Chapter Seven
Seven
EMMA STARED AT THE CLOCK. IT WAS 12:02 P.M. AND HER book editor was supposed to call her at noon. She wondered if the delay was a bad sign. Or if she was just making assumptions without having any real information and evidence. It was hard to be a therapist with generalized anxiety disorder; sometimes she just wanted to let her brain misbehave without feeling any pressure to act rationally.
When the phone rang at 12:03 p.m., Emma answered on the first ring. She had given up trying to seem aloof years earlier. It didn’t suit her.
“Hi, this is Emma!” Her voice reached the level of pitch reserved for awkward phone calls and unsettling interactions with strangers on elevators.
“Hi, Emma, it’s Michelle.”
Michelle was around Emma’s age and had been the one to reach out about the potential of writing a book after finding Emma’s content on YouTube. Michelle was a younger editor and was hoping to use her social media fluency as a leg up in her old-school industry. Emma had been unbelievably flattered when Michelle reached out and immediately sent over a flurry of potential book ideas. They ultimately decided on The Good-Enough Relationship: How Unrealistic Expectations Get in the Way of Love. The first draft was a blend of Emma’s experiences as a couples therapist, the latest evidence-based relationship research and snippets of her own love story with Ryan. That last part was the problem.
“How’re you doing?” Michelle asked with the gentleness of someone who expected a long and harrowing answer.
“I’m, you know, still processing. But I’m excited to dive back into the manuscript,” Emma lied. She wondered if Michelle was going to bring up Operation: Save My Date or if she’d stopped watching Emma’s content once they had a signed deal. She secretly prayed for the latter even if it meant one less view.
“I’m glad to hear that. I know we’ll have to make a lot of changes given what happened, but I still think the book has good bones. I really enjoyed the read.”
Emma sighed with relief. After she’d rushed to meet her deadline right before Ryan left, it had mostly been radio silence as Michelle worked through the draft. This was the first she was hearing that it wasn’t a complete disaster.
“That’s great. I was worried you hated it!”
“If I hated it, this would be an email not a phone call. I hate confrontation.”
“Good to know. The next time I see an email from you, I’ll be sure to panic.” Emma let out a nervous giggle that didn’t enhance her awkward joke.
Michelle, smart enough to bypass the minefield of Emma’s writing insecurity, replied, “So, what are you thinking for the next draft? I know it would be easiest to cut Ryan out completely, but I don’t want to lose the personal narrative. We’ve found people engage with advice better when it seems to be coming from a real person and not just an expert.”
“Yeah, I get that. I’m just worried that if I include what really happened, my premise will sort of fall apart,” Emma replied.
“Maybe. Or maybe it will prove it. Did Ryan have unrealistic expectations about love?”
“Oh. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Really? That’s the first thing I thought when I found out he left without any real reason. I mean why do you do that unless you think there’s something better out there?”
For someone who hated confrontation, Michelle didn’t have any aversion to being blunt. But it was a good point: could Emma’s own relationship have fallen victim to the very type of thinking she railed against? Had Ryan convinced himself he could “do better” or “love more” when really what he should have been doing was pouring more effort into what he and Emma had already built together? The possibility made Emma’s heart sink. But it did lend itself to a compelling book narrative. If only it wasn’t about her own life.
“You could be right,” Emma confessed. “I clearly didn’t know what was going on in his head.”
“Well, it’s a theory. And one that could work well for the book. You could even do a thing where you don’t reveal until the very end that he left you. And then it’s like, Boom, unrealistic expectations ruined my relationship too !”
Emma felt a sob almost escape her body, but she managed to turn it into a fake cough instead. While she understood where Michelle was coming from, the delivery could’ve used some work.
“Totally. Yeah. Let me think on the right approach and get back to you.” If Emma could make it off this call without bursting into tears, she deserved a medal in composure. And maybe some ice cream.
“Perfect. In the meantime, I’ll send you all my notes on the current draft in the next few days. I’ve been highlighting every time you mention Ryan, so we know what needs to change.”
“Sorry to make you do that.”
