Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
In the day that’s passed since I called him from the ferry, Miles has done something truly despicable: he’s made me take up exercise.
“This is barely exercise,” he asserts, hands on his hips as I drag my ass up a hill.
“I have one little meltdown on the Staten Island Ferry and the punishment is corporal?”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “You can walk normally on the street. How come you can’t walk normally when it’s for your cardiovascular health?”
“Maybe it’s the shoes.”
“What’s wrong with the shoes?” he demands.
“They’re for running. They’re inherently flawed.”
“It’s closed-minded to have opinions on something you’ve never experienced,” he informs me.
“Ooh. Burn.”
“What do I have to do to make you run?”
“Dance naked around the Empire State Building.”
“It can’t involve me getting arrested. I’ll buy you a new Garfield shirt, how about that?”
“Pass. I don’t need two.”
“Nutella croissant? Bruce Willis movie marathon? I’ll go back to the sporting goods store and see if that married guy will go out on a date with you?”
I come to a full stop and put my hands on my hips. “How do you know me so well? It’s creepy.”
He laughs and rubs at his eyebrows. “It’s not creepy, Lenny. It’s called friendship.”
“See? Why doesn’t that count as having a new friend? Why do I have to make even more?”
“You need more than one friend. Trust me.”
“How many friends do you have?” I demand.
He glowers at me. “Run up this hill right now.”
“If I run up this hill…I want…an afternoon beer. And…sunshine. And…a basket of fried shrimp. And…a view of the ocean.”
He blinks at me. And then at the cloudy sky. It’s been a full day since my trip to the Met and the clouds haven’t let up yet. “Well, I can’t promise the sunshine. But I can do everything else.”
Three hours later, after an hour of labored feet-moving and a shower apiece, we find ourselves sitting at a picnic table at one of the Russian cafés down the boardwalk from Coney Island.
Yes, there’s an extremely cold beer. Yes, there’s a basket of shrimp, and apparently he can promise sunshine because the old girl has made an appearance, bouncing silver off the ocean.
It’s only seventy degrees in the sun, so no one is swimming, but there are plenty of wrinkly late-season sunbathers, men with potbellies and G-strings, beach volleyball enthusiasts, hotties arching their backs for the ’Gram.
I eye his lunch critically.
“What?” he asks, mouth full of sandwich.
“Yours looks better than mine.” I pout. “Next time remind me to order whatever you order.”
He tears his sandwich in half and puts it in my shrimp basket, stealing some shrimp for himself. “So tell me about the cashier.”
“Huh?”
“The cashier. The one you were just lusting after. What makes him your Prince Charming?”
I laugh and take a bite of the sandwich he just gifted me. “He’s not a Prince Charming. They’re never a Prince Charming. Who wants Prince Charming? I want someone as screwed up as I am so I don’t suffer by comparison.”
He laughs. “Sounds healthy.”
I shrug. “It is what it is.”
“So tell me,” he prods. “What’s your story with the cashier? I’m curious.”
“I figure he’s an aspiring chef. He’s got a TikTok that’s got a lot of traction. He’ll take me to a ton of restaurants and expos around the city. We’ll eventually live in one of those studio apartments right over there and I’ll stroll along the boardwalk, even in the winter. He’ll get me earmuffs and those badass gloves with the fingers cut off.” I’m on a roll and Miles is listening intently. “With him? I bet I get pregnant by accident. We’ll get married so my parents don’t have a heart attack. And I’ll always wonder if he would have married me otherwise. Until one day I join him at an expo he doesn’t know I’m coming to. A gorgeous girl is hitting on him but he shows her his wedding ring and tells her he loves me.”
Miles eyes me, chewing his food for a long moment. Then he bodily turns around and studies the cashier. The cashier catches Miles’s eye and jolts, looking distinctly uncomfortable and busying himself with organizing receipts.
“What you just described is a Prince Charming, isn’t it?” Miles says, turning back around. “You got your happy ever after.”
“Oh.” I consider it, and then the cashier again. He catches my eye and starts to look annoyed. “I think the cashier thinks we’re about to ask him to spice up our marriage.”
Miles chokes, coughs, and then turns around to look at him again. “Whoops. Let’s let the poor guy work.”
