Chapter 29
Gabby was telling Natalie some long and involved story about the preschool application process, so although Natalie could hear Tyler talking next to her, it took her far too long to register the meaning of his words.
“I knew there was something familiar about you,” Tyler said, slinging his arm around Angus’s shoulder. “I kept feeling like I hadn’t just met you tonight, and it was sending me on this whole spiral of, like, is my guru right, and past lives really are a thing, and you and I fought in a war together or something? But, nah, our girl here just captured you good.”
“And they have to interview the parents,” Gabby was saying at the same time. Natalie forced herself to pay attention to her words. It was tough with Tyler talking so loudly and the persistent buzzing memory of Rob’s mouth on hers sending aftershocks through her body. “I have to write a two-thousand-word essay about Christina’s good qualities. It’s like applying to college all over again.”
“What?” Angus asked Tyler.
“In Apartment 2F.” Tyler squeezed Angus’s shoulder, concern on his face. “Hey, listen. I hope you’re not offended by what I did with Dennis, given that it’s so different from the book. I want to take your opinion into account. So, how are you feeling about the portrayal?”
At the mention of Dennis, Natalie’s split focus zeroed in entirely on Tyler. She turned away from Gabby, only half catching sight of her look of offense.
“Tyler—” she started.
“Just a sec!” he said.
“Oh wow,” Angus said, not quite understanding. “That’s so kind of you to ask me for my thoughts about your character.”
“Of course. It’s yours too! Having a version of yourself out in the world for public consumption can be a sensitive thing. Believe me, I know, especially after the memoir.” Natalie grabbed Tyler’s arm to try to make him stop, but he just put a hand over hers affectionately and kept going. “Part of the acting process is finding your own way into a character, but I also want to honor the source material, especially now that I know what it really is. So, truly, if you want, I can make some changes going into season two.” Angus put a hand on his hip, cocking his head in confusion, and Tyler pointed, a smile breaking over his face. “That mannerism? Sure! I can totally incorporate.” He mirrored Angus as Natalie’s stomach threatened to come up her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Angus said, as Gabby threw a What have you done? look at Natalie. “I’m just computing a moment. You’re not saying…Is Dennis in the book modeled after me?”
Shit.
“Uh,” Tyler began, his eyes beginning to widen in concern.
“No!” Natalie jumped in. “That was not my intent. Some of the scenarios in the book were rooted a little bit in real life, but I didn’t mean to make him you.”
“I am so sorry,” Tyler said, looking back and forth between them all. “I thought it was like an in-joke with you all. An homage. But I must have misunderstood.”
Every Tuesday night, Angus sat down and watched Meant 2B full of pride over Natalie’s achievement. He’d probably spent hours laughing at the buffoonery of the Dennis character, never realizing he was the source of it.
Natalie opened her mouth to offer more excuses, but Angus cut in.
“You said he was different in the book than the TV version, though. How?” His voice was hopeful, but his eyes filled with worry.
Nearby, a few of the other houseguests turned toward them, the tension ringing like alarm bells. Natalie felt a sinking sensation, her past sins finally, finally catching up to her. The Christmas lights strung up around the house blinked merrily on, undisturbed. Rob came power walking up toward them, then stopped short, alarm on his face.
“He’s…” Natalie began.
“You haven’t read the book?” Tyler asked. “Well, he’s way different. He wears a shirt all the time. And now that I think about it, I totally jumped to the wrong conclusion here, because Dennis from the book isn’t similar to you at all! Like, the main character really hates him. Plus, he and the best friend are probably going to get divorced.”
“Tyler—” Nat began. Gabby’s eyes were shooting out a glare of death. But Tyler carried on, determined to fix things.
“Oh! And you’re, like, killing it in finance, yeah? Dennis in the book isn’t that good at anything he tries, so he’s just gonna fail upward into running his family’s business!” He held his hands open triumphantly.
“Please stop talking,” Natalie said.
“Sure,” Tyler said, and snapped his mouth shut.
Natalie stepped closer to Angus. “I’m sorry. I did a stupid, selfish thing when I was twenty-six, but I truly didn’t mean any harm by it. And I barely knew you at that point—”
“Right,” Angus said. He nodded, then kept nodding, giving himself the appearance of a sad bobblehead. “Well, we all make mistakes.”
For some reason Natalie couldn’t comprehend, Rob decided to step in. “I think anyone who knows you recognizes that the book version is not the full picture of who you are.”
Angus looked around at the group of them. “Does everyone but me know about this, then?” he asked. For such a naturally buoyant man, he seemed deflated, all the air let out of him. “Has everyone known the whole time?”
