Chapter 22
chapter
twenty-two
Reading my words to a room full of people cracked something open.
I’ve crossed the fifty percent mark in my editing, the words flowing freely.
It’s like I’ve given myself permission to make changes to the original story without betraying the version of myself who wrote it.
I’ve been softening some of the medical gore and making it more about the psychological impact of illness. The mental side of healing.
Every chapter I finish, my fingers itch to text Eitan, to tell him. I quiet the urge, reminding myself what his face looked like when I asked for more. Perfect buzzkill.
Two weeks pass, barely looking up from the spread of my manuscript and my computer, and suddenly I’m approaching the joint-bach camping trip weekend.
Penelope is back from the book tour, and our text message chain has been relatively quiet.
I’m half excited to hear about how the book tour went, half dreading her piling on new wedding tasks.
I sit at my kitchen table, working on my query letter. Even if my deluded crush on Eitan turned out to be a bust, there are still other things to look forward to. Progress. Goals. Some shimmering mirage of my life, off in the distance.
Dear Alice Sutherland, I begin. No, it should be less formal. This isn’t a cold query. This is an introduction from her favorite client, according to Pen. Dear Alice. Nine thrilling letters. I am seeking representation for—
Across the kitchen, next to the microwave, my phone rings.
It’s Eitan, I think, a buzz breaking out on my skin. But when I pick it up, Penelope flashes on the screen.
I try to bury the disappointment that coils in my gut.
“Hey,” I say, tired.
“Hey, Rubes,” Pen says. “How are you?”
I slump back into my chair. “Good. I was actually just working on my query letter.”
“Oh, nice.” Something smacks on the other end of the line. Is she chewing gum? “I wanted to talk to you because I heard you went out with Eitan, you little minx!”
My cheeks burn.
“Time to spill.” Pen waits.
“Spill what?”
“You know what!” she hisses. “You and Eitan.”
My skin feels like it will break out in hives. Does she know about the kiss? Did Eitan…tell people? I don’t like the idea of Eitan telling people about that moment. It cheapens it. Like it was a conquest, something he wanted to brag about.
“I thought he and Deep would be a thing this summer, but then you snapped him up like the maneater you apparently are!”
“What—”
“Eitan told Josh a while ago that you two went out and he only just told me. I mean, come on. Boys.” More gum smacks.
“But what I want to know is how exactly it happened? And how did I not hear about it first?” Pen asks this last question like I was personally responsible for reporting every single wedding detail to her.
Even if it involved developing feelings for the best man.
“It’s nothing,” I say, distracted. “Just a—a crush.”
“Don’t be coy.” Pen’s voice narrows, sharpening to a point. “You must have gone after him. He doesn’t normally go for girls like you.”
The ground sinks, or perhaps it’s just me, sliding beneath the earth.
My vision blurs, the query letter becoming an unfocused gray blob.
The comment lodges itself between my ribs.
A knife made of my own insecurities, capable of puncturing a lung or maybe stabbing the ventricles of my heart that still work.
I like…people who are nerdy, Eitan said.
Even though it’s been two weeks, the shape of his lips are still seared onto mine.
I like you, Ruby Hirsch. He does go for girls like me.
Maybe, for once, it’s Penelope who’s on the outside.
“Girls like me?” I ask, proud of how even I keep my voice.
“Oh, you know what I mean! He’s a total player. Likes the model types, from what I can tell.”
There’s some small victory in knowing Eitan better than Penelope knows him. But I put a stop to that kiss for a reason. I’m intimately acquainted with what happens when you get involved with someone out of your depth. What I don’t need is Pen rubbing it in my face.
“Well, you can relax,” I say, words biting. “Because it’s not going anywhere. We’re…” Cosmically incompatible. Destined to be the best five minutes of my miserable life. “We want different things.”
“Whew!” Pen says. She sounds relieved, one single syllable managing to carry so much stark cruelty. Is she embarrassed of me? That knife twists.
Pen catches herself. “I just mean, I’m glad nothing is getting too messy.”
“Right. Messy.” I sift the word back and forth, trying to glean its subtext.
“To be honest, I was a little worried you told Eitan about, you know, the wedding and stuff.”
So that’s what this is about. Pen is worried I outed her to her fiancé’s best friend.
I remember Eitan’s reaction to witnessing a fraction of Pen’s behavior this summer.
I don’t like the way she treats you. I haven’t said a word about our arrangement, yet still he’s perceptive enough to sense something is wrong.
“Well, not to worry,” I say darkly, “I haven’t mentioned a thing.”
“Of course not!” Pen gushes. “I knew you wouldn’t. I mean, it’s best to keep that to ourselves. Other people wouldn’t understand. They don’t know our friendship.”
Friendship. Is this what friendship feels like? Like I’m roadkill? It’s hard to compare this to the memory of Eitan holding out his hand at the beach, goading me to jump in Lake Michigan. Of the two of us, submerged in water, howling at the sun.
“Anyway,” Pen breezes on, “I’ll pick you up Thursday at noon. You, me, Clara, and Calliope are driving together.”
“Okay,” I say, defeated.
“Joint-bach here we come! Bye, Rubes!”
I don’t camp. Well, I have. I did go to summer camp for seven summers.
But as a twenty-first-century adult, I don’t.
Before cancer, I was a big fan of glamping.
Fancy desert resorts, cabin-in-the-woods rentals.
Of course I still fantasize about traveling, but it’s difficult.
My doctor’s appointments have only just slowed down in the last six months so that there would even be enough time for a trip.
Not to mention the nagging fear that somehow cancer will reappear, and I’ll be too far from my care team.
In this scenario, I end up taking my final breaths from a Madrid hospital, a handsome Spanish nurse holding my hand in my last moments.
For some reason, this nurse looks like Eitan.
I shake myself out of it. This is a Thursday–Sunday trip, we’re driving, and my oncologist’s office is closed on the weekend.
I survey my belongings. Every pair of leggings and flannel shirt I own is packed in a duffle bag, and next to it, my backpack is stuffed with my computer, my writing notebook, my planning notebook, and two new books.
It may seem like a lot, but it’s my strategy to avoid Eitan while we’re stuck in the woods together. Bury myself in some form of paper.
I check the clock. 12:45.
I lace up my newly purchased hiking boots tight and strap myself into my backpack, followed by the broad duffle strap. I wobble on the edge of my couch and fall back, off balance. I manage to stand—a megasquat, my pilates instructor would be proud—and teeter down the stairs.
It’s crisp and cool out, now that autumn has officially begun. Yellow and red have started to bleed into the leaves. I sit on my steps, leaning back on my pack, and wrap my sweater tighter around myself.
Pen’s Audi honks as it pulls up, fifty-four minutes late. “Get in, loser!” she leans out the window to holler. I smile, the expression forced. Her trunk pops and I haul my duffel inside. Clara is already in the front seat, so I buckle myself into the back with Calliope.
“Ready?” Pen asks, our eyes meeting in the rearview mirror.
Ready to spend a weekend in the woods with someone who gave me the best kiss of my life, and then promptly rejected me?
Ready to deal with you, your demanding wedding, and your ultimatum offer that’s still my only lead to revive my writing career?
Other people wouldn’t understand. They don’t know our friendship.
“Yep,” I say, looking away.
Pen and Clara twitter at each other like birds. I tune it out, watching the city, and then the marshland, zip past the window as we round the foot of the lake and carve our way along the western coast of Michigan. Calliope is sketching in silence with headphones, pretending she’s alone.
Honestly, not a bad strategy to get through the five-and-a-half-hour car ride.
“Craig was so bummed he couldn’t come,” Clara says from the front seat. She glances back at me. “Ruby, you’re, like, so lucky you’re single. This weekend is going to be a meat market.”
My ears perk up at the mention of my name. “I guess?” I say, unsure. I’m not sure who there’s left for me to meet. Or, more importantly, if I want to meet anyone.
“Do you have your eye on anyone?” Clara waggles her eyebrows. “Andres is so hot. The things I would have done to that man if I had met him before Craig.”
This is such a strange conversation. “Yeah, he’s, uh, really attractive. And he was nice when we—”
“Or maybe you’ve got your eye on someone else?” Clara turns around to face me. “Maybe someone whose name rhymes with shmeitan—”