Overdue

Chapter Eleven #2

Another serving of alcohol seemed useful. He grabbed a cold cider for me, then excused himself to change pants. If we’d been more confident, that would have been the moment for us to lose our clothes altogether, but neither of us was Justin.

I glanced around and discovered a shelf of books beneath his extensive movie collection. Most of them appeared to be assigned novels and textbooks from his school days, but there was also some film history and criticism. I flipped through a newer biography about Buster Keaton.

“Oh no,” he said, reappearing behind me. The washing machine sloshed in another room. “I’ve been dreading this. Please don’t judge me by my books.”

I forced my mouth into a smile. “I would never.”

This was a lie, but his books were also fine.

I wasn’t sure why I felt uneasy. Maybe because he’d imagined me in his apartment before, inspecting and scrutinizing his life, but I had never imagined him in mine.

This did make me feel bad—I had more information about our lack of a future than he did—but something else was rumbling inside me, too.

We settled onto his couch, ostensibly to watch something. It reminded me of my earliest dates with Cory, when we still needed an excuse to sit beside each other and fool around. I started, realizing Gareth’s couch was the exact same model as mine, only with navy upholstery instead of red.

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

“This is my couch. We have the same couch.”

He laughed in relief, and I pretended to laugh, and after a few seconds it eased into the real thing.

I was nervous, that was all. Condensation slipped down the bottle in my hand.

He was asking what I wanted to watch when the tiny splatters of primer on his cheek caught in the television’s flickering light.

They looked like a constellation of stars.

I set down my drink and touched them gently.

His eyes closed, and unlike those earliest dates with Cory, the situation escalated immediately into sex.

But we fumbled more than Cory and I did now, which made sense because this was new, yet we also fumbled more than I had with Justin.

Perhaps this was because Gareth and I never left the couch.

Our bodies were too aroused to take it elsewhere.

The correct buttons were hit and experiences were had. Yet afterward, I felt deflated.

The way he gazed at me warned that he did not feel the same way.

A siren went off inside me. I did not spend the night with him.

He offered, but I used work as an excuse.

I was so rattled that I forgot I’d be seeing Macon in the morning and didn’t get nervous until I was sitting behind the desk the next day and saw his car pull into the lot.

Were we friends again? Or would things still be weird in person?

My heart was thumping as he entered through the double doors. Our eyes met, and he halted. His expression looked hesitant and exhausted… but it also held a glimmer of hope.

I broke into a warm smile that seemed to surprise him.

He smiled back reflexively. But then self-consciousness engulfed him, and he hurried off to the annex, presumably to catch up with Sue.

I awaited his return anxiously and regreeted him enthusiastically.

His skittish response reminded me of Edmond.

I was coming on too strong. I backed off to let him get used to my physical presence again.

That week, we resided in a liminal space between politeness and friendship.

We conversed about subjects other than work, but we didn’t tease each other as we used to.

We were overly respectful of boundaries.

We stayed on our own sides of the desk. But we were taking steps in the right direction and finally seemed to be on our way to course correcting.

The hiccup occurred on Thursday night when Gareth arrived.

Macon disappeared with his watering can again and didn’t reappear until Gareth had left, but there was no way he hadn’t overheard us discussing our upcoming plans.

Once more, Macon’s mood soured, but he didn’t lash out at me, nor did I try to provoke him.

Instead, we retreated into frustrated silence.

He was jealous—it was so obvious—yet I still couldn’t decipher the implications.

No. Ingrid. No.

That weekend, against my better judgment, I did spend the night at Gareth’s.

I thought that being in his company would quell my loneliness, but as I lay beside him in a bed strikingly similar to my own—as he slept soundly and I kept checking the clock on my phone—the truth shook loose and broke inside me.

I liked him, the dates were fun, and the sex had improved.

But I wanted to run screaming from his apartment.

Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

“Maybe it’s his coloring,” I said to Kat as soon as I could escape to FaceTime her. “His hair and eyes are so similar to Cory’s.”

