Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
A word about my general love life: shriveled.
I have dated.
Here’s a brief overview: virginity (fictional, contrived, social construct but I digress) mutually lost at seventeen with a sort-of boyfriend at his dad’s house. No technique or skill. We conked heads and laughed hysterically. He made me pizza bites afterward.
Then followed a series of unserious hookups with randoms that occasionally culminated in some underwhelming penetration.
At twenty-four I was pretty firmly swept away by one guy, Tony. His best friend, Mario, was head over heels for Lou and the four of us used to go on double dates, which was probably a large part of the appeal. It was very fun until Mario started sucking and everybody broke up with everybody. I slept with Tony a few more times over the years, which was generally a thumbs-up. He came to Lou’s funeral in a suit but I couldn’t even look at him. And now you’re up to date.
Which brings us to now. This moment, where I’m peeking out from a crack in the blankets in the dusty dawn light and trying not to scream every time Miles’s chest rises and falls with his breath.
He’s asleep on his back, face turned toward me, and why have I never noticed before that you could brush those eyelashes with a hairbrush they’re so long?
The locket is clutched in my hand. It feels like a wedding ring he doesn’t realize he’s given me.
Do some people slowly fall in love and not realize it? Have I been in denial? Or did he hand me a locket with my best friend’s face glued into it and bam just like that two hundred gallons of feelings upturned onto my head?
Does it matter when it started? I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve never felt like this before and I’m not handling it well.
I slide out of the living room and track down my bag. I’ve never moved more quietly in my life. I change back into muddy camping clothes and don’t care. I can’t wear Miles’s gigantic white T-shirt anymore or I’m going to go out there and crawl under the blanket with him.
I’m completely packed, bag in the car, his mother’s dress laid out and all the towels already in the dryer by the time he wakes up.
I may or may not be sitting on the back porch in an Adirondack chair tapping my foot at sixty miles an hour.
“You’re up already?” he asks, sliding open the glass door. His breath makes clouds and he’s in boxer briefs and a T-shirt. I think. I can’t look at him directly.
“Yup. All packed.”
“It’s only seven.” He’s flabbergasted.
“Ready to get back to the city.” Or at least away from this place where I can’t catch my breath and have absolutely no idea what to say to you.
“Oh. All right.” He slides the door closed and comes back five minutes later with a steaming cup of coffee. When I take it from him, I bow my head to him in thanks. You know. Nice and natural. Like I’m the queen of England.
He scratches his head and looks down at me. “You good?”
“Yup.”
He waits for me to say more. But I can’t. So he heads back inside and I wait on the porch for him to do whatever he needs to do to prepare his house for winter.
I drink my coffee and try not to think too hard about the man who delivered it. Because Miles? Miles is? Miles is my list shepherd. My constant companion. My ace. Miles is my pal.
Friends to lovers is not, like, groundbreaking, I know. But I’m having a lot of trouble imagining changing literally anything about my relationship with him. He’s seen me unkempt, unwashed, crying on sidewalks, shouting at strangers. He’s dragged me off dance floors. I’ve shamelessly gotten crumbs on his couch.
Impertinent, teasy, bratty, goofy, unbothered…this is my wheelhouse. But suddenly, none of that seems even remotely reachable. I’ve broken a boundary between us. Our entire house of cards is built on the fact that we’re friends.
And aren’t feelings like this supposed to feel good?
Because this doesn’t feel good. This feels…uncomfortable. There’s a certain high-flying euphoria with every inhale, sure, but on every exhale, there’s a corresponding emotion. One that pierces my gut and almost makes me gasp. Why am I feeling like total shit right now?
This isn’t, like, Oh, I’m so scared of what the future might hold with Miles, this is a bad feeling. Almost overwhelming. It’s creeping up from my gut, into my throat, stealing my words, battling for control.
I grasp the locket in one fist and fight to breathe. The coffee, for once, is not helping. I set it aside and try to focus on the trees in his backyard, the blue sky, the icy-damp air.
“You’re shivering,” Miles says behind me. I hadn’t even heard him open the glass door.
“Yeah. Should we get going?” I hop up and force myself to look at his face. My euphoria blooms and so does this nameless awful feeling. I’m being torn in two.
