Chapter 10
chapter
ten
It was a bad night. One of those nights that feels like the world is crumbling around you, like you’ll never experience joy again because you don’t deserve it.
Yes, I’m aware of how dramatic it sounds.
I’ve already figured it out though: the blame rests squarely on Eitan’s shoulders.
If he didn’t insist on pushing, I wouldn’t always be my worst around him.
My persona would be perfectly intact. Ruby, cancer survivor, winning at life-er.
I usually think of crying like a cleanse.
The bad thoughts pile up until there’s nowhere to go but be physically expelled from your body.
Then you’re renewed. Birthed by tears and sadness, redfaced, ready to take on the world.
But today, I feel worse. My eyes are swollen and dry, and I’m bloated from a late night gorge on popcorn.
I got approximately three hours of sleep, and the light is making my head pound.
I hiss at my windows and close the blinds so that I may cocoon in my depressive episode in peace.
I brush the used tissues off my couch and wrap myself in a blanket.
I’ll just spend another day rotting on the couch, and then I’ll do something productive.
Like work on my query letter or attempt to open the manuscript again.
Even the thought of it rings false in the echo chamber of my mind, like me, myself, and I are already aware that no writing progress is being made this weekend.
I turn on the TV and it is, conveniently, ready to resume 13 Going On 30. Why can’t life be more like a Jennifer Garner movie? At this point I’d take any of them. Even Elektra.
I press play and shove a fistful of stale popcorn into my mouth.
Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner are eating razzles on a playground in their pajamas.
I wonder if anyone ever actually feels like life is a movie from the 2000s.
A world where mental health issues don’t exist, everyone is dripping in Calvin Klein, and all it takes is one kiss on the Manhattan Bridge to secure a happily ever after, despite the two main characters knowing fundamentally very little about each other.
A knock on the door rings through the entire apartment. Who could that be? No one knocks on my door. The building manager lets himself in (I’ve asked him many times to knock). It could be a delivery? My mother has been known to send an edible arrangement now and then.
I walk slowly toward it, leaving a trail of popcorn crumbs, not convinced there’s not an axe murderer on the other side of the door. I open it slowly, pulling my fluffy pink robe tighter around me.
The first thing I see is a crisp white hat sitting on dark curls.
The next thing I see are seaglass eyes.
It’s Eitan.
But then again, who else could it be? The Universe wants him to see me at my worst.
“We’ve got to go,” he says, not even blinking at my hit-by-a-truck appearance.
I blink, slowly. “Come again?”
“Get dressed.” He checks his watch. “We need to be on a train in ten minutes or we will be late.”
“I think I’m missing the part of this conversation where you explain what you’re talking about?” I scan him, drifting from Reeboks to well-tailored dark wash jeans to a pale blue crewneck that only makes his eyes glow brighter. “And why you’re at my door?”
He sighs, like I’m causing the inconvenience of not knowing what he’s talking about. “Florist. Lincoln Square. The appointment is in forty-five minutes.”
“Florist,” I repeat back to him, still trying to make sense of it.
“I’m guessing you haven’t checked your phone yet?”
I step out of the doorframe and rub my forehead, leaving a silent invitation for Eitan to join my cocoon of sadness. “It died.” Similar to my sense of self worth.
I hear the familiar creak of the floorboard near the door and I know a threshold has been crossed: Eitan Moreno has entered my apartment.
“Well, Pen scheduled an appointment with the florist and didn’t tell any of us until midnight that we needed to be there at ten a.m.,” he says with a tinge of annoyance. “I was given the honor of doing a welfare check on you.”
I sit back down on a couch littered with used tissues, in a robe I’ve had since I was eleven, bristling at the implication that I am in need of a welfare check. “How did you get my address?” I ask, shoving another fistful of stale popcorn into my mouth.
He stares at me for a moment. “I broke into the DMV database.”
I’m just out of it enough that I believe this.
“Pen gave it to me.”
“Right.” Yes, that makes more sense.
The movie I never paused makes itself known, Mark Ruffalo informing Jennifer Garner that he can’t do this. You can’t just turn back time! Don’t I know it.
Eitan steps closer to where I sit, staring at the television. “Why are you watching 13 Going On 30 at nine in the morning?”
The Universe punctuates his question by cutting to an advertisement where a silver fox tells me about another drug that will help with menopause.
