Chapter 24
There were too many fucking Santas in this house. Rob liked Gabby, but this was obscene. How was a person supposed to walk through a party when inflatable snowmen and reindeer kept springing up in one’s path, a holiday spirit–themed obstacle course? And they were all grinning grotesquely, as if they didn’t know that at any moment, a person you loved could throw a bomb at you and ruin your entire life.
He’d knocked over the Santa just now accidentally, but as it lay on the ground, he was tempted to give it a good kick. The world was not all cookies and milk, buster!
No, this Santa had done nothing wrong. This Santa had not seduced his fiancée. In fact, Rob saw that this Santa’s smile had a dazed, dead-eyed quality to it. Much like Rob’s face had looked over the past weeks, when he was somehow expected to continue on doing his job and appearing in public as if he didn’t have a pile of broken glass where his heart used to be.
Rob lifted Santa back up to his feet. They both wobbled. Then Rob took a step back and looked around the room. Were people sneaking glances at him? He would not give them more to laugh at or sympathetically cluck about. He gave Santa a little pat on his head, as if he’d been assessing his sturdiness. For all anyone else knew, Angus had sent him out here to see how childproof the living room was before letting Christina loose in it. Reliable Rob.
“That one’s stable, all right,” he muttered under his breath, then looked up defiantly to find—oh Christ—Natalie Shapiro studying him. Well, this was a situation straight out of his nightmares—Natalie looking more self-possessed and radiant than he’d ever seen her, while he was falling apart.
He hadn’t even wanted to come to this goddamn party. But Angus had insisted that Rob stay with him and Gabby for at least a long weekend on his way home for Christmas with his family. Angus had gone so far as to move Rob’s plane ticket for him. “You shouldn’t be alone right now, buddy!” he’d said. “We can do whatever you want for the weekend.” Then he’d bitten his lip. “Shoot, we have this housewarming party. But a party could be good, don’t you think? A little nog, maybe some light flirting under the mistletoe?”
After the holidays, Rob would return to Arizona for the next semester, a prospect that was more unappetizing than regurgitated tuna fish. In the weeks since Zuri had called things off, he’d had bad days and worse days. If he wanted to get tenure, he couldn’t just up and disappear at the end of the semester. He still had to hold office hours. But when students came in asking for advice on linguistics PhD programs, he had to stop himself from shouting, Don’t do it! There are no jobs! Each time he started to plan for the following semester, he wanted to bellow into the abyss: What is the point? What was the point of standing in the ivory tower of academia, burying oneself in research, oblivious to the important things happening in one’s real life? He’d built his career on the idea that there was an order to everything. He wasn’t sure he believed that anymore.
His daily routine involved telling himself he needed to grade papers, then proceeding to Google-stalk Michael Garrido instead. Michael’s online presence was show-offy, like the man himself. He had not yet posted a straightforward picture of him and Zuri together on social media, perhaps out of some sense of respect for Rob. (Where had that respect been when he shamelessly flirted with an engaged woman?) But evidence of Zuri was everywhere in the snapshots of his life. Her shoes on his floor. Her hand around a sweating bottle of beer, even though Zuri didn’t drink beer! She only liked wine! Most egregiously of all, Zuri from the back, standing on a balcony, just starting to turn toward the camera. She was silhouetted by the setting sun in front of her, the sky alight with color. Most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen, Michael had captioned the image. How corny and unoriginal of him.
Zuri had offered to handle the wedding’s dissolution, which was decent of her. The worst part was how decent she’d been about it all. Well, the decency plus the way she looked at Rob as if she were a guru who felt vaguely sorry for his level of unenlightenment. She’d emerged from her love nest long enough to try to get back some of their deposits and to send their guest list a brief note: We are sorry to announce that we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel our wedding. We appreciate your love and support during this time and always. (The decision hadn’t seemed particularly difficult to her. And “we” hadn’t made the decision, Rob wanted to shout when she sent the draft over to him for approval. But he didn’t have the energy to send back anything more than a This is fine.)
But there were still people who hadn’t gotten the memo, and that was how the trouble today had started. One of these acquaintances, another groomsman from Angus’s wedding, clapped Rob on the back five minutes into the party. “My man, long time! I hear congratulations are in order.” Rob stared at him, so he continued, “Angus said you’re getting married. When’s the big day?”
Heartbreak on its own was bad enough. Mixing it with humiliation took things to a whole other level. “It’s been called off,” Rob said stiffly.
The man made a shocked face. “Holy shit, what happened?”