—
On the drive back to the city I sit on my hands and look out the side window. Miles has noticed my silent anxiety and can’t stop worrying himself. “Seriously, what the hell is happening right now?” he asks approximately eighteen times.
“Autumn’s here,” I observe, because I have to say something. And indeed. The weather’s finally turned. There were spiderwebs of frost on the Jeep windshield this morning. There are comets of red and yellow and orange on every tree. The world is on fire with change.
When he pulls up outside the studio apartment, I grab my bag from my feet and scramble out of the car. His door slams and then he’s in front of me on the sidewalk.
He’s got one hand tugging on his short hair. “Lenny, are you sure you’re okay? Is this…a Staten Island Ferry sort of thing?” he asks.
“I’m okay,” I say, trying to reassure him. I see the worry etched in stone. “This isn’t that kind of problem.”
His hands slide into his jeans pockets and he suddenly looks so bewildered that I just want to koala-bear-hug him.
“Oh. Okay…” He clears his throat and then bounces on his heels. “Obviously you don’t want to talk about it but…could you tell me what genre this problem is?”
I laugh, because cute. But then I get serious. Because what genre problem is this? This is a love-life problem. An ache-in-my-heart problem. A hysterical terror at the thought of loving someone wholeheartedly. And maybe it’s also me realizing that I simply can’t love someone wholeheartedly. The love-maker in my chest is too injured. When it creates love, it creates dread in equal measure.
“It’s…out of your jurisdiction,” I eventually say.
He recoils like I’ve slapped him. I almost take it back. He’s the man who helps me. That’s his job and he’s proud of it. I’ve just stripped him of the Superman S on his onesie.
“Just…I’m fine,” I say. “It’s okay. I think this weekend was a lot and I just need some time on my own to get my head on straight.”
“Okay.” His eyes narrow and he cocks his head to one side. I think he’s gotten over the shock of my rejection and has moved back into problem-solving mode. “I’ll…give you a little space.”
My heart skitters with panic. He’s turning away from me toward the car and I drop my bag on the ground and leap forward, pinching his sleeve. “Just a little space.”
He’s paused, turned back toward me, his eyes on my hands white-knuckling his sleeve. When our eyes meet, there’s a softness there that’s almost immediately wiped away by resolve. “Just a little,” he agrees.
I don’t watch him go. I gather my bag and run upstairs. I slam the door of the studio behind me and collapse onto the tiny bed, trying to take a catalog of my emotions.
Giddiness, disbelief, sadness, panic, happiness, fear, excitement, confusion. It’s a wall of white noise bearing down on me and turns out, I didn’t want to be upstate and I don’t want to be in this tiny apartment either! There’s so much adrenaline in my system that when a plan pops into my head, I just barrel toward it, advisable or not. It’s a bandage that I’ve been needing to rip off anyhow; might as well do it now, when everything already feels intense.
After a quick shower, I open the old wooden dresser and there, look, my Big Bird sweatshirt is holding hands with an old red hoodie of Miles’s. My knees hit the floor and I try my best not to hyperventilate. If this were two days ago I would’ve worn Miles’s sweatshirt in a heartbeat. Cozy, pre-loved, oversized men’s wear? I mean, come on.
But today, right now, with the locket pressed against my heart, the thought of wearing Miles’s clothes makes me feel like I just did cocaine.
I slide into leggings, the Big Bird sweatshirt, and my jean jacket. I have to go.
—
After a brief stop at a bodega and a long train ride, I’m standing outside wrought-iron gates I can’t pass through.
Greenwood Cemetery is a beautiful, peaceful place. A pond is in there. Flocks of migratory birds. Blue skies and a patchwork quilt of rolling hills.
Lou is in there, too.
I’ve wanted Lou, mourned Lou, grieved her.
But this is the first time since she’s died that I’ve actually needed her. These feelings for Miles…it’s the first time in my life I’ve felt this way. I’m aching, panicking, and promptly rethinking every single leap in logic I just took to get myself here.
Why did I think coming here was going to help clear my head?
My stomach is churning, my heart burning. I put one hand on the wrought-iron threshold that I cannot make my body cross.
My hands shake and I jam them into the pockets of my jean jacket.
What will I say when I get to her grave?
Sorry I don’t come visit you? Are you taking care of the part of me that died along with you? Are you warm enough? Are you happy?