“It’s no problem. Maybe it will feel nice to delete him.”
Emma laughed to be polite, but she knew that she would never get to fully delete the remnants of Ryan from her book or from her life. That’s not how the mind worked.
“Oh, and Emma?”
“Yeah?”
“If you pull off this whole Save My Date thing, I want it as the epilogue. Or, depending on how things go, maybe it’s juicy enough for its own book. Like an unconventional follow---up or sequel.”
“Wow, that would be amazing,” Emma replied, trying not to convey her quickened heart rate. Her mind flashed forward to one year in the future. Best-case scenario she would be a newlywed on a major book tour with a second book deal. Worst case… Well, worst case was almost too terrifying to think about. “And just for curiosity’s sake, what would happen if I don’t, you know, pull it off?”
“Then we pretend it never happened. And hope it doesn’t completely ruin your credibility.” Michelle paused. “But who knows! Wilder things have happened. My aunt met my uncle after falling off a cruise ship.”
Emma wasn’t sure what that peculiar love story had to do with anything, but she was sure that the stakes of her little experiment were now at an all-time high. She had to get to work, both on and off the page.
***
“Do you want organic bananas or regular bananas?” Debbie asked as Emma scrolled through Hinge in the produce section of the Westwood Whole Foods. Emma didn’t care that she was shamelessly scrolling for love in public—she had to find a new match soon if she wanted to keep her career and will to live.
“What do you normally get?” Her thumb hovered above a surprisingly intriguing profile. The man in the photos, who claimed he was a podcast producer named Will, looked secure but not cocky with his blond hair and bright blue eyes. He had an easy smile that ate up half his face and an entire photo dedicated to the books he had recently bought and wanted to read. Emma was delighted to see psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning in the pile; it was one of her favorites.
“I normally get regular because I don’t think the pesticides can make it through a banana peel, but I don’t want to get a lecture about it if you prefer organic.”
“I think you have me confused with Jackie. I’ll eat whatever.”
Debbie nodded and put a few of each kind in the cart anyway. Emma didn’t care though. She was too busy reading Will’s answers to the app’s often cringe-inducing prompts.
In response to “Two Truths and a Lie,” he had written “My mom thinks I like her homemade jam more than store-bought jam and now I can never have good jam again.” Emma chuckled. The answer was not just endearing but showed he was willing to disobey authority by ignoring the rules of the prompt. Emma appreciated that kind of independence when it came to things that didn’t actually matter. She kept scrolling. In response to “The Dorkiest Thing about Me,” Will had written, “If I make you breakfast, we can only use my mom’s homemade jam and it is not very good.” And finally, in reply to “This Year I Want to…” Will wrote, “This year I want to work up the courage to buy jam from someone other than my mom but that was my resolution last year too and I couldn’t find the strength.” Emma was officially laughing out loud to herself in a supermarket, which would be a perfect start to their love story as long as he didn’t end up being a serial killer.
“Mom, look at—” But before she could shove Will’s profile in her mom’s face, Emma noticed she was being watched by a tall guy wearing a Rick and Morty T-shirt. When they made eye contact, he waved. Terror shot through Emma’s body. The last thing she needed was a random client seeing her in her pajamas with her mommy. This could be worse than when Imani was high at Disneyland and ran into a client’s entire family in the hour-long line for Space Mountain. Actually, that one was impossible to beat. Emma could always flee and wait in the car.
But as the man approached, Emma realized he wasn’t a client after all. It was Rob… Something. The nice guy who lived next door to her at her first apartment after college. A guy who had tried, rather relentlessly, to make the move from neighbor/acquaintance to full-blown love interest only for Emma to dodge his advances at every turn.
As he confidently made his way past the oranges and apples, Emma had a hard time remembering why she had turned him down—multiple times. He had floppy brown hair and looked like he would fit right into one of Emma’s favorite pop-punk bands with his thin frame and skinny jeans. He was middle-school Emma’s epitome of a man. And adult Emma had similar taste.
“Emma Moskowitz! I thought that was you.”