“Maybe you’re right about the Prince Charming thing. My fantasies don’t always end up happily, though. Sometimes I fantasize about a breakup.”
He laughs, balls up his napkin, and tosses it into his empty sandwich basket. “Why would you fantasize about a breakup? Aren’t these fantasies supposed to be fun?”
“Hypothetical breakups are totally fun! Come on! They’re romantic when they’re not actually happening to you.”
He eyes me. “You’ve never had a real breakup, huh?”
“What? How dare you! I’ve never been so insulted in all my—yeah, not really. I’ve dated casually. But I’ve never been heartbroken. Romantically at least.”
“Well, it’s not something to fantasize about, trust me.”
“Well, was your relationship itself something to fantasize about?”
“Define fantasy.”
“Clothes-tearing, you’re-my-other-half, still in love after all these years?”
He gives me a funny little smile, like he just learned a secret about me. “That’s what you’re looking for?”
“Isn’t that what everyone is looking for? High passion? Rose between the teeth?”
“Are you saying you want high passion for the rest of your life? You never want your partner to just be your companion sometimes?”
“It’s not that I never want to feel comfortable. It’s just…It’d be nice to wake up in the morning and desire. I’d like to come home from work and be wanted. Is that so bad?”
“You want to be having sex in the morning and after work from now until you’re dead?…That sounds like hell on your joints.”
I can’t help but burst out laughing. “And what you want is…” I prod. We’ve never talked about anything like this and I find myself dangerously close to insatiably curious.
He considers, finishing his beer in one big swallow. I nudge mine across the table and he takes a sip of that too. “I want something that feels…natural, even if it’s not always sexy. Because relationships change so much while you’re in them. And so do the people. Even if you start out wanting one thing, a few years down the road you might want something completely different.”
“That’s…the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”
He laughs. “No, it’s not. Think of it this way: relationships have phases and they’re supposed to. If you’re gonna be in a relationship with someone for life, it’s like driving from one end of the country to the other. If you do the whole thing in first gear, you’re gonna overheat and cook your engine.”
“Lifetime New Yorker here. Never even touched a gas pedal in my life.”
“Okay, fine. Then think about…okay…going to the pool. What’s the first thing you do when you get there? Maybe you’re the type who cannonballs into the pool? But how many cannonballs can one person really do in an afternoon? After a while, you gotta do other stuff. You move to the shade. You read a book. Eat lunch. Take a nap. Whatever. Turns out there’s more to do at the pool than just cannonballs.”
“And there’s more than one thing to do in a relationship than screw each other’s brains out?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t find that at all disappointing?”
He laughs and takes another drink of my beer. “I mean, everything is vaguely disappointing if you directly compare it to some hypothetical white-hot sex you’re not currently having. But yeah. Companionship…it’s incredible if done right. It’s satisfying. And isn’t that ultimately what everyone wants? To feel fulfilled?”
“Known.”
“Of course.”
A teenaged girl on a skateboard comes barreling toward our picnic table. Miles half stands, reaches up, and secures her by the elbow before she takes herself out. “You all right?” he asks.
She jumps back, scoops her skateboard up, and holds it against her chest. “Yes,” she breathes, clearly just having fallen disastrously in love with Miles. “Thank you.”
He nods and sits back down, turning his attention back toward me. The girl drifts away, looking back over her shoulder as she goes.
My mind is processing what it looks like when someonefalls in love with Miles. “So, then, why did you two breakup?”
“Hm?” His eyes bounce from the ocean to me.
“Oh, come on. Give me the deets on the ex. When and why and who?”
“It’s complicated.”
I can’t help but notice that’s not a mind your own business. “Try.”
“Why’d we break up? Well, the fight where we actually broke up was because she really, really wanted to go to Paris with me.”
“Oh, she’s one of those. ”
“One of whats?”
“The kind who wants to go to Paris on a trip with her boyfriend someday. Yuck!”
“I can’t tell if you’re—”
“She probably wanted to go on dates and wanted you to remember her birthday too, huh? What an asshole. Sounds like you really dodged a bullet. “
“Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Sorry! Yes. I’m all ears.” I fold my fingers under my chin and wait expectantly.
“She wanted to go to Paris. Romantic getaways and stuff. And I don’t have anything against any of that. It’s just that she wanted to go there. And I wanted to come here. And get to know Reese and Ainsley.”