“Oh, Lou.” I drop down to a three-point stance, right there in the entrance of the cemetery. I can’t be the only person who couldn’t make their legs take another step inside these gates.
If I weren’t feeling so confused about Miles I’d call him and gripe. The change of scenery didn’t work, I’d tell him. I reach into my pocket and pull out the Snickers bar I bought at the bodega on the way here. I take half of it down in one bite. The something bad for me didn’t work either, you know-it-all is what I’d say to him.
But then I realize I’ve likely left out the most important component of his recipe for feeling better.
I pull out my phone and pull up a contact.
Something good for me.
Oh, this is going to hurt.
I swallow the rest of the Snickers bar and I can’t tell if my heart is racing from what I’m about to do or because I’m the closest I’ve been to Lou in months.
On a deep breath, I press call. The phone barely makes it through the first ring before it’s answered. I gasp words, reveal my location.
“I’ll be there in twenty.” The words come through the line, clear as a bell. “Wait for me.”
I’m grateful for the instruction. I lean against the iron fence around the cemetery and wait.
Twenty minutes later on the dot, I lift my head and look up toward the hill that Lou is buried on the other side of. The sun is off-kilter beside it and a woman atop it is backlit and distant. I push to a stand and now the woman walking down the hill is twenty yards from me.
When I called, I didn’t expect her to walk through the cemetery to get to me.
“Mom,” I shout, my voice like a frog.
She stops in her tracks, scanning for me. The wind must have carried my voice because she looks back over her shoulder, in Lou’s direction.
“Mom!” I call again, this time my voice stronger.
She whips around, locates me, pauses, and then breaks into a flat-out run. She’s a marathon runner, so this is not shocking. Her peacoat flaps open around her hips; her long dyed-dark ponytail sails behind her. As soon as she’s upon me I’m in her arms, inside her coat, my hands gripping her sweater and hanging on like I’ve been lost in a grocery store and she’s just found me.
“Baby,” she gasps into my hair. She takes me by the shoulders and pushes me back to look at me. “Where have you been. ”
Her tears are like glass spears down her cheeks. Her fingers turn into talons on my shoulders and she repeats her question. “ Where have you been?”
“I’m okay, Mom. I’m okay.”
“A few texts here and there. A voice message or two. Months, Helen. Months!”
No one but Mom calls me by my full name. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to the ground.
“You haven’t been going home,” she accuses. “I know because I did a goddamn stakeout. ”
“I’ve been working uptown,” I offer. But from the way her eyes are burning I can tell that I’m going to have to give up a lot more than that. “I haven’t been able…to…”
She reads the months of misery in my expression and her own softens accordingly. “I was about half a week away from hiring a private investigator.”
“I really am okay,” I assert again. “I’m…” Alive. Surviving. Learning to wake up in the mornings like the happy people do.
These are all accurate descriptions, but it’s different words that bubble up inside me. I can’t make myself walk through the gate to get to Lou’s grave, but everything I came to tell her is scratching to get out.
“I’m…” I try again and the words just tumble. “ I think I might be falling in love with someone, Mom. With someone who has saved me these last few months.” I cover my face with my hands. “I don’t know where I’d be without him. And I mean that literally. He’s kept me earthbound, Mom. The only reason I’m standing here right now is him. And I’m feeling so much and it hurts —” I drop back into the three-point stance. “It hurts and no one ever tells you that when you want someone this hard, you risk everything you built with them. And I came here to tell Lou, because I’ve never felt like this before and I had to tell her. But I couldn’t even go in.”
Mom tugs me up to a stand by the scruff of my jacket and takes me by the shoulders again. She’s got a look like she’s about to say something profound and illuminating. Then her face scrunches up like a paper ball. “ What? ”
I can’t help it. I laugh. “It’s really good to see you, Mom.”
“Don’t change the subject. Did you just tell me you’re in love with someone? Who is this person?”
I scrub my hands over my face again. “His name is Miles. He’s…new.”
“Miles…I heard something about him from Marzia.”
“Ah, God. Don’t get me started on that. Whatever she told you is patently false.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “He treats you well?”
“Mom, he walked into hell and dragged me back out.”
Her face cracks into alarm. The months since I’ve seen her in person splat between us. “Baby, how bad was it?”
“I wasn’t okay for a while. But I am now.” I try for a reassuring tone, but the alarm has not receded from her face.
