Chapter Nineteen #2
When the food arrives, Lachlan and I slip into a dance that has become as familiar as breathing.
I take the pickle off his sandwich, he takes a handful of my fries.
I mix ketchup and mayo together on a small plate and slide it between us, he fishes the lemon out of my Diet Coke with his knife and plops it into his water.
I spear the tomato on my burger with my fork just as he lifts the top of his sandwich up for me to slide it in.
It’s a routine developed over the course of countless shared meals, and I normally wouldn’t think anything of it, but then I catch the look on Josh’s face and that familiar guilt twists again.
How must this look to him? It’s the funhouse mirror version of seeing my professional competence through Josh’s eyes this morning, and this time it doesn’t fill me with pride so much as apprehension.
To any outside observer, the rest of the meal passes in harmony, but I’m acutely aware of the tension building between Josh and me.
Outside the restaurant, we leave Lachlan and head for the water, preferring to walk home to help Josh stave off a jet lag crash.
We stroll along the riverfront in silence for a while, bundling our coats closer against the biting autumn wind whipping off the Mersey.
I know what Josh wants to say, and I don’t know if I’m ready to have this fight.
But we’ve been friends too long not to have it.
Josh breaks the silence. “So what’s the deal with you guys?”
I decide my first line of defense will be to play dumb. “What do you mean?”
“Abby, come on. Erica and I don’t have that level of choreography, and we’ve been together since college.”
I shrug, the picture of nonchalance. “We’ve just gotten really close. We get each other on some fundamental level. It’s nothing more than that.”
“Because he’s married.”
I bristle, and not just because of a particularly brutal gust of wind. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. Because he’s married. And because I’m just out of a broken engagement—don’t know if you remember that part.”
He ignores this. “Have you talked to him about it? As in, about how intense your relationship is?”
“Why would I do that? I don’t want to make him uncomfortable.”
“Of course.”
“Josh, come on.”
He stops walking and looks at me. “No, Abby, you come on. This relationship is not normal. You need to say something.”
“You’re wrong,” I say. “Just play it out for a second: I go to Lachlan—practically my only friend in this entire country, by the way—and say I think it’s weird we’re spending so much time together. What happens then?”
“I don’t know, you guys ease back and maybe it’s awkward for a bit but then you end up being normal friends. Like you and me. You don’t feed each other pickles and gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes as you discuss highlights from the weekend’s matches.”
“First of all, I have definitely lovingly fed you a pickle.”
“I’m not going to let you joke your way out of this one. You need to realize this path is dangerous. There be dragons.” Josh waves his hand at the imaginary perils lurking beyond the borders of my life.
“Dragons be damned. I don’t think he thinks it’s weird at all, so what happens when I go and incept him with the idea that it is weird?”
“Please don’t use incept as a verb,” he says.
“Please don’t be an English teacher when I’m trying to talk you out of talking me into ruining my life.”
“How can I not be an English teacher when you hit me with sentences like that?”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to joke our way out of this?”
He sighs and slips his arm through mine.
“You’re right. I’m just trying to look out for you.
And I know what you get from him: Clearly you have a blast together and it’s great to have such a good friend in a new city when so much in your life is in flux.
And I’m sure it’s nice to have positive attention from a man after Steven.
I get it. But flip it around: What does he get from you? ”
“The same thing, but with boobs?”
“No, he gets a proxy for his wife. You’re giving him the affection and support and love that she’s supposed to give him, except she can’t be bothered to drag herself out of Mallorca to divorce him, or whatever. I mean, Christ, Abby, you’re living with him.”
“Okay, but what’s so wrong with that?” My voice is veering into the high whine of desperation, but I can’t help it. “I’m fine with it, he’s fine with it. We’re friends. It wouldn’t be weird if I lived with you.”
“He’s using you.”
“If anything, I’m using him. Or we’re using each other.”
“But the power imbalance…I mean, what happens when his wife comes home? Because she will.”
