Chapter 21
Nat and Jeff got out of the taxi at the train station and walked to the ticket kiosk, the last of their friends returning to the city, having stayed late to help with the cleanup.
You built up routines over a year and a half with someone, all sorts of lovely little patterns. Whenever Natalie was at Jeff’s and she got cold (Jeff’s roommate refused to turn up the heat, another reason Jeff wanted to move), Jeff would bring her a blanket, then a hat, then gloves, then another blanket, and on and on until she was warm and laughing and nearly drowning in fabric. Natalie poured them both cups of coffee in the mornings when he stayed over at her place and knew exactly how much milk to put in his to make him smile in utter satisfaction. They each had two toothbrushes now, one in the other’s apartment. Sometime during the last six months, they’d started buying their train tickets together whenever they went on a day trip, alternating who covered the cost. Natalie had gotten their tickets out to Long Island, so now Jeff sped up ahead of her to start the transaction.
“No, I’ve got this,” Natalie said.
“You do not. You bought last time.” He pushed the button to select the ticket type, and she hurried to the machine next to his, starting her own transaction.
“Yeah, but this was for my friend’s event, so I should pay for it.”
He looked over, grinning as her fingers flew over the options on the screen. “Oh, is this a race? You know I’m competitive, Shapiro!”
“Not a race. I insist.”
Still, laughing, he hustled to remove his credit card from his wallet. Her arm, of its own accord, popped out and whacked the card away from the machine, sending it to the ground.
“Please, let me,” she said in a strangled voice, and he held his hands up.
“Whoa. Okay.”
Silently, she waited for the machine to spit the tickets out, then led the way to the platform. He stood beside her, shifting from foot to foot as Rob’s words echoed in her head. You can feel that way with someone else. Rob, with his dark eyes and his hands in his pockets, seeing her to her core. Her fingers had lost circulation as she stood with him in that freezing garden. She hadn’t noticed until she got back inside.
It broke her heart that she couldn’t feel that way about Jeff.
Beside her, Jeff began to talk about how cold it had gotten, unable to stand the silence for long. Sometimes, when they were quiet together for more than a minute as they walked down the street, he’d say, “Isn’t it nice that we’ve gotten to the stage of our relationship where we don’t always have to talk?” and then begin to discuss all the other nice things about the current stage of their relationship. He was so good to her.
“So, what do you think?” he asked now. “You want one more night to sleep on it, or should we pull the trigger on the apartment?”
Natalie swallowed, dread in her stomach. “I can’t say yes to the apartment.”
His eyebrows knitted together in concern. “Is it because of the bedbugs? Drew swears that was two years ago, and he hasn’t seen one since. But I can look into getting an extra inspection—”
“No, it’s not that. The place sounds lovely. I just don’t think I’m ready to move in together.”
“Oh,” he said with such disappointment in his tone. His mouth tightened in determination. “Well, it could be nice to wait one more year. Delayed gratification! Or I could see if I can go month-to-month on my lease.”
She hesitated. Maybe things would change in a year. She’d grow into the person she so desperately wished she could be, the person who was right for Jeff. She could keep the one stable thing she had in her life. In the distance, the light of the approaching train appeared, the wind whipping up, a mournful blast of the horn echoing around them. She had sympathy for her mother now, for the fear of loneliness that led her to run headfirst into relationships, to stay even when the joy had expired. She’d always told herself that she’d rather be alone than be in a relationship just to be in one, but she hadn’t been acting like it.
Giving this another year—of uncertainty, of the constantly changing pros and cons list in her head—would be unkind to both of them. He’d try even harder to hold her while she pulled farther away. Jeff was not Greg, not her mother’s husband by a long shot. And that made it even more important to let him go so that he could find someone who appreciated him as much as he deserved.
She clenched her fists, unclenched them, and forced herself to say, “No. I’m so sorry, but no.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to be ready to move in together.”
He stepped back, features frozen in hurt. “Then, what are we doing?”
She tried to find the right combination of words, but there was nothing to say to make this better. “I think this is so close to what it should be, but there’s just something in me that can’t…And you’re a wonderful person. Some other woman is going to snatch you up—”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to…” The train was growing closer now, the front of it hurtling toward them.
“I’m so sorry.”
“You said that already.” He turned away from her. “I need to…I can’t sit with you. I’m going to a different car.”
“Okay.”
He took a couple of steps, then ran back and gathered her in his arms, holding her one last time against his broad, solid chest. She breathed him in, knowing that she might never see him again or that when she did, they’d be strangers to each other, all the important and vital things they’d shared gone hazy, if they remembered them at all. Then he pulled himself away and strode down the platform, shoulders shaking, not looking back.