“Well, how can I believe you? You were lying to me for months!” She scrambles her phone out of her pocket and pulls up our text thread. I wince when I see all the lying, cheating exclamation points I’ve been sending her. The phone goes black and she shoves it away. “Not that I bought any of it.”
There are more tears in her eyes, and these ones are angry.
“You want to talk about hell, Helen?” She points up the hill toward Lou. “I feel like I’m down two daughters.”
Her words pierce me, but they’re also overdramatic and said with a flair for theater. Just enough to keep me from spinning off into her world. “Mom.”
“Texts are not enough. ” She steps into my space. “One call is not enough. You don’t want to live in your apartment? That’s fine. Come home and live with me and Dad.”
I hold my ground. “I’m not moving home.”
Her eyes narrow. She wants me where she can keep an eye on me. “Fine. Then I want a weekly dinner. A rain-or-shine dinner. And if you don’t come to Bay Ridge, then I’m coming uptown. Wherever you are. Once a week.”
I roll my eyes like a teenager and unlock a flood of lovely chemicals. How wonderful to be casually annoyed at my mother. How wonderful for my mother to boss me around and threaten me with her overbearing presence. How wonderful to word-vomit my thoughts and fears to her in one big gob and have her say the wrong things.
“Okay.” I agree to her terms. “Once a week.”
And then I’m back in her arms, inside her coat. She trembles as we grip each other and I realize something awful. That at some point I’m going to have to deal with the fallout of my complete disappearance from my former life.
It occurs to me for the first time that people have been…missing me.
“Oh, Lenny-girl.” Mom grips me so tight it hurts and then releases me all at once. “Give me your phone.”
I do as she says because when she’s in this mood, it’s way easier to just succumb. She’s scrolling my contacts. I know who she’s looking for.
I watch in suspended animation while she texts herself his contact info from my phone.
She tips her phone away from me and texts him something.
I cover my face with my hands again. “You just invited him to dinner, didn’t you.”
“I need to befriend him if he’s going to keep tabs on you for me.”
“Mom. Come on—please don’t—things between us are weird right now and I—”
“Why are they weird? Oh, he just texted back. He asked what he could bring. That’s sweet. Doesn’t seem weird to me.”
The flood of emotions from earlier is receding and I’m left with some good old-fashioned sheepishness. “I don’t know.” I play with my sleeve. “I, like, just realized how I feel about him. So, now I…don’t know how to act…or if I should tell him…and I know that he cares about me, but that could be so different than how I feel about him and wait, yeah, how do I know if he likes me?”
Mom’s pretty green eyes grow wide. “ You’re not together ? I thought—Oh, Helen. You do need Lou, don’t you?” She says this on a laugh and I’m smiling in spite of the stab of pain that comes with it. “Regardless. Bring him to dinner. Bring the after-dinner fruit. Tomorrow night. We’ll do Sunday dinner on a Monday. Just for you. He already agreed to come, so don’t try to get out of it.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. She loops her arm through mine and I think I’m walking her to the train until she stops next to a dinosaur of a Subaru. I blink, my eyes widening. “You got it out of long-term parking?”
“You think my long-lost daughter finally calls me and I’m going to fool around with the subway? Get in.”
“Mom, you’re not going to drive me all the way to the Upper West Side.”
Her eyes widen a little at my mention of the neighborhood she didn’t know I was staying in. But apparently, that’s exactly where she’s driving me, because she stuffs me into the car. We spend the next hour and ten minutes fighting traffic and mildly arguing. When we stop in front of the studio apartment, Mom puts on her hazards and gets out to take a picture of my front door. She even drops a pin on her Google Maps. She’s got my location and she’s holding on with two hands. I hug her goodbye on the sidewalk but she follows me up the stoop.
“Should I come up? We could order in.”
Now that we’re separating, her alarm lines are creasing her face again.
“I’ll be there tomorrow, Mom. I promise.”
“You promise.”
“I promise.”
A UPS truck lays on its horn and makes us both jump. It can’t get past Mom’s idling car. “Okay. I’ll go.” She gives me one last hug and then I stand on the stoop and watch her drive away.
It’s chilly. And I’m hungry. And I should really go inside now. But instead I just sit there and think about how tightly she held on to me.