“She simply fell in love with her soulmate, a man who is not me.” Rob proceeded to choke down the entire glass of eggnog in his hand. The man awkwardly backed away.
Eggnog was too thick, too cloying to get the job done. For his next drink, Rob poured himself a glass of Angus’s whiskey.
Now, as Natalie began to weave through the guests toward him, Rob tried to remember if he’d had two glasses of whiskey or three. The details were fuzzy.
Perhaps she was simply heading toward the kitchen, and he could duck into a nearby broom closet before she passed by him. Then she’d forget about him, and he wouldn’t have to—
No. She’d somehow gotten much closer as he’d been deliberating the broom closet plan. Close enough that he could see her looking at him with a new kind of gentleness in her eyes. He would not be pitied. He did not need to be treated like a small child. He was a strong grown man. A strong grown man for whom his former fiancée could apparently not feel the kinds of feelings that people wrote songs about. Had Natalie heard about the wedding? Or was she simply concerned that he’d had too much to drink? (Now that he thought about it, the three glasses might have been four.)
“You doing all right there?” she asked, placing a hand on his arm. “Want to go get some fresh air?”
He flashed back to the last time they’d seen each other in the fresh air, standing out in the backyard after Christina’s christening. How idiotic he’d been, waxing poetic about how he knew that Zuri was The One, thanking his own lucky stars that he wasn’t still flailing about in the muck like Natalie was.
She didn’t seem to be flailing now. He had a stain on his shirt while she was all dewy and fresh. Her leather pants hugged her lower half like she’d been sewn into them. Had she done something to her hair? Some special cream, or whatever people did when they wanted to look nicer?
It felt imperative that he keep Natalie Shapiro from pitying him. Her pity would be the final nail in his coffin, the one thing that could make his humiliation even more complete. “I’m perfectly fine,” he said, yanking his arm away, banging his elbow into the banister behind him in the process.
A grunt of pain escaped him. If he had to put it into letters, the sound would look something like “mraghhh.” He rubbed his elbow, squeezing his eyes shut. He could fix this.
Somehow the grunt was still coming out of him. He turned it into more of an “ahhh” sound, then reopened his eyes and looked at Natalie as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Oh. Excuse me. Just marveling at the house.”
“With your eyes shut?” she asked.
“It has good strong bones,” he said, patting the banister. “Solid wood. Not the flimsy stuff you often find in new construction.”
She held her hand up over her mouth, trying to stifle a laugh.
“I don’t see what’s so funny about wanting to make sure that our friends live in a well-built house,” he said stiffly.
“You’re right,” she said. “Nothing amusing about this at all.”
As if things couldn’t get worse, a familiar-looking man slid toward them smoothly, like he was on a moving walkway. Rob shook his head to clear it. Was he hallucinating the presence of Tyler Yeo?
“Nat! This party is lit!”
Nope, it was the man himself. Was she with him? Perfect, now she could stand there and compare him to a literal movie star.
“Hey, man, you a friend of Nat’s?” Tyler held out his hand for a shake, and Rob reluctantly took it. God, Tyler’s grip. He might accidentally crush Rob’s fingers. Rob would not let him. He gripped back, squeezing as hard as he could, until Tyler looked down at their handshake, confused, and extricated himself from it.
“Are you a friend of Nat’s?” Rob asked back.
Tyler furrowed his brow, as if surprised Rob didn’t already know all about him. “Not just friends. Coworkers too.” He slung a casual arm around Natalie. “We’ve got a TV show together.”
“Ah, right,” Rob said. “I think I’ve seen some billboards.”
He’d watched most of one episode, actually, sprawled catatonic on the couch that he’d until recently shared with Zuri, empty beer bottles on the coffee table in front of him, thinking it might be the kind of mind-numbing entertainment he needed. Then he’d had to turn it off. Why had he thought that anything to do with Natalie could be mind-numbing? At least the character of Dennis was different now. If Rob hadn’t read the book, he would never have connected him to Angus. But would this show drive more people to pick up the source material? He couldn’t stop worrying about how it might hurt Angus, if he ever put two and two together. And more than that, Rob couldn’t stop thinking about Natalie jabbing her finger into his chest in the hallway outside the wedding reception, how cruel he’d been to her that night.
Rob’s phone began ringing with an unfamiliar number. Spam, most likely. Still, it offered an excuse to get away from Natalie’s raised eyebrows. “I’m getting an important call,” he said loudly, and began to walk down the hallway, ready to fake a meaningful conversation with whatever random telemarketer had dialed him up. “Hello?”
“Robert?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“This is Bill Flanagan, your parents’ neighbor.”