When the doors opened, she found an empty row in a sparsely populated car. The train lurched, then began to glide back toward the city.
Trying to fight off tears, she reached for her phone to call Gabby. But Gabby was exhausted. And also, maybe Gabby wouldn’t understand.
Instead, she dialed her mother. Ellen answered on the second ring. “Natalie?”
“Hey, Mom,” Nat said, her voice breaking.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” her mom asked, and Natalie’s shoulders slumped at the familiar, comforting sound. She could go home to Philly for a few days, sleep in her childhood bed, start to recover. Yes, that would help.
“Jeff and I broke up,” she began.
“Oh no. Are you all right? What happened?”
“I…I don’t really know how to explain.”
Ellen made a sympathetic noise. “I had no idea you two weren’t happy. He always seemed so smitten. I thought he just doted on you.”
“He did.”
“Ah,” Ellen said, and Natalie could hear how valiantly her mom was struggling to hide her disappointment.
“I know you think I’m making a mistake,” Natalie said. “But I tried. I really tried. And I think I deserve to be smitten too.”
“Of course you do,” her mom began with such surprise and tenderness in her voice that for the first time, a possibility struck Natalie. Maybe, just maybe, Ellen didn’t even remember saying the things that had burned themselves into Natalie’s brain the night before her wedding. Maybe Ellen had simply been expressing a loose collection of thoughts rather than some unshakable, unchangeable truth about her daughter’s core.
Just when Natalie was about to ask, a voice in the background interrupted. “What’s going on?”
“Natalie and Jeff broke up,” her mother said quietly.
“Here,” the voice went on, and then the sound quality turned grainier as Natalie was yanked onto speakerphone. “Do you need me to talk some sense into him?” Greg asked, his booming voice grating against her ears. “If he needs a little mano a mano—”
“No, thank you,” Natalie said, her chest tightening. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“So, you broke up with him? That sounds like our little perfectionist,” Greg said, and Natalie swallowed the urge to tell him that she was not his little anything.
“Greg,” her mother said, frustration creeping into her tone. “Let’s not—”
“I’m just saying that the clock is ticking.”
“Really?” Nat said. “No one’s ever told me that before.”
On the other end of the line, things went muffled, as if her mother was holding a hand over the speaker, saying something that sounded like “You are not being helpful” as Greg protested.
Natalie needed to get off this call immediately. “Sorry, I’m on the train, and…service…”
“Wait,” her mother began. “Do you want to come visit?”
“I can’t,” Nat said. “And you’re going in and out…I’ll try you later.”
Then she hung up, sat back on the hard seat, and let the tears come.
She had to start over, and loneliness lay ahead, and she wept at the prospect with racking, muffled sobs. But there was relief in her tears too, relief from finally having made a choice, hard as it may have been.
Maybe five years from now, she’d look back at this moment and wish she’d chosen differently. But somehow she didn’t think so. Talking to her mother and Greg had helped after all, even if not in the way Natalie had expected. There were so many elements of a life with Jeff that could have been wonderful. She trusted him. She admired him. But she just didn’t love him enough.
Maybe one person in a relationship was always going to be the one to commit more, give more, love more. Maybe someday, despite how much it scared her, she could let that person be her. And if not, well, she’d commit to loving herself as hard as she could, starting now.
Her phone began to vibrate. Her mother, having snuck away from Greg to talk further? But instead, Tyler Yeo’s name appeared on the screen. Probably calling to talk about some new exciting article pinned to the memoir: Tyler Yeo Is Now a Bestselling Author. What’s Next? or 5 Facts You Won’t Believe About Early 2000s Heartthrob Tyler Yeo! #1: He’s Lactose Intolerant! She was not in the mood, so she sent it to voicemail and looked back out the window, the outlines of trees and houses blurring together in the dark.
Another buzz, a text from Tyler. Dude! I just finished Apartment 2F!
She stared down, then immediately called him back. “You read my book? What?”
“Yes! It took me forever to get a copy. It’s too popular, it’s sold out everywhere!”
“I think it’s just been remaindered.”
“Cool!”
“No, that’s when they take your book out of stores because no one is buying—” She cut herself off. “Never mind. Thank you for reading, that was really nice.”
“I loved it. That Dennis guy? He had me cracking up! And I had the best idea. You want to hear it?”
“Um, I think so?”
“Oh, come on. I need some enthusiasm here. You’re gonna like it. So tell me you want to hear it, Natalie Shapiro.”
“I want to hear it,” she said. She leaned forward as Tyler kept talking and the train gathered speed, hurtling into her future.
“I think we should make a TV show.”