“No,” Natalie said weakly, as Rob looked down at his feet and Gabby reached out a sympathetic arm.
“I guess it is an in-joke,” Angus said to Tyler. “I just wasn’t part of it.” Angus’s face, previously flushed with the joy of the party, had gone pale, even as he tried to keep his mouth fixed in a smile. “Serves me right, I should’ve read the book, huh?” His attempt at cheer was the worst part. Suddenly, Natalie could see him as a little boy, keeping his chin up as bullies taunted him. No wonder Rob had flown so fully to his defense. Watching Angus like this was hell.
“Excuse me.” Angus swallowed a few times. “I need to…I should go check on Christina.” Giving them all an awkward goodbye salute, he turned, then power walked away as they stared after him.
“I’ll go see if he’s okay,” Rob said after a moment of silence.
“No, let me,” Gabby said, her voice flinty.
“Gabby, wait,” Natalie said, grabbing her arm, and Gabby turned with fury in her eyes.
“I have to go check on my husband.”
“I know. But please…”
“I’ve got it,” Rob said, and disappeared up the stairs after Angus.
“Fine, you want to talk?” Gabby spat at Natalie. “Come here.”
She stalked over to a nearby door and threw it open, leading Natalie down into a finished basement. Wall-to-wall carpet, on which lay scattered mounds of Christina’s toys, a pretend kitchen here, a ukulele there. The muffled clomping of the guests upstairs sounded above them, faint compared to the ringing in Natalie’s ears.
Gabby folded her arms across her chest. “Well, what do you want to say to me?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t believe that Tyler would say all that.” Nat held her hands up. “But at least maybe this has cured you of your crush?”
She’d been trying to make Gabby laugh. And Gabby did laugh, but it was hollow, disbelieving. “Really, that’s it? You’re just going to blame it on him.”
“No.” Natalie breathed out. “Obviously this happened because of me. And I’m sorry, and I wish I could go back and rewrite the book, which is actually why I made Dennis so different in the TV show—”
“A TV show that is probably bringing a whole new audience to the novel,” Gabby said, her tone flat.
“Not really. You might be shocked to learn that the people who love the show aren’t that interested in reading semi-masturbatory literary fiction about girls and their feelings. And I told the team that I didn’t want any of the show’s publicity or press releases to mention Apartment 2F.”
“How noble of you. Now, if you’re done, I’m going up to Angus,” Gabby said, starting to turn away.
“Wait,” Natalie said, and Gabby turned back. Natalie felt like she and her best friend hadn’t really looked at each other in years. Now, the two of them standing across from each other like cowboys getting ready for a duel, Nat noticed all the new details that she hadn’t been privy to as they were happening—the threads of gray at Gabby’s temples, the way her round cheeks had grown thinner. She used to be able to read her friend’s expressions as easily as her favorite book. Now, she barely recognized her. “Please stay, and let’s talk this out just a little longer.”
Gabby rubbed her eyes and said quietly, “You’re always trying to make me choose between him and you.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is! Don’t you see? You’ve humiliated the man I love for your own benefit, not just once, but for years. You wanted me to fawn over your book when it dragged my husband through the mud, and now you want me to make you feel better about this too. But I won’t. If you’re going to force me to pick sides, I choose him.”
A breath escaped Natalie like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Oh, believe me, I know,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “You’ve been choosing him ever since you met him.”
Gabby thrust her chin up. “You’re my friend. He’s my family.”
“I get that. And it’s not like I’m asking you to leave him and run away with me. But you’re still my first priority, and I feel sometimes like you could take me or leave me.”
“I shouldn’t still be your first priority! That’s not healthy!” Gabby shook her head, pacing the basement. “And besides, it’s not even true. You are your own first priority, as you’ve made very clear with this TV show.”
“Okay, so you want me to turn down the opportunity to write for television, finally be financially stable, just because your husband might be a little bit hurt?”
“Of course not. But you could have at least talked to me about it before you made the decision!”
Natalie’s voice was rising, and she didn’t know how to stop it. She felt out of control, skidding down a dangerous path, no choice but to plunge forward. “Are you kidding? I’ve tried to talk to you about so many things over the years, and you have shut me down over and over again. It feels like you’ve never cared about me the way I care about you. I can’t open up to you about my writing, you’ve never even read a full book of mine, and you make it very clear that all you really want me to do is get married and have children like you.”
“You’re one to talk! Every time I try to tell you some detail about the parenting shit I’m dealing with on a daily basis, your eyes glaze over. No wonder I’d rather talk to other people instead. They don’t make me feel like I’m boring because I care about raising my child or wanting a big family.”