“Rob! Hi! It’s been forever.” Emma knew the next move was to hug but she suddenly felt shy. So she turned to Debbie, who was already staring at Rob with more interest than was socially appropriate.
“Mom, this is Rob. We lived next to each other in Silverlake.”
Emma nearly shuddered at the memory. After graduating, Emma had thought living in the “coolest” part of Los Angeles would rub off on her. Instead, her immediate distaste for the area had further proved Emma’s suspicion that young adulthood didn’t suit her, and she moved west as soon as her lease was up. She felt more at home with the sixty-five-and-up crowd with their clean sidewalks and chain restaurants. And that was perfectly okay.
“Rob, so nice to meet you. I remember that building. It was…” Debbie searched for a diplomatic description as Rob stepped in to save her.
“A total eyesore. Which was why we could all afford it.”
Both women laughed as they exchanged a knowing look.
“Why don’t you two catch up?” Debbie suggested. “I need to find a few more things anyway. Meet at the car?”
Emma nodded as Debbie pushed her cart away. She and Rob watched in suspense as Debbie narrowly missed a pyramid of cantaloupes before turning back to each other.
“How have you been?” Emma asked, secretly hoping her life wouldn’t pale in comparison.
“Good, thanks. I’m officially a doctor of radiology. So, if you break a toe or swallow something metal, I’m your guy. I mean I couldn’t fix it or anything, but I could identify the problem and help you find a better doctor.” He smiled and Emma remembered what the issue had been almost ten years earlier: Rob liked to shit on himself. Despite everything he had going for him, he was painfully insecure.
“They didn’t cover how to fix a broken toe in eight years of medical school?”
“Sure, they did. But I specifically went into radiology so I wouldn’t have to touch anyone’s feet.”
Emma laughed. Maybe what was once insecurity had morphed into flirtatious self-deprecation.
“Enough about my raging success. What’s up with you? Are you living with the fam?” He vaguely gestured in Debbie’s direction although she was now hidden behind the cereal aisle.
“Sort of. I have my own place—I’ve just been spending some more time at home. Kind of alternating between the two.” This was an exaggeration bordering on a lie. Emma hadn’t been back to her old apartment in weeks and her father was actively looking for someone to take over her lease. The misrepresentation gnawed at her. She decided to abandon the niceties of small talk. “I actually went through—or am going through—a broken engagement. So, it’s been nice not to come home to an empty apartment every night.”
Instead of looking shocked or uncomfortable by this overly vulnerable admission, Rob’s eyes lit up. Despite his apparent pleasure in the news that she was single, he managed to say, “That must be really tough. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. But I’m doing okay. Trying to, you know, get back out there and flourish.”
“You look fully flourished to me,” he replied, and Emma felt her heart twitch.
***
“Rob seemed nice,” Debbie said as she pulled out of the panic-inducing parking lot. Emma nodded, waiting to see if her mom could resist saying more. “What’d you two talk about?” Debbie stole a look at her daughter.
Debbie was big on respecting boundaries, mainly so she could enact her own and never have to address any potentially nosy questions about her personal life. So, while Emma was incredibly close to her mom and had spent an immeasurable amount of time with her, she knew very little about Debbie’s childhood. Whenever she’d tried to ask, Debbie would say something like “Who cares about that!” and then change the subject to the latest Bachelor drama. As a daughter, Emma found this frustrating. As a therapist, Emma also found this frustrating. And a bit pathological.
“We were just catching up. He’s a doctor now.” Emma sneaked a glance at Debbie, who despite all her progressiveness was still a Jewish mother at heart. As expected, Rob being a doctor had brought a grin to her face.
“That’s wonderful. Is he…um…seeing anyone?”
“I hope not. Because he asked me out. We’re getting dinner on Thursday.”
Debbie pumped her fist in the air like she had personally scored a touchdown. “How exciting, Emma! I have a great feeling about him.”
“Great enough that you think he’ll agree to marry me in five months?”
Debbie’s face briefly revealed her skepticism about the entire plan, but she recovered with a grin. “I guess we’ll just have to find out.”