Chapter Thirty-Five #2
This statement jumped out as if it were written in bold ink.
It sounded like he wanted me to know that his mattress was new.
(At least I hoped it was new. I hoped he hadn’t found it wherever he’d found the couch.) Was he remembering how he’d carried the mattress that I had shared with Cory to the dumpster?
Was he thinking about how this was the first time that I’d ever stepped foot inside his bedroom?
As I searched through my boxes, his energy seemed to pulsate. “Have you started looking for a new place?” he asked.
“I’ll look in January when the store slows down. Or goes out of business, ha. I can’t deal with anything else right now.”
“Oh,” he said quietly.
And it struck me: Did he think a relationship counted as anything else ?
With a pounding heart, I tested him. “Hey. I know you’ve never met them, but Brittany and Reza are hosting a birthday dinner for me next weekend.
Mika and Bex will be there. And I know you hate parties, and I do, too, but this one will be small and simple.
Like that one here at your house all those years ago?
It’s okay if you don’t want to come, though,” I added, providing an escape.
“You don’t know everybody, so it might be uncomfortable—”
“No,” he said. “I mean, yes.”
“Really?”
“You are inviting me, right? You didn’t actually say that.”
“Yes.”
He swallowed. “I’d love to come.”
My whole body tingled in response. It wasn’t a date. But it wasn’t not a date.
While I didn’t normally do anything special on my birthday, it had been a year , and thirty was a loaded number.
I’d been hoping Macon would host the celebratory dinner, which would have been a tricky ask, but then Brittany and Reza had surprised me by showing up at the store, Amira in tow, and offering first. And now, just like that, Macon was in.
I’d love to come . My mind played this on repeat for the next week, hearing the swallow beforehand.
On the twenty-second of October, Mika, Bex, and I arrived early to Brittany and Reza’s house, bearing wine and my favorite foods.
(I’d instructed Brittany and Reza not to cook; they didn’t need any additional burden right now.) Macon surprised me by arriving on time, although it dawned on me that I’d only ever seen him arrive late to work.
He’d been punctual whenever I’d asked him to be somewhere.
In addition to my requested dishes, he was also carrying two bouquets of garden flowers, a big one for me and a smaller one for the hosts.
“Where’s mine?” Bex joked, and Macon looked so insecure that I wanted to hug him.
I hugged the flowers instead. Flowers! He’d brought me flowers again.
“How thoughtful,” Brittany said. “Thank you.” She still had a lingering distrust of him because of the incident in January.
We’d both been so busy that I hadn’t been able to fill her in on how much he’d been helping me.
But Macon didn’t know that her opinion of him was low, and I was relieved that she had decided to behave.
I officially introduced everyone who didn’t know each other, and then we unwrapped the containers and heated what needed to be heated.
Evidence of an infant was everywhere—bottles drying, piles of burp cloths, a carrier, a bouncy chair, blankets on the floor—but the house had been vacuumed, and it smelled warmly of beeswax.
Two honeyed tapers were lit on the table like they’d been at Ramadan.
And once again, Brittany’s appearance was polished and on point.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I said, feeling guilty.
“We’re just grateful that you were okay with us hosting,” Reza said. They weren’t ready for babysitters or spending an entire evening away from home.
“Where is the baby?” Mika asked. “I’d love to meet her.”
“She’s asleep,” Brittany said.
All conversation froze.
“She’s in the back with a white-noise machine,” Reza said, reassuring us. “She’ll be awake soon enough, though.”
“I love her and want to spend every second of every minute of every day with her,” Brittany said.
“And I’m fucking exhausted and need her to sleep more than two goddamn hours in a row.
” Her polish had already worn thin, and it made me love her even more.
She placed Macon’s flowers between the tapers before turning on us.
“And don’t even think about giving me advice because we’ve tried it all, and I don’t want to hear it. ”
After a brief and awkward pause, Bex gave her a dashing smile. “I’m confident that none of us have any advice to give you.”
Brittany exhaled. “Thank God.”
“Our moms have been a lot,” Reza explained.
We gathered at the table. Brittany sat at the end nearest to the hallway and Amira, and Reza sat across from her.
Mika and Bex sat beside each other, and I sat beside Macon.
Despite sitting beside each other for years, there had always been distance between us at the circulation desk, and we always sat across from each other at his house.