“You don’t know that.” It comes out much more defensively than I intend, with the end result of me sounding like a kid on the playground trying to tell off the school bully.
“This is a marriage, Abby. They’ve been together for decades. Plural. She won’t throw all that away because she likes the weather in Spain—nobody cares that much about a little rain.”
“I found a draft separation agreement in his house a few weeks ago. And she might be having an affair. I think their marriage is over.”
“A draft agreement? Might be having an affair? You think it’s over? Listen to yourself! You’re grasping at straws. Have you actually asked him what’s going on with them?”
All I can do is stammer, because the truth is he’s right: I have no idea if that piece of paper I saw went straight into the recycle bin.
I have no idea if she’s cheating on him.
It may seem like they’re on the brink of divorce, but I have no actual idea if Claire will ever come back, because Lachlan never discusses it. And I never ask.
Josh presses his advantage. “So now it’s your turn to play it out: The wife comes home, she finds you living in her house with her husband, sharing his food and laughing with him until all hours of the night—what happens to you in this situation?”
“Maybe she’s really cool.”
“And maybe she rips out a chunk of your hair.”
I have to laugh, but it’s a heartbeat away from tears.
“I’m just saying you have to protect yourself. I don’t want this to be another Steven situation, where he gets whatever he wants and you just roll over and let it happen.”
“Jeez, tell me how you really feel.”
He brushes past this remark because he’s building to a crescendo. “You need to stand up for yourself. Be vocal about what you want.”
“This is what I want.”
“Really, Abby? A sexless relationship with a man you know you can’t have? That’s what you want?”
I have no response to this, because his words hit too close to the bone.
I hadn’t ever articulated it to myself so clearly; trust the English teacher to find the perfect, knife-twisting sentence.
My shock must flash across my face because Josh sighs and puts his hands on my arms. “You know I hate to be like this. I hate to use Teacher Voice on you. And maybe I’m totally wrong and this is just a really good friendship and eventually you’ll find a great new roommate or start dating someone and Lachlan’s wife will come home and you’ll all be jolly old pals.
Maybe that will happen—I hope that will happen.
But if it doesn’t, I want to make sure that at the end of it, you’re not left homeless and out of a job and broken-hearted, three thousand miles away from everyone who loves you. ”
It’s a thought that’s been present in the back of my mind for months: how quickly this could all crumble.
Not just my relationship with Lachlan, but everything.
My fragile little heart is suspended over a dizzying precipice, balanced atop this new life I’ve built for myself with shaky hands and determination born of God-knows-what.
If it all falls apart, what will happen to me?
My voice is thin and feeble and full of fear. “What do you think I should do?”
“Move out, for one. Go back to the Iqbals’ if you have to, but get out of his place.”
“But the Iqbals are so far away. And I can’t take another Fiona and Oliver situation.”
“Okay, then you have to start dating.” He sees the look on my face and bugs his eyes out at me. “Not dating him, idiot. Start dating other people. Get back out there. Do the things on Erica’s List. Go meet men who aren’t married and maybe even aren’t world-class soccer players.”
The thought fills me with a corporeal, leaden dread.
I was on the apps before Steven and I never want to go back.
Not to that parade of underwhelming men, the soul-destroying tedium of conversations about how your weekends were, the untenable cycle of getting your hopes up and having them inevitably dashed. “I’m not ready.”
“I’m not saying you have to start something serious, I just think it could be a helpful reminder to both of you that you are not together and never will be together. And a helpful reminder to you that there is life after Steven, but it’s not as the platonic live-in mistress of Lachlan Ramsay.”
“Well, there’s a job title I won’t soon be putting on my résumé.”
He pulls me into a hug, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “You know I only say this because I love you, Abs.”
“I wish you loved me fifty percent less.”
“Not possible.” He lets me go and we just stand there. All around us, the streetlights are flickering on as the city falls into darkness. Josh holds out his elbow. “Come on, take me back before I fall asleep.”
I link my arm in his and steer us to the home I know I can’t let myself call my own.