“He doesn’t look anything like Cory,” she said.

He did, though, a bit. His sense of humor was similar to Cory’s, too, not to mention the shared appreciation for a themed location.

But why was it so distressing that we had the same pathetic furniture?

It wasn’t like Macon—it felt shameful to still be comparing other men to the man who had rejected me—had amazing furniture. Arguably, his couch was even worse.

“But Macon’s couch is inside a house,” Kat pointed out. “And he cooks adult meals and tends an established garden. His decor might be shit, but he’s firmly in another phase of life. It sounds like Gareth is making you anxious because he’s in the same phase as you and Cory.”

“Shouldn’t that be a good thing? To be in the same phase of life?”

“Maybe. Unless you don’t want to be there anymore.”

It hit me like a sledgehammer. One sentence shattered me into pieces that could never fit back together the way they used to be.

“You need to break up with him,” Kat said, not realizing what she had done. “It’s already gone on too long.”

I could barely say it. “Cory?”

“ Gareth .” Her expression changed. “Oh my God. It finally happened. You finally just realized that you need to break up with Cory.”

It wasn’t true, though. As startling as it was to learn that she had been expecting it this whole time, I hadn’t reached that conclusion yet. I still didn’t understand that breaking up had always been the inevitable and only possible way this could end. I reeled and sputtered.

Kat realized her mistake and backtracked to refocus my attention on Gareth. “One step at a time,” she said. “Let’s do this first. Then we can figure out Cory.”

“What am I supposed to say to him?”

“To Cory?” she said.

“ Gareth ,” I said.

She advised me to tell the truth, but how could I do that to him?

From Gareth’s perspective, we were heading in the direction of becoming an actual couple.

He wasn’t living inside my world of pretend.

I’d asked him out, we’d gone on a series of adorable dates, and then we’d slept together multiple times.

I’d given him no reason to suspect that I was already taken.

I’m sorry , I texted him that evening, after ignoring his texts all day.

I can’t see you anymore because I’m getting back together with my boyfriend.

I didn’t know if I was lying, but it was close to the truth.

Cory and I would at least be seeing each other again.

I was simply withholding a few crucial details that would only make the situation worse.

Normally Gareth responded immediately, but this reply took several minutes. The three dots appeared and disappeared. I don’t understand. Is this a joke?

I’m sorry , I said again. It’s not. You’re a great guy, and I had so much fun with you. I wish you all the best.

WOW. Seriously?? Fuck you too.

An arrow shot through my chest. His hurt and pain leapt off the screen as if they were written in pulsing neon.

Heat flushed my skin. He was a nice person.

I was a nice person. I hadn’t meant to do this to him.

I didn’t treat people this way. Kat’s words from late February rushed back to me: and then feel guilty about how you treated him for the rest of your life.

My world tipped over sideways. I supposed it had tipped over on Christmas, but I hadn’t noticed how tightly I’d been holding on to the edge until I finally lost my grip and fell.

The next few days spun in a nauseous whirl. Kat tried to press me about Cory, but my thoughts were unraveling so quickly, so catastrophically, that I didn’t dare speak any of them out loud. I began to ignore her calls.

I had never been able to see my future with Cory in any kind of detail.

There wasn’t anything, apart from a vague sense of more , that I was looking forward to.

The realization was devastating. Cory himself had been the only part of it that I could see, but now it seemed this was because he’d been blocking the view of every other possible future, and I had been doing the same for him.

Maybe. Probably. I couldn’t be sure yet, but I was certain there would be no threat of a ring in April. Perhaps there never had been.

My mood and behavior at work became so erratic and abnormal that Macon’s attitude toward me shifted again, and he grew protective.

He tried to provide space for me. He answered the phone, jumped to help patrons approaching the desk, volunteered to assist people with the computers.

He didn’t know what was going on with me because I didn’t tell him.

