Chapter Sixteen
I love New York City in the spring.
Not that March is technically spring, but it’s when things start to turn.
Winter loosens its grip and eventually gives up the fight, letting flowers and warmer breezes enter the chat.
All the snow finally melts away, pops of yellow from early-blooming daffodils taking its place in the parks.
Brown and muddy gradually dries up, making room for newly green grass that will be lush and bright in the next eight weeks.
And now that it’s late March, rather than early, I feel like I can wander Manhattan without needing boots or some kind of rain gear just to keep my shoes and pant legs from being spattered with dirty wet from the sidewalks.
In fact, today is gorgeous. High fifties, sunny, electric blue skies. Definite signs of spring. I’m meeting Jessie for lunch, as she’s in town to see her publisher, and whenever we’re both in the city, we try to meet up.
There’s a small, unobtrusive bar and restaurant in the Theater District called Mandy’s.
It’s off the beaten path and kind of hard to find, which is what I like about it.
It’s not touristy at all, and if you don’t live here—not just in New York, but in this area of several blocks—you probably have no idea it exists.
I had my apartment here for nearly two years before a friend clued me in on Mandy’s.
It’s small and dim inside—hard to tell what time of day it is when you have a table at Mandy’s place—and I have to stand inside the door for a moment so my eyes can adjust. When they do, I spy Jessie at the corner of the bar waving her arm in the air.
I head her way, a smile on my face. “I take it we’re eating at the bar?” It’s her favorite.
“Listen, I even commandeered the corner so you can look at my gorgeous face while we chat.” That’s always my complaint: that sitting side by side at the bar means I can’t see her face without turning my head the entire time.
She slides off her stool to give me a hug, wraps me up tight. Jessie gives the best hugs.
We sit back down, and she’s right—the corner really does take care of my one complaint about eating at the bar. “Whatcha drinkin’?” I ask, glancing at her martini glass.
“This one’s a lemon drop, but I’m gonna move on to either a chocolate or an espresso one next.”
“I haven’t had a martini in forever,” I say, then order one, telling the bartender to make it as dirty as he can.
A few minutes later, he slides me a glass of the cloudy deliciousness, a stick with three stuffed olives sunk diagonally into it.
“To friends,” I say, holding my glass up.
Jessie touches hers to it and we sip. I hum my approval, because damn. This is a good martini.
“So?” Jessie says. “What’s new? Got sick of being upstate?”
“I did a little, yeah. Spent the holidays with my family, got some work done, did a couple interviews, tossed around some ideas, and got bored.” I chuckle.
“I felt like I needed some hustle and bustle and to see a few new shows.” Jessie is not a Broadway girl, so we don’t dive into which shows I have tickets for or am trying to get tickets for.
She just nods in understanding because she knows me.
“And how is Reginald Aloixious Chambers, my favorite dog in the whole wide world?”
I laugh at the name she christened my dog with, totally without my permission. Nobody calls him that but Jessie. “He’s great. We took a long walk around Bryant Park today, so he’s crashed out on the couch.”
“You’d think a dog that small would hate the streets of Manhattan. It’s gotta just be a sea of legs for him.”
“I know, right? Nope, he loves it here.”
We both sip, and my martini is deliciously strong. We decide to order some food to keep us from becoming schnockered too quickly.
“So,” Jessie says, and draws the word out. “How long are you staying down here?”
“In the city? I don’t know. A few weeks, probs. Maybe a month. Maybe more.” I shrug. Kinda playing it fast and loose lately, but I don’t say that.
She nods, finishes off her lemon drop, and signals the bartender.
Once she’s ordered her chocolate martini, she returns her focus to me.
“I’ll be back in two weeks. Riker wants to meet up again.
” John Riker is Jessie’s agent. He’s based out of Manhattan and works for a very large, very well-known agency.
Jessie is a big deal. You’d never know it talking to her because she’s so normal and down-to-earth, but she’s pretty huge in the field of horror lit.
Not Stephen King huge, but she’s not far off. She’s in New York City quite often.
“That’s great,” I say. “New project?” I lift my glass in salute.
“Who knows with him,” she says with a soft laugh. Riker drives her a little nuts sometimes. “But I’d like to get together with you again.”
“Absolutely. Just let me know when.”
“I have someone I want you to meet.”
Ah, there it is. I stifle a sigh because I know she means well.
“I don’t know, Jess…”
Jessie grabs my forearm. “No, she’s great. I promise. She works with Riker, and I’ve known her for quite a while. I’ve actually been kind of scoping her out for you since, well”—she lifts one shoulder—“since Italy.”
Italy has become the code name for Marina. We never say her name. It started as “Heard from Italy?” And it’s moved on to “Fuck Italy. Italy sucks.” Jessie has even offered to put “Italy” in one of her books and then kill her off in spectacularly horrifying fashion. I declined.
“I don’t suppose anything’s changed.” It’s Jessie’s way of asking if I’ve heard from Marina.
I haven’t. At all. I’ve been back in the States for four months.
For a while, I texted her every day. Then it tapered to every week.
I called. I left messages. I might as well have been shouting into the void.
I heard nothing but the echo of my own voice.
“No.” I say it quietly and try to hide the little wave of shame that washes over me.
I was going to delete her contact information from my phone to help curb the temptation to reach out.
I told Jessie I was going to. I didn’t. In fact, I sent a text last week. But I don’t tell her that.
“You’ve gotta get back out there, Lil,” Jessie says, and her voice has a firmer tone to it than usual, probably thanks to the alcohol.
“You deserve someone who adores you. Adores you . Treats you like a queen. And you certainly deserve better than someone who ghosts you like a teenager instead of having an adult conversation.” I love how irritated she is for me, and she’s not wrong.
Marina’s way of going about…whatever it was she hoped to accomplish…
was mean and hurtful, and if I dwell too long on how I’m still hanging on with the tips of my fingers instead of simply letting go, that shame will well up again and swamp me like it has so many times in the past sixteen weeks.
“I know.” I nod and gaze into my glass. “I know.” And I do. But knowing and accepting are two very different things, it turns out.
“I assume there’s been nothing?”
I shake my head.
“Ugh. Fuck that bitch.”
I can’t help but laugh, even as some small part of me wants to defend Marina, because Jessie never was a person to mince words.
She blurts. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been in some kind of group or public situation and whatever inappropriate comment was rolling around in my head came right out of Jessie’s mouth.
“At least tell me something like, we’ll see. Then I can pretend you’re thinking about it. I’ll call you when I’m back in two weeks and we can talk about it then.”
I’m quiet for a moment, but finally say, “We’ll see.” It’s partly just to steer Jessie off the topic, but it’s also because there’s a little smidgen of me that does think We’ll see. Maybe. Possibly. Who knows? A very little smidgen. Like, microscopic.
“That’s my girl,” Jessie says, and pulls me halfway off my stool in an awkward one-armed hug.
“That was such a guy hug,” I tease her, and that makes her bark out a loud laugh that has a couple other bar patrons looking our way.
My time with Jessie is always well spent.
We settle back into our visit, sharing food and drinks and stories.
It’s nice to have a friend who does what I do and gets all the inner workings and ins and outs of publishing.
Jessie’s people are working on a movie deal for her.
Mine are looking into another Netflix series. If Harlan Coben can do it, why can’t I?
The whole time we’re chatting, though, there’s a face hovering in the back of my mind.
A smiling one with a tender smile and kind, gentle eyes, all framed by waves of soft, dark hair.
I don’t want to think about why it’s been so hard to simply let her go, how I’ve been hanging on to her in my head and in my heart four times longer than I spent with her.
It makes no sense to me, but it also makes all the sense.
Jessie’s talking, and I spin my ring on my finger, noticing how much easier it is to do. I’ve lost weight recently. Turns out I don’t like to eat when I’m sad. Or when somebody I’m in love with ghosts me.
Yeah. I said “in love with.” I’ve known for a while, probably since the day Marina tossed me out of her flat.
I know I should tell her, but that’s not something I want to say to a woman in a text or over the phone.
That’s an in-person discussion, and Marina clearly never wants to be in the same room with me again.
I swallow my sigh because Jessie’s in the midst of a story about her very strange doom prepping neighbor, and I don’t want her to think I’m bored. I’m not. Just caught up in my own thoughts. My own crappy, self-sabotaging thoughts. As usual.
They say when you break up with somebody, you need one month for every year you were together. So, if you were together for ten years, you need a good, solid ten months of recovery.