“Ah. It was right around when your dad had his first stroke.”
He nods. “She told me that it wasn’t that I chose them. It was that I didn’t choose her …I guess she was right.”
I sit up straight and my hands come back to the table. “Wait, why was she right?”
“I definitely didn’t choose her.”
“Maybe she was wrong to make you choose in the first place.”
“She wanted to feel like a priority.”
“You think maybe she could have done so without setting down an ultimatum between her and the only family you’ve got left? Might have been beneficial for both of you, not to mention the relationship.”
His eyebrows go up, and a small smile kicks up one side of his mouth. “You sound like you’re defending me.”
“Well, duh. Miles, you’re my…” Grief wingman? List doula? Only companion these days? “Ace.”
He blink-blinks and then quickly turns and squints out at the ocean. Takes another sip of my beer.
“Do you miss her a lot?” I ask, trying to read his mood.
“Sometimes,” he says with a shrug. “Sometimes not. We were together for five years. But breaking up was the right move. So…yeah. It is what it is.”
“Five years ?”
“Yeah.”
I’d give anything to juice his memories like an orange. I want the good stuff, no filter. “What’s her name? Is she pretty?”
His eyes flick up to mine. “Kira. And yeah.”
He laughs at my expression, even though I can’t begin to guess what I look like right now. “Well, there’s a lot we don’t know about each other.” He hands the beer back to me and my fingers accidentally overlap with his. “And a lot that wedo.”
I take a sip of our beer and clear my throat. I haven’t made a new friend in so long I forgot that it could feel like this. But Miles isn’t just a friend. He’s also my version of George’s son. He’s my handler. My manager. My personal EMT worker. My cook.
I sigh. How am I ever going to repay this debt to him?
“Hey…” I clear my throat. “By the way. Thanks for your help yesterday.”
His eyes are on the side of my face instead of on the ocean. “Thanks for badminton,” he replies easily. And then, “But I’m sorry if I…you know…triggered your meltdown? When I pushed you toward making friends.”
I turn and meet his gaze and it holds for a second longer than I expect it to. “So.” I turn back to the sea. “Am I fixed now? Something good for me, something bad for me, and a change of scenery? You drag me off the ferry, make me run a mile in the morning, stuff me full of shrimp and beer, and now I’m all better?”
He doesn’t laugh. “That is what started it, right?”
I shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. Who knows. I’m the dummy who went to the Met by myself. I thought I could cross it off the list.”
“You went to the Met before the ferry?”
“Yeah. Now it’s on a new list. The list of places I can’t go. My apartment. Lou’s grave. The Met.”
“I didn’t realize you hadn’t been to her grave.”
“Not since we buried her.”
He absorbs this. “So…you went to the Met and…”
“I got overwhelmed. I hadn’t been there since she’d died. And she used to take me there all the time. We’d walk around and she’d explain all the art I didn’t understand. She was an incredible artist, you know.”
“You mentioned Pratt…”
“Yeah…” I sniffle a little, but it’s nothing compared to yesterday’s tidal wave. “I just got overwhelmed,” I say again. “I went to the ferry, you came and got me, and then you were there for the rest.”
His strong grip on my shoulders as he steered me into a cab. Glasses of cold water in his apartment. A heavy blanket. Ibuprofen. The oblivion of sleep. Bananas and coffee and scrambled eggs in the morning. New-to-me workout clothes and a mandatory hill to run up.
“You know,” he says, and there’s a note in his voice that has me studying him. He’s glancing at me and then away. “If I had a list, this would be on it.” He nods. “The ocean. Or mountains. A view, I guess. Something beautiful and far away.”
“Also cardio,” I add. “That would be on your list.”
“And The Godfather Part II. ” He’s finally putting those smile lines to good use.
We watch the water and the foot traffic on the boardwalk for a long time. Those pesky clouds come back and a wind whips up and most everybody starts heading to the train, to their warm houses with warm beds and cups of after-dinner decaf.
I turn to Miles, to suggest we do exactly that, but he’s already looking at me. “Lenny. Thank you for calling me,” he says in a low voice. His hand slides across the picnic table and lands on mine. We’re only touching in four square inches but I’m awash in his warm heat. “For calling when you needed me.”