But on Thursday, he dared to ask, “Is your boyfriend coming in tonight?”

He didn’t mean Cory. My reply was sharp but guarded. “I doubt it.”

He did not ask any follow-up questions.

The days continued to slip by, out of control.

An outraged book banner showed up during another late shift.

Macon was straightening the periodicals in the back when the woman marched straight to my station, screeching about a list of books in our collection she hadn’t read—they never read the books, which was part of the problem—and then accused me of being a pedophile.

I wasn’t strong enough to take it. My backbone had broken.

And although I had a personal rule to never let the hatemongers see me cry, it was too late.

She spat another abuse behind me as I ran full throttle toward the annex, and then Macon was roaring at her to exit the premises.

I burst into the restroom—and into racking sobs.

My body collapsed against the wall beside the sink, searching for support, and slid down until my limbs crumpled onto the floor.

I heaved and gasped. Wailed. Gasped again, in shock, and covered my mouth.

Snot and tears bubbled into my hands. I was breathing so rapidly that I couldn’t breathe.

A knock on the door. “Ingrid?”

I cried and choked, gripping onto myself so tightly that my nails dug into my flesh.

“Ingrid?” Macon said again. He tried the handle and let out a noise of surprise when it wasn’t locked. “Ingrid, I’m coming in.”

The door opened cautiously, just wide enough for his head to poke in.

When he saw me, he hastened inside and began grabbing paper towels.

He was the one who’d placed the REMEMBER…

THESE COME FROM TREES stickers on our dispenser, but now he kneeled beside me and handed me an entire fistful like a bouquet.

I was aware that I was sprawled on the floor of a public restroom and felt all the accompanying revulsion and self-loathing, yet I was helpless to do anything about it. I wiped my face with the paper towels, continuing to sob, still unable to breathe.

“Do what I do.” His voice was firm. “We’re going to make our exhalations longer than our inhalations.” He demonstrated loudly, shortening his inhalations to mirror mine but then exhaling for a few seconds longer. “Look at me. Look at me .”

He forced my eyes to meet his. With each breath, our inhalations lengthened. Our exhalations lengthened even further. We inhaled. We exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled.

“There,” he said a minute later.

I was breathing again.

“That woman was abhorrent,” he said. “A goblin. I will murder her.”

I laugh-choked. But although my tears had quieted, they still spilled. He pried the crumpled paper towels from my hands, threw them away, and handed me a fresh one.

My voice wobbled. “It’s not just her.”

“I know,” he said.

I couldn’t speak anymore, and he didn’t ask me to.

“Hello?” a man called out at the circulation desk.

“Shit.” Macon started to leave but just as quickly stopped.

He took off his thick duffel coat and draped it over me like a blanket.

The tile floor was cold, and I was shivering.

He left, but two seconds later the door swung back open.

His head was shaking as if he were the fool.

“I just remembered there’s a handkerchief in the pocket. If you need it.”

He left again.

My muscles felt weak, my bones heavy. I hugged the coat with my whole body the same way I hugged Cory’s pillow in bed.

It was the closest I could get to the comforting presence of another person, and some nights, it was the only way I was able to fall asleep.

Did I imagine Cory in its place? I did, sometimes.

But other times it was somebody else, somebody nameless because my loyalty to Cory still lingered.

The coat was warm and weighty and smelled like Macon.

Smelled like his house. I breathed in the concentrated scent.

A few minutes later, he returned with an oversize hardcover about the Faroe Islands. He squatted beside me again and opened it to a photograph of a stone cottage with a sod roof that overlooked a windswept sea.

“Let’s close early and go here,” he said. “We’ll light a fire. Put the kettle on.”

“We’ll wear our oldest and most comfortable sweaters.”

He smiled. “I’ll bake bread.”

“I’ll sleep.”

We held each other’s gaze until it became too much. He broke away first and placed the book into my lap. “I’ll handle everything out there. Stay here as long as you need to.”

He meant both the floor and the cottage.