I groan and rush to turn off the television.
“I swear to God my Prime account thinks I’m a sixty-year-old woman.
” I toss the remote across the room into my armchair, with it my dignity.
“I mean, you Google menopause symptoms one time! One freaking time! And you’re typecast for the rest of your life. ”
Eitan’s brows are raised, but for the first time since he knocked on my door, he’s smiling. It’s lopsided and gorgeous. It makes me want to grab his face and—
All of a sudden I’m sweating. I rip off my robe—beneath it I’m wearing a Hannah Montana t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts I stole from Grant—and wrench open my fridge to stick my head in. “Are you sure she wanted me to go?” I call out from the fridge. “That seems like a Miri job.”
“Well, when I saw her text thirty minutes ago, I also learned the breaking news that Pen fired Miri.”
I slam the fridge closed. “She did what now?”
“You really need to check your phone.”
My hot flash has ended abruptly—painfully—and I’m an inch away from shivering.
I drape my robe back over myself like a shawl and root through last night’s purse for my phone.
It’s a useless block of metal, just the way I like it after an identity-crisis-meltdown.
When my phone is dead, I can pretend the world it connects me to doesn’t exist either. I plug it in and wait.
Eitan looks pointedly at his watch. “You should probably get changed.”
I look between him and the black screen, not sure who to trust.
“Why would I lie about this?” he asks, reading the suspicion in my face.
“I don’t know.” He’s probably not lying, which is concerning on many levels. The first being: Miri is actually fired. The second being: Miri is fired, and the reaction is to knock on my door.
The marquee lights spelling out AGENTED WRITER in my brain pulse, as if to remind me what’s become tied up in this wedding.
I grimace at my phone one last time before dropping it on the counter and stomping into my closet.
What outfit says, I actually didn’t cry myself to sleep last night! Does a blouse exist that screams, Ducks? Most definitely in a row!
I think about Felicity the Fair in her babydoll top.
Babydoll says something along the lines of: I’m taking the patriarchy by the horns and reclaiming a silhouette made for little girls.
Elizabeth Bennet essentially wears a babydoll silhouette, and Darcy crossed a misty field at sunrise to declare his love for her. There’s something there.
I emerge from my closet in a power combo of wide-leg jeans, babydoll top, and a hasty coat of mascara (don’t read into that).
Eitan is sitting on my couch, having retrieved the remote and restarted 13 Going On 30.
His arms splay over the spine of the couch, and his feet are planted confidently.
It’s the way, I imagine, a king would sit.
Someone who knows who they are. Knows where they stand.
My phone has powered on and is buzzing in a stream of modern morse code: You!
Are! Popular! I swallow down the thrill at the noise, stuffing more popcorn in my mouth, and scan the notifications: two text messages from Penelope, three text messages to a group chat of unknown numbers from Penelope, and one from Instagram.
The text messages are quick to read, confirming everything Eitan’s said so far. Fragments stand out like, You are saving my life and I can’t wait to get your help.
“It clicked why I’ve never met you,” Eitan calls from the couch. “You’re Pen’s friend who had breast cancer.”
My popcorn swallows wrong and I accidentally bite the inside of my mouth. I soothe the spot with my tongue.
“She had mentioned it a few times a while ago, and it clicked this morning when I saw her post, after what you said last night.”
“Post…?” I question, fearing the answer. Then I remember the Instagram notification. @PenelopeIsland tagged you in a post.
The first thing I see when the app loads is a cover image that Penelope took with me last night.
We’re both smiling, arms wrapped around each other, faces pressed together.
A warm fuzzy sense of belonging overflows in me.
I swipe, hungrily, to see the rest of the carousel.
It’s all pictures of us, I realize with awe.
Photos of us waiting in line, inside bars, having bottomless brunch picnics.
Then, at the end, a selfie Penelope took with me after my surgery, the one time she came to visit me.
I’m still out of it on painkillers, with barely-there peach fuzz on my head and zero eyebrows.
My skin is blotchy and my eyes are half open.
I’m SO honored to introduce you to the best bridesmaid in the world, @rubyhirsch23. Not only has my girl battled CANCER, but she’s already halfway done planning the joint-bach of my DREAMS! #cancerwarrior #pinkribbon #breastcancer #bridesmaid #bride