“Right.” Bow Tie Bill, a man in his fifties who was always dressed formally even while mowing his lawn. Why the hell was Bill calling him? For a moment, Rob wondered if his parents had shared the news of his ruined wedding with the whole neighborhood, knocking on every door with Rob’s tale of humiliation, and Bill was calling to express his condolences. But of course not, Rob’s father was probably too ashamed of him to tell anyone.
The phone call where he’d had to tell his parents about Zuri had been one of the worst moments of Rob’s life. He’d made it as brief as possible, saying goodbye into their stunned silence. His mother called him so frequently now, he had to occasionally pick up so that she didn’t send the police to his apartment to check on him. But he hadn’t spoken to his father since. He couldn’t bear to hear a lecture or disappointment or, worst of all, a hint of triumph in his father’s voice.
He caught Natalie watching him out of the corner of her eye and gave her a nod. Everything is fine. I am an in-demand person. She did not seem convinced, so Rob forced out something adjacent to a chuckle and said, “Nice to hear from you, Bill. Happy holidays.”
“I’m sorry to bother you. I tried your mother, but she wasn’t answering her phone, and I had your number from a list of emergency contacts she gave me a while ago.”
“Ah yes,” Rob said, nodding as if Bill was saying something of extreme fascination.
“Your father is standing on my porch yelling about how I’ve stolen his wallet.”
“What?” The sentence was not computing in Rob’s head. All that whiskey making him slow. “Why…why did you take his wallet? A mistake?”
“No—”
“Whatever your reasons, it’s all right. You can just give it back to him.”
“I haven’t taken anything from him,” Bill said. “I think he’s confused again, but your mother isn’t around this time. So I don’t know what to do.”
A buzzing started up in Rob’s ears. Suddenly, he was stone-cold sober. He looked around for the nearest doorway and opened it, ducking into Angus and Gabby’s laundry room, bracing himself on the washing machine. His mouth had gone dry, and he forced himself to swallow before saying, “What do you mean ‘again’?”
“It’s been a couple of times now. Your mother usually comes and takes him home, talks him down.”
And with that, Rob did understand, fully and irrevocably, what he’d been convincing himself not to see for over a year now. The moments of confusion that his father had covered with bombast, the way he missed details of Rob’s life, it went beyond normal aging. His father was a lion, a star, the man who sucked up all the oxygen in the room. Rob had found it so much easier to believe that he was becoming more of an asshole rather than less of himself.
“Hello?” Bill asked.
“Yes, I’m here. Sorry,” Rob said.
“I’ve tried to convince him to go back inside, but I don’t think he’s pleased with me.”
“Right. Um. Let me try to call my mother. I’m sure she’s close by.”
“Gotcha,” Bill said. “I’ll keep an eye on him in the meantime.”
“Thank you.”
Rob hung up and dialed his mother’s number, waited as it rang to voicemail, then dialed again, over and over. No answer. He sent her a text. Where are you? Dad’s in trouble.
Nothing. He tried his father, but no answer on his phone either. Rob stood there, resting his head against the wall, a sick sensation in his stomach. Where was his mom? And what the hell had she been thinking, hiding this? A nagging ache in his head told him that he had made it easy for her, in the way he’d found it increasingly unpleasant to talk to his dad, hurrying off the phone when he could, throwing himself into wedding planning and letting weeks go by without contact.
Then he pulled himself upright and snapped into action, stepping back out into the party, powering through the guests toward the front door as he wrote Bill a text: Not sure where my mother is but I’m on my way. There in 50. Someone followed him outside into the crisp night air. Natalie.
“Are you abandoning ship?” she asked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make fun—” Her words cut off at the devastation on his face.
“What happened?” she asked in a low voice. “Are you okay?”
“I have to go. My father needs help.” He headed toward his rental car, pulling the keys out of his pocket. In his haste, the key ring fell onto the ground.
Natalie stepped forward and scooped the keys up before he could get to them. “You are not allowed to drive right now. Ten minutes ago, you were nearly weeping over an inflatable Santa.”
“I was not,” he grumbled. She shot him a disbelieving look, and he knew she was right, no matter how sober he felt at the moment. “Fine. I’ll see what the taxi situation is.” He reached in his pocket for his phone, scanning the various apps for available cars. They were all at least twenty minutes away, and the cost would be astronomical. But better than nothing.
Natalie was still standing there, shooting a look back at the party, shifting from side to side. She let out a sigh and muttered something like Fuck it under her breath. Then she pressed the unlock button on his keys and headed toward the rental car.
“Well, come on,” she said.