As everybody tucked in and laughed and shared stories, I tried to remember the last time we had sat this close together.
It must have been at one of the all-day all-staff meetings at the main library.
We always sat beside each other in the sea of folding chairs, but that was in fluorescent lighting with a hundred coworkers, and this was in candlelight with two couples and us.
His profile was achingly familiar. The line of his nose and chin, the slope of his shoulders.
But his hands looked larger and more alive as they moved beside me.
Our elbows bumped, and our forearms brushed.
Each time, we murmured an apology, reining our limbs back in.
Though our arms were clothed, my skin shivered.
Macon felt solid. Not abstract, like in my murky thoughts before slumber, but like muscle and sinew and bone.
He was wearing a nice button-down that I’d never seen before, and I was wearing a dress that he’d never seen before, and I felt pretty and happy, surrounded by my friends in the flickering glow.
As the meal progressed, Macon even opened up and began sharing stories, too. Everybody was enjoying themselves. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday.
“We forgot to toast!” Mika said.
Our wine glasses were almost empty, but everyone turned to look at me.
Mika lifted hers. “Ingrid, you’ve had a horrible and sensational year.” Everyone laughed. “But I’m proud of everything you’ve accomplished, and I’m so grateful to be back inside a bookstore. Thank you.”
Bex raised their glass. “And I’m thrilled to have no financial stake in it.”
Everyone laughed again, and Brittany added, “To Ingrid and her bookstore.”
“To Ingrid and her bookstore,” everyone chorused.
My skin was flushed with joy and prosecco as everyone clinked glasses. Macon’s and mine clinked together last. He held my gaze as he spoke. “Happy birthday, Ingrid.”
I was beaming. “Happy birthday, Macon.”
Everyone froze in surprise—then burst into fresh laughter. When I realized my mistake, my flush transformed into a full-bodied blush. Macon’s eyes lit up with delight, but he was the only one who wasn’t laughing.
“I’ve had a very busy year, and I’m very tired,” I said.
“Happy birthday, Mika.” Bex clinked their wife’s glass, which started a new round of everybody wishing everybody else a happy birthday. Amira cried from the nursery. Brittany and Reza both vaulted to their feet, but she waved for him to sit back down and left.
“So, when is your birthday, Macon?” Mika asked.
“November twenty-third,” I answered.
Everybody stared at me again. “I can name all of your birthdays, too,” I said defensively. And then, to remove the pressure from myself, I said, “He’s also having a big one this year.”
Their collective gaze shifted, and I immediately regretted thrusting him into the spotlight.
“Forty,” he said. It made him the oldest at the table by six years. There was a subtle undercurrent as they processed that he was a full decade older than me. When we were younger, a difference like that would have meant something, but it had long stopped mattering to me.
Mika smoothed away the tension with a warm smile. “Happy early birthday.”
“Hey,” I said to Macon, diving straight back into awkwardness. I blamed the wine. “This is the first time since we’ve known each other that we’ve both been in our thirties.”
Macon’s expression tightened. “For a whole month and a day.”
The tension ratcheted up another notch, and I realized I still hadn’t taken my attention away from him. I shifted toward the others and brightened my expression. “Well, this isn’t where I expected my life would be at this age, but… I like where it’s headed.”
“I’ll cheers again to that,” Bex said with a third raise of their glass.
But it turned out that Macon wasn’t done. “Where did you think you’d be?”
The directness of his question in front of people he hardly knew surprised me. Perhaps the wine had loosened him, too. “Definitely not in an under-construction micro-studio,” I said.
Everyone but Macon laughed again.
“In my own house,” I said, because he was waiting for an honest answer. I couldn’t look at him, though. “With somebody I love. But the bookstore has been a wonderful surprise.”
“Do you ever want kids?” Reza asked.
“Reza!” Brittany admonished from the baby’s room. I laughed and called back that it was okay. But now everyone at the table was interested in my response. The intensity of Macon’s gaze told me he was interested in my response.
“No,” I said.
“Even if you find the right guy?” Reza asked.
Something smacked against the hallway wall. Mika leaned back in her chair to see what it was. “Brittany threw a stuffed bunny.”
Reza looked sheepish. “That means I shouldn’t have asked, and you don’t have to answer.”