Gabby and Natalie had snapped at each other before, had arguments over meaningless things like Natalie leaving the window open when they used to live together. But they’d always turned away when it came to confronting the deeper issues.
Perhaps they’d been saving up all their vitriol for this, every time they’d swallowed down resentment or failed to understand each other. They had reserves of anger from all the times they didn’t let it out before, and now it was coming to drown them.
“I don’t know when it got so difficult to connect with you—” Gabby was saying, and Natalie couldn’t just stand there and let Gabby dump her, couldn’t let the woman she’d loved most say something irrevocable, so she said it herself instead.
“Maybe we’ve outgrown each other.” At Nat’s words, Gabby stopped her pacing. Natalie straightened her spine, heart breaking as she went on, “We love the memory of each other instead of each other now.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Gabby whispered, eyes shining. “So, why are we wasting our time?”
Natalie realized that she’d been memorizing the new details of Gabby to store them up. Unless it wasn’t too late, unless she could take it all back, throw herself at Gabby’s feet, and promise to keep trying to grow together instead of apart.
But Gabby turned on her heel and headed to the stairs. Before the first step, she said, over her shoulder, “I’m going to talk to Angus. I think it’s time for you to leave.”
And then she was gone. The girl who had made Natalie feel at home the moment she met her. The woman who had held Nat’s hair back and made her laugh so hard she peed herself, and rubbed her back while she wept. Her plus-one, her confidant, her soulmate. A part of Natalie’s past. Now, inconceivably, not a part of her future.
She wanted to sink onto the carpet and wail. But if she let herself start crying, she’d never stop. She’d melt onto the basement floor, a pile of defenseless, quivering guts, and eventually Gabby would come downstairs and say, Didn’t I ask you to leave?
So Natalie forced herself to walk back upstairs into the pathetic remainders of the party. She spied Tyler sitting on a chair in the corner, looking at his phone. He’d ruined so much, but she couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t known.
Rob, who’d been pacing by the snack table, locked eyes with her and came her way. He, on the other hand, had known everything, had told her way back from the beginning how cruel and careless she was. And Rob had been talking to Tyler right before everything went to shit.
“I think Angus just needs some time,” he started, but Natalie cut him off.
“Did you say something to Tyler? What did you do?”
He sighed, running a hand through his rumpled hair. “I’m sorry. I misspoke.”
A dry, disbelieving laugh escaped her. “Misspeaking all over the place tonight, huh?” He’d misspoken, and now her best friend didn’t want to see her again. The hard line of Gabby’s mouth as she told her to go flooded Natalie’s mind. The pain she felt was so strong and sharp, unbearable. She spat at Rob, “Your life is so screwed up that you have to blow up mine too?”
Rob stepped back. “Natalie,” he said, the sound of his voice matching the hurt inside her.
She began to turn away from him.
“Stop,” he said, reaching out a hand for her. She couldn’t let him touch her, couldn’t bear to feel the hands that had made her shiver earlier that evening. She pulled back.
And suddenly she wasn’t in Gabby’s living room anymore. The other party guests disappeared, and she stood in the hallway outside the wedding reception, facing off with a man who confronted her with the parts of herself she didn’t want to see. She was supposed to be grounded and successful, but Rob had plummeted her back into all the shame and confusion she used to feel. And if he was going to drag her back there, she could act like her younger self, someone who got hurt, and hurt in turn.
“What happened with Gabby?” he asked, concern in his eyes, and her fury gathered strength in her chest.
“It’s over.”
“What?” He shook his head. “No, she’ll come around. It can’t be that bad—”
“It is, actually.” She threw her shoulders back, formal and cold. “You’ve ensured that I won’t get invited to any more of Gabby and Angus’s events. So, goodbye. I guess this is the end of us meeting like this.”
“No. What? Stop, it doesn’t have to be—”
“I think it does.” Tonight, he’d cost Natalie her best friend. So how could she ever fall back into his arms? “I hope you have a nice life and figure your shit out.”
“Come on,” he said, his voice rough with frustration. “You can’t blame me for everything here. I messed up, but at the end of the day, you’re the one who wrote the book.”
“You’re right. I did something cruel, and I’ve finally gotten what I deserve,” she said. “Congratulations. You’ve won, once and for all. I hope that this victory can keep you company, because I’d rather not.”
He stepped back, his face closing off, but she couldn’t let herself feel guilty about this too. There was simply no more room inside her.
Instead, she turned around. “Tyler? It’s time to go.” Tyler rose from his seat with a chastened nod. She was supposed to be a grown woman, and all she wanted to do was cry like a little girl. Natalie held her head high and, not letting herself look at Rob, she walked out the door.