted a writing sample, assuming nothing would come of it given her recent track record. But then her phone had lit up with Iman’s name.
“Good news, Tyler loves your writing,” Iman said. “You’re on the short list. But he wants to meet all the finalists in person for, and I quote, ‘a vibe check.’?”
When she walked into what could only be described as a bro pad—the living room of Tyler’s huge SoHo loft—Tyler bounded off the couch toward her, arms wide open for a hug. “Hey!” Then he stopped himself. “Wait, would you rather high-five hello instead? No pressure. It will not affect whether or not you get the job.”
Natalie was immediately charmed by this gorgeous doofus of a man who still, in his midthirties, thought that a high-five was one of the top ways to say hello. “We can hug,” she said, and held her own arms out. He pulled her in. His chest was so rock-hard, it practically bludgeoned her. She deduced that the answer to “Tyler Yeo—where is he now?” was, in general, the gym.
The walls of the living room were hung with framed canvases of neon graffiti, words like “love” and “peace” and “Tyler.” A Ping-Pong table sat in a corner. Tyler gestured to it. “I hate just, like, sitting up straight and being all formal. You wanna play while we talk?”
He handed her a paddle. As they took their positions, the whole thing had the surreal quality of a dream. Natalie told herself that it was a dream, that some unconscious recess of her brain had conjured up playing Ping-Pong with has-been movie star Tyler Yeo, and since she was going to wake up, none of this mattered, so there was no need to be nervous.
He sent over a casual serve, and she sliced it back. “Whoa, you’re good!” he said.
“Yeah, after my parents got divorced, my dad got a Ping-Pong table in his new house. Whenever I went to visit him, this was pretty much all we did. I think I channeled all my repressed anger at him into learning how to beat him.”
“Family…man,” he said as they volleyed back and forth. “It can be complicated.”
“Yup. Yours too?”
And then he was off and running. As he told her all about his upbringing, Portal Makers, and his life now, she casually whupped his ass.
A week later, Iman called with the job offer. “He liked you,” she said. “Apparently, you were the only one who didn’t let him win at Ping-Pong.”
It was still so odd to Natalie that she knew Tyler, an incongruous fact that sat alongside the rest of her life. If she could time-travel back to tell her teenage self that she was working with the Tyler Yeo, sweet naive teen Natalie would probably jump up and down in glee, assuming that her older self was set for life. But she wasn’t set for life. She wasn’t even supposed to talk about it.
Now the job was done, even if Tyler kept calling her every time their book reached some fun new benchmark, wanting to praise her work and also rejoice in their success, assuming she cared just as much about all of it as he did. He probably had no idea that she didn’t get any royalties, that his agent had cut a ruthless deal. Still, she was happy for him each time he got another hit for his sweetly ravenous ego, very happy to have made in the mid five-figure range for a writing job. Not to flatter herself, but she thought that part of the reason he kept calling was that he missed her. They had spent a lot of time together over the past year. Her job had been to pay rapturous attention to him and ask him questions about himself. No wonder he liked her.
Natalie closed Gabby’s closet door and went to join her on the bed. Gabby might have been happy enough to sit there in silence, catching her breath as Christina fed, but Natalie shifted, scratched her ear, then said, “So, Jeff wants to move in together.” Interest lit up Gabby’s exhausted features. “His friend is leaving his apartment, and we could get it without a broker’s fee if we commit by tomorrow.”
“Oh yay, do it!” Gabby said, surprising Natalie not one bit. Sometimes Natalie felt that the best way to engage her friend now was to hint that she was joining her in domesticity. If Nat got married and had babies, then they’d have so much to talk about. They no longer knew the day-to-days of each other’s lives, but if they could only debate the quality of different strollers, they’d once again be as close as they were at twenty-three. “Living together is great. You can see your favorite person whenever you want.”
Natalie bit her tongue. Would she say that Jeff was her favorite person? No, she’d still say Gabby, even if Gabby wouldn’t pick her. (Though, she loved Jeff. He was very close to being her favorite person!)
“I really like Jeff,” Gabby said.
“Same.”
“I should hope so!” They laughed. “And I really like how he treats you. He knows how special you are, you know?”
Natalie nodded. She never had to worry about being enough to Jeff, never had to look into his eyes and hear her mother saying, He’ll get bored with you eventually. If anything, she wished Jeff would push her a little more, but that seemed like a ridiculous complaint.
“So,” Gabby went on, “you’re going to say yes?”
“At some point, you’ve just got to take the plunge, right?” Gabby nodded approvingly. “Besides, the apartment is closer to you and Angus, so that would be nice. Only two subway stops away. We could even walk if we were ambitious.”
“Well,” Gabby said, “we’re considering moving.”
“Really? Where? Still Brooklyn, or is Angus jonesing for Manhattan?”
Gabby bit her lip.
“No,” Natalie said. “Please don’t say the suburbs.”
“The apartment is small with a baby, and especially since we want a big family…”
“But you guys are rich now!”
“We’re comfortable.”
“That’s what rich people say. You could afford a bigger apartment, right?”
“I don’t think you realize how expensive babies are. Any good daycare in the city costs practically as much as college tuition.” She shook her head. “Besides, I want a backyard. I want to watch Christina run around and put her hands in the dirt without having to worry that there’s broken glass in it.”
“Well. Okay,” Natalie said, trying not to sound like a sullen teenager. “I guess you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.” They sat there silently for a moment. Gabby stroked Christina’s hair, and Christina met her mother’s eyes, feeding peacefully. Gabby smiled down and Christina smiled up, as much as one could smile with a nipple in one’s mouth. A beam of pure love extended between them. Natalie felt a million miles outside of it.
“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Natalie said. She took a deep breath, only for Christina to unlatch and let out a gurgle.
Gabby squinted at her child. “You doing okay, sweetie? You done?” Christina scrunched up her face, pawed at Gabby’s breast. “More?” Gabby guided Christina’s mouth back as Natalie sat there.
Another moment passed, then Gabby sighed. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
“Do you know if your company needs copywriters?”
“What?” Gabby asked, processing. “You’re asking for yourself? Like, you want a full-time advertising job?”
“If I’m not writing my own stories anyway, I might as well have benefits.”
“Your office manager job doesn’t have health insurance?”
“Nope, they give me just under the weekly hours for a full-time employee.”
“Capitalism,” Gabby sighed, shaking her head, even though her husband was a finance bro. “And what about the ghostwriting?”
“Who knows when another job like the Tyler one might come in?” It wasn’t as if Tyler was going to write more books. It had been hard enough finding material to fill up the one. Since finishing with him, Natalie had gotten far along in the process for some ghostwriting opportunities, requiring hours of unpaid work writing samples and interviewing. But she hadn’t actually landed any of the gigs yet. Did she want to hustle her ass off to write someone else’s book?
Natalie noticed that Gabby did not ask if she was planning to write another novel. But on that front, well, Sally Rooney had come along and done what Natalie had been attempting with her first novel, done it far better than she could have. The world did not need Natalie to add redundancy. And, as Angus had so surprisingly brought up, she did not need to attend more parties for books she’d helped create but to which she could lay no claim. Coming home from Tyler’s launch, she’d cried in her kitchen for twenty-five minutes.
“You said that your work nemesis was thinking about leaving, right?” Natalie went on. “You could recommend your real-life best friend to take her place. Imagine: we could eat lunch together every day.”
Gabby blew a puff of air out of her mouth. “I don’t know. Are you sure it’s the right fit for you?”
At Gabby’s unexpected hesitation, Natalie’s hackles rose. “What, you don’t think I’d be good at it?” she asked, her voice sharp.
“I’m sure you could do the writing part.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know.” Gabby pursed her lips. “I’d want to know that you were actually going to care about it.”
“Do you really care about helping, like, Bud Light sell more beer?”
“Yes! Maybe not Bud Light specifically. But overall, we’re helping people who started businesses grow their dreams and connecting the right people with the right products to make their lives better! And fine, even if I sometimes don’t care about the clients, I care about being good at what I do.” Gabby grew animated, her voice urgent. “This job is my place. It’s my passion.”
“I’m sorry, since when has advertising been your passion? I thought it was art.”
Gabby shrugged. “Maybe ‘passion’ is too strong. But people respect me, and I get paid well to be creative. Besides, it’s not like I was going to be a famous painter.”
“You don’t know that. Have you been painting at all?” Natalie asked, and Gabby pursed her lips again. “You should!”
“In what hours of the day? It takes a lot to keep a human alive. And believe it or not, it takes effort to do good work at the agency too. Which is why I don’t want you to come into it half-assing things, being like, ‘I guess I’ll deign to do this because my actual dream hasn’t worked out.’?”
“Well, that’s harsh.”
Gabby sighed. “I just—” Her agitation dislodged Christina, who began to whimper. Gabby stroked her back. “Oh, shh, shh, it’s okay, sweetie.” Still, Christina mewled, twisting her face away from Gabby’s breast, and Gabby’s shoulders slumped in despair.
It felt like eons since Natalie and Gabby had been able to have an uninterrupted conversation, since they’d truly been able to pay attention to each other. Natalie reached out and took Christina into her own arms, then stood and began to dance with her, bouncing her gently. The novelty of it all distracted Christina from her cries. On the bed, Gabby rubbed her temples.
Quietly, Nat said, “I didn’t mean to make you feel like your workplace is my backup option. I thought it would be a nice way to hang out with you more while doing something at least somewhat creatively stimulating.” Christina nuzzled into her, reaching out to grab Natalie’s hair, and Nat let her. “I just think it’s time for me to get it together, like everybody else.”
Gabby gave a slow nod and cleared her throat. “Look, if you’re really committed to it, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“But I have to warn you. If you come to work with me…I’m really earnest. You’re going to want to make fun of me.”
“Oh, believe me, I got that from the whole ‘we’re helping people grow their dreams’ bit you did.”
They both laughed, but half-heartedly, then lapsed into uncomfortable silence. “So,” Gabby said, “we should probably get back to the party.”