Chapter 24
From: [email protected]
Dear Autumn,
I have a confession. I haven’t been totally keeping you up-to-date. Life is kind of a mess here in New York, actually.
Charles’s mother is planning this amazing wedding that no one can really afford. Meanwhile, Charles and I have been inexplicably turning into strangers. You used to joke in college that Charles and I were joined at the hip, but now it’s been so long since we’ve seen them, I’m not sure if we would even recognize each other’s hips! (Joking…but not really joking.)
At first, it was easy to chalk it all up to the fact that Charles had to put in overtime hours on this big case at work…but then it seemed like there was more to it than that, and now we’ve reached a point where I honestly believe he is actively avoiding me. He comes home so late now, I’m usually already asleep in bed—and then he sleeps on the couch because he “doesn’t want to disturb me.” And then he leaves for the gym super early, often before I’m even awake. He communicates with me via notes (and sometimes bagels, which I appreciate, but that’s neither here nor there). I think he is worried that if we spent more than 2 minutes in the same room together, we’ll get into some kind of argument and call off the wedding.
Which means we shouldn’t be getting married, right? Except neither of us knows where to begin, calling it off. I’ll admit, I’ve been wondering for a while now, if Charles really wants to marry me…or if he just doesn’t want to deal with what it would be to not marry me.
And there’s more. That guy, Nick. I’ve been spending my Fridays with him. And…I don’t know. When I’m around him, I feel like myself. I feel like my old self—that kind of whimsical, arty book nerd I was back when you and I first met freshman year—and somehow, I feel that old me connected to future me, the writer and editor and adult version of me I want to become. I think Nick has a way of bringing people’s truest selves out. Or maybe just me.
He’s pretty special. I mean, don’t get me wrong—he’s also cocky and opinionated and so blunt sometimes he’s downright rude. I guess you can tell I kind of like him. But of course, I’ve gone and messed that up, too, with my disaster zone of a life. He doesn’t want to hang out anymore. I don’t blame him.
But I’m going to miss him this Friday.
And probably all the Fridays.
And of course I miss you, too.
Sawyer
When Friday rolled around, Sawyer got off work a little after noon and decided to walk over to Bryant Park. She’d passed by it before but never really stopped to visit it on purpose.
It was green and leafy, full of café tables and gravel—a curious hint of Paris, smack in the middle of Manhattan. Sawyer watched children ride the ornate carousel with its green-and-white-striped circus top and listened to the squealing laughter of their happy voices.
She wandered over to the entrance of the New York Public Library, walked the marble staircases, and peeked into the famous Rose Main Reading Room, with its long wooden tables and brass lamps, its dark wooden coffered ceilings inset with neoclassical murals of a cloudy sky at sunset. She gazed at all the people studying, reading, scribbling notes…and wondered if some of them were writing poems, or even a novel that might one day cross her desk at a publishing house.
After a while, she walked back outside, where the summer sunshine temporarily blinded her as she reemerged. She crossed back through Bryant Park and stood around for a while, watching the old men playing chess. The group she was watching was a loud, boisterous bunch, all of them with heavy mustaches, shouting in what sounded like Greek. It was hard not to dwell on how much more fun everything would be if she were spending the day with Nick. Nick would have tried to join the chess players, finding a way to charm the grumpy old men. Or he would have roped Sawyer into a game; something she would never dare to do on her own.
They would have laughed. Traded inside jokes. Strolled the park and sat in the dappled, leafy shade. Nick would have caught her gaze and held it in that intense, knowing manner. She would have shivered despite the sticky summer heat, wishing for his mouth on hers again.
Now, Sawyer stood watching the chess players from a distant remove, and felt an emptiness widening within her. It was still early—not even quite four o’clock. But it was also no use. Without Nick, the earlier magic of summer Fridays now eluded her. It almost felt like a physical thing leaving her body, like wind abandoning a sail, leaving it slack in a dead calm. The heat of the day suddenly felt oppressive, and she felt a new sense of weariness.
It wasn’t as if there was anything or anyone waiting for her back home, but she turned, and headed for the subway.
Sawyer was alone for the rest of Friday evening, as well as most of Saturday.
But on Sunday, Charles was booked on a 6:20 p.m. flight to Chicago out of JFK. The trip was actually a little more than two weeks—sixteen days; out on a Sunday and back on a Tuesday, not the following Tuesday, but the one after.
That morning—to Sawyer’s surprise—he slept in and skipped the gym.
He was full of affectionate cuddles that morning, but his touch felt confusingly both familiar and alien to her, like being kissed by a brother. The ground had shifted between them. Sawyer knew: it was time for them to talk.
As if reading her mind, he pecked her chastely on the forehead and got out of bed, intent on a shower.
“Hey,” he said, “I was hoping we could keep things really low-key and simple today, you know—before I have to pack and head to the airport. Chicago’s a big deal. It would do me a world of good to take it easy. Maybe even no wedding-plan talk today, no nothing—just a nice, homey day like we used to have all the time back in Boston.”
Sawyer looked at him. She bit her lip, reluctant.
“Could we do that?” he nudged, with a hint of gentle pleading.
“Sure,” she relented, finally.
He smiled, then disappeared into the bathroom. She heard the all-too-familiar sound of the taps squealing and the shower water sputtering to life.
Later, they ate deliciously greasy breakfast sandwiches from the deli next to the bodega, then tidied the apartment together. It was almost strange, Sawyer thought, to spend time together again, doing all those mundane little everyday things.
Around two o’clock, Charles started packing his bags. He spent the better part of an hour adding and subtracting things, angling his suits still on their hangers into a garment bag, rolling undershirts and boxers into tight tubes that he later packed into his gym bag like sardines, and occasionally asking Sawyer her opinion about matters like exactly how many pairs of socks a person could need for two weeks in an office environment.
“I’m sure you’ll get some time away from the office,” Sawyer said. “A night off, here and there.”
“Doubtful,” Charles said, shaking his head. “Pretty sure I’ll be sleeping in these suits. I hope the hotel has dry-cleaning drop-off.”
Sawyer smiled sympathetically and turned her attention back to balancing their checkbook. Something caught her eye as she looked over their monthly bank statement. She frowned.
“Charles,” she said, alarmed. “This can’t be right. There’s two thousand missing from our savings.”
Charles looked up from his packing with a serious expression but didn’t say anything.
“We should call the bank,” Sawyer said. “Oh—but it’s Sunday…What do we do? What if it’s been…I don’t know, stolen or something?”
“It wasn’t stolen,” he said.
She blinked at him.
“My mom was racking up so many charges for our wedding, her credit card was getting full,” he explained. “I felt bad. I wired some money to clear a little space on her Visa. It seemed like the least we could do.”
“That was the money we were saving to eventually take a honeymoon someday,” Sawyer murmured, surprised.
“Yeah, but we weren’t actually planning to go for at least a year or two. I can earn it back; by then I’ll have probably gotten a raise. Maybe I’ll even get one from this case. And it’s not like we’d be able to take the time off for at least another year, anyway.”
Sawyer simply stared at him.
“My folks are paying for everything, Sawyer,” Charles added. “It seemed like the least we could do,” he repeated.
“I don’t have a problem with that part,” Sawyer said softly, steadily comprehending that they were on two very, very different pages. “You know I’ve always felt funny about them paying for the wedding.”
“Look, you can’t say anything. My dad doesn’t know. And my mom thinks the payment came from him. I doubt they’ll compare notes. Everyone believes what they need to believe, and everyone’s happy. I’m just trying to help out, be a good son, et cetera.”
“That’s not the part I have a problem with,” Sawyer reiterated. “It’s more the…disconnect. We’ve been disconnected in a lot of ways. It’s not just this.”
He paused for a moment, closing his eyes and pressing his lips together like he was suddenly angry and trying to keep calm. After a moment, he let out an irascible sigh.
“I knew if we talked before I left for my trip, we’d find something to argue about,” he said, his voice full of accusation.
Sawyer was silent a moment, taking this in.
“Charles…we really need to sit down and talk.”
At this, a look of fear passed over his face briefly, and his anger gave way to something much softer.
“Please,” he said, the combative tone in his voice gone. “This case is huge for me. I’m not saying you can’t have your feelings and we won’t talk eventually, but I can’t have the rug ripped out from under my feet right now. I need your support to focus and get this done.”
Sawyer stood blinking at him dumbly, taken off guard by the look of fear she’d glimpsed, the sincere pleading in his voice. She felt sympathetic to how hard he’d worked and how critical the case was; a part of her understood that if their talk led to calling off the wedding, his Chicago trip would be full of calls to and from his parents, an unfathomable weight on his shoulders over all the wedding deposits they were unlikely to get back. He would be, in effect, sabotaged.
“Can we at least table this conversation? My car is supposed to be here to pick me up in like ten minutes, and I can’t miss this flight. This is too important to tackle in passing like this, when we really can’t get into it.”
Sawyer took a deep inhale and let it out, feeling some of the weight on her own shoulders, too.
“OK,” she agreed reluctantly.
Ten minutes later, the car came to pick up Charles, exactly on time.
Two minutes after that, Sawyer stood in the empty apartment, staring at the pile of ties and belts still strewn on the bed, the rejects Charles had left behind.
Alone for two weeks.
She checked her email. Her inbox was empty.
Several hours later, when Sawyer was getting ready for bed, Charles called to tell her he’d gotten into Chicago and checked into his room.
“You know, we should look into getting one of those cards that give you airline miles,” he told Sawyer. “Kendra has one and she was able to use miles to bump us up to first class. A total lifesaver—there was a crying baby back in coach. Screamed its head off all the way from JFK to O’Hare.”
Sawyer was quiet. She didn’t bother to remind him that they were both paying off student loans and the last thing they needed was another credit card.
“Anyway, we got here in one piece and I’m in my room now,” he continued. “Getting ready to call it a day. Room 213, if you need to get a hold of me. Not that I’ll probably be here in the room much—it’s seriously looking like it’s gonna be round the clock.”
“Do you have the number there, in case of an emergency?” Sawyer asked.
“Where? The office, you mean? Gosh, I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’ll double-check and let you know. Anyway, I should turn in for the night. I wanna get up early and hit the hotel gym…we’ll see if I manage it, ha ha. At least I’ve got the one-hour time difference on my side…”
They said good night and hung up.
Afterward, Sawyer lay in bed for a long time, studying the cracks in the ceiling. It was an old brownstone and the plaster bubbled a little in places from water damage. If you stared long enough, you could find shapes and faces. A language of hidden things, only they weren’t really hidden if you thought about it; they had always been hidden in plain sight.
The next morning was Monday.
Normally, Sawyer loved her job. Passing through the revolving door of the publishing house still gave her a tiny thrill—to think she actually worked there, doing something she enjoyed.
But that week, her heart wasn’t in anything. Sawyer rode the subway to work and home, read manuscripts, and lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling.
Making matters worse, the week was marked by an extreme and relentless heat wave that only grew hotter and hotter with each passing day. The heat wave was headline news, and there was no getting away from it. People foolhardy enough to insist on their morning jog around the reservoir in Central Park were fainting and being carted off by paramedics. The asphalt on the city streets felt sticky, sucking at the soles of shoes as though the tar itself was melting. The underground subway stations baked with a ruthless steamy heat, utterly unbearable, leaving riders dripping in their own sweat, the air thick with body odor.
For Sawyer, the only relief came during the air-conditioned hours she spent in the office. She started getting in earlier and earlier, and leaving later and later.
On Thursday, Sawyer arrived at her office at 6:03 a.m., already sweating from the terrible heat.
Around 10 a.m., she noticed a kind of buzz going around their open-plan floor of cubicles. Evidently, everyone was excited about a giant vanilla orange-blossom cake in the break room, the description of which intrigued Sawyer…until she learned that it had been procured in celebration of Erin Michaels’s last day at the publishing house.
At the appointed hour—three o’clock—the office gathered together and presented Erin with a banner that read “GOOD LUCK!!! WE’LL MISS YOU!!!” and a greeting card that was signed by their core group. In the break room, they cut the cake and turned on some music (curiously, reggae), then invited everyone on the floor to come join in.
Sawyer definitely planned to stop in, but the phone kept ringing. When she finally found a free moment, she stood up to head over but was surprised to see Erin standing beside her desk, holding a paper plate of cake in one hand and a small slip of paper in the other.
“I just wanted to say goodbye,” Erin said with a kind smile. “And I wanted you to have my contact info.”
She held out a Post-it. Sawyer gratefully accepted.
“I don’t have business cards yet, of course,” Erin said with a happy laugh. “But they tell me that this will be my new email address.” She leaned over and pointed to the address scrawled on the Post-it. “If you need anything, or just want to chat, I’d love to keep in touch.”
“Really?” Sawyer said, before she could stop herself. She was bowled over with flattery.
“Absolutely! It’s been such a pleasure. I think you’re going to be a great editor someday, Sawyer.”
With that, Erin nodded and waved. She headed back in the direction of the break room, pausing to say goodbye to others, smiling and swaying to faint sounds of Bob Marley still drifting out from the break room as she delivered the occasional bite of cake to her lips via a plastic fork.
Sawyer watched her go, feeling both sad and hopeful at the same time.
That evening, Sawyer came home to her apartment in a hot, humid fog of utter defeat. There was nothing she wanted to do. She hadn’t written anything in at least a week. She was acutely aware that the following day was a summer Friday, and that she had no plans.
It was too hot to do anything on her list, anyway. The heat wave was expected to hit a peak spike tomorrow. Sawyer couldn’t imagine it getting even hotter; it was already intolerable. Maybe when she got off work tomorrow, she could go hide in the cool, air-conditioned dark of a movie theater, she thought. She caught herself involuntarily imagining meeting Nick for a movie…that magical teenage feeling of simultaneously being entranced by the silver screen, yet aching for the person sitting next to you in the dark. Aware now that her mind had entered the realm of blatant fantasy, she silently scolded herself to get a grip.
As she tried to think of what else she could do, she absent-mindedly turned on her computer and logged on to the internet. She no longer had any expectation of finding a message waiting in her inbox, but the ritual of checking her email was like a phantom limb of sorts.
She was genuinely shocked when her eyes skimmed the screen and spotted [email protected]. Her heart gave a forceful thump, then skipped a beat. The subject of the email was, simply, “TOMORROW.”
Sawyer’s finger clicked, lightning fast.
From: [email protected]
OK. I give.
I can’t stand the thought of you stuck home alone on a summer Friday sweltering in this God-awful heat wave. Unacceptable. So, I propose to pick you up at your place at 1pm tomorrow. Bring a bathing suit.
I still meant what I said the other day, but the bottom line is, a Friday with you is highly preferable to a Friday without you. I’ll take what I can get.
—Nick
Sawyer read the email at least five times.
Her dread of the heat wave’s peak had instantly vanished; tomorrow could not come soon enough.