Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
M eredith invites me for drinks and dinner before I leave for my trip. It's been approximately forty-eight hours since Dave showed me the gossip website. I've held strong and haven't mentioned anything to Matt. But the knowledge of it is eating away at me.
We meet at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants halfway between our two apartments. True to form, I arrive first and order us both top shelf margaritas on the rocks with lots of salt. Meredith breezes in, offering unnecessary apologies. I never mind that she's always late; it is as much a part of her personality as her unwavering loyalty.
She sits down and takes a long pull from her drink. Then squints her eyes at me.
“What’s up? You have that look.”
There's no hiding with a best friend.
I pour out all my worries, everything that has been weighing on my mind, in no particular order. The comments from Matt's exes in LA that I can't shake, the threat of people taking my picture without my knowing, the gossip that Dave showed me, the photos I saw of Matt and Kerri. I talk about Matt's intensity in general—sexy, mostly, but also at times teetering on too much. I talk about my insecurities, my perception of his insecurities, the way I've been second-guessing the validity of our whirlwind romance, my lack of clarity on where this is going and what it will look like. I ask if it's even realistic to think I could be with someone again long term but especially someone who happens to be famous. Finally, I divulge my ultimate fear—the fear of making the wrong choice, of fucking up, the fear of failure. The fear that something is seriously wrong with me. By the time I’ve debriefed her, she’s drained her margarita and ordered another round.
She blows out a long breath. “Damn, Jules. I had no idea you've been holding this all in for so long. You have a lot to think about, that’s for sure.”
“I know. I don’t know why it has to be complicated. It feels like I'm getting in my own way or something. Like I can't see clearly.”
“Well, why don’t we try to simplify it for you, then?”
“I’m all ears.”
We order dinner, the usual—enchiladas for her, fajitas for me, guacamole to share. And begin simplifying.
“Okay, first things first, he’s obviously gorgeous, and you’re insanely attracted to him. I am, too, just so you know, but I think a corpse would be, so the physical part isn’t an issue, correct?”
“Correct, but the caveat is that the intimacy in general, not just the sex, is so off the charts, it sometimes it feels like too much. Too intense. Is that even possible? I feel like we’re always at a ten out of ten, and it distorts my vision, like my logical side is offline most of the time we’re together.”
Meredith looks at me, deadpan. “I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from, but I am also working very hard not to roll my eyes at you right now. Since when is it a bad thing to be that connected? You know the intensity of the sex part will change."
“Will it?” I can’t help but remember how often I’d use sex as a measuring stick for how well or poorly my marriage was going.
“Jules, come on. It will. It always does, and you know it. But that isn’t a bad thing. Sex is not the only measure of love. It's not the only measure of attraction, or connection, or even desire. And it certainly isn't the only linchpin for having a happy relationship. Even if it fades a little at times, that doesn't mean it's gone. It comes back. Ebbs and flows. It doesn't make it any less valuable or passionate because it's not the exact same as it is right now. Plus, you’ll find new ways to excite each other and make it special. I know all our friends love to talk shit about their husbands and the boring sex, them pawing at them all the time, blah blah blah, and sure, I join in sometimes for fun, but that isn’t the case for me and JP, and we've been married for twelve years."
I nod in agreement. She makes an excellent point.
“And we are both well aware of all the toxic bullshit tropes we are fed about love and life and marriage—we've talked that to death plenty of times. You can't let those poison your well. Next issue.” She polishes off her second margarita and orders another.
“I want to be married again. I want to have kids.”
“I know,” she says softly. She knows this has always been a sore spot for me.
“I don’t know what that would look like with him. I can't picture it. And I don’t want to fuck it up again. Matt’s life is … unconventional. There are so many good parts of it, but I don’t think it's considered normal by any stretch of the imagination.”
Meredith interrupts me. “This is where you are making things more complicated than they need to be. First of all, you didn’t fuck up anything with Nick, that was a dumpster fire you both contributed to equally, so stop using that as some sort of metric. And next, do you want to be married to him? Do you want to have kids with him? If the answer is yes, forget everything else.”
“How can I forget everything else? That isn’t reality. I don't even know where we would live.”
She sighs, exasperated. “If you love him and want to marry him and have kids with him, to me that means you are committed to him. I’d argue you didn’t have that strong conviction, at least with the kids thing, when you were with Nick. If you have the relationship I think you have, you guys talk. A lot. You talk too much, quite frankly. It's not always fun to have a therapist as a best friend. But those lines of communication are open. You can figure out all the details. Focus on the big picture stuff. Not the minutiae. That shit will be in every relationship whether you’re with Matt or the next banker who walks into this restaurant. Everyone has their own weird shit to navigate, including you. We are simplifying. Remember?”
As soon as she says it, my brain flashes back to Matt in my office, that first week in July. Staring at the painting on my wall. His amber voice, raspy and warm, saying, If you can just take a minute to really look at something, to find the heart of it, it's pretty simple.
I smile at the memory. “Yes, I can picture myself marrying him. And having kids with him. And even more, I can picture all the in between with him. The boring nights, the slog of work, the logistics of travel, the issues we'll have to navigate. I can picture us together through those things, the figuring it out part of life.”
Meredith smiles at me, and something washes over her face. Joy? Excitement? A knowing? I can't tell.
"What next?" she asks. She is on a roll.
"The pictures. On the gossip website."
"You mean the ones you never even talked to him about? Seriously, Jules? Aren't you a therapist?"
"Yes, Mere, I am a therapist, but I'm a person first."
"Do you trust him?"
"Yes." I answer without hesitation.
"So, what's the problem?"
"He's told me about instances when he has done less than honorable things in other relationships. He's clearly capable of it."
"But he’s never done that with you. You're going to punish him for being honest about past bad decisions?"
She's right. Again. I'm reminded that my entire career is built on the fundamental belief that people can grow, change, and evolve. Wow, am I a hypocrite.
She grabs my hand. "Okay. Well, what is that shit you say to me all the time? In the absence of information, we fill in the blanks with our own subconscious bullshit. Or something like that. You're inserting your own worst-case scenario without even consulting him. There's an easy way to simplify that one. Just fucking ask him! Get the information and then figure it out."
When she puts it like that, it does seem simple. I feel the tension melt out of my shoulders. Talking it out has proved to be a better option than going around in circles in my own head. Thank God for girlfriends.
We finish our dinner and switch from margaritas to Modelos. Meredith’s phone buzzes.
“JP is around the block. He's going to stop by for a beer.”
While we wait for him, Meredith fills me in on her ongoing struggle to decide whether she wants kids. When I first met her, she was certain that babies were not in the plans for her and JP. “I feel a calling to be the cool, fun, rich aunt. And I can be all those things because I won’t have kids,” she told me. But in the past year or so something shifted, which she attributes to many things—her waning egg supply, the patriarchy, and feeling more attracted to JP than ever.
“I feel like after all this hemming and hawing over a decision, I’ll wind up being infertile so all these endless conversations will have been for nothing.”
“If that’s where you’re at, then why not just give it a good old-fashioned college try?"
"I think I just might."
She looks over my shoulder. "Well, well, well, if it isn’t my sperm donor himself.”
I turn to greet JP but stop dead in my tracks when I see who is strolling in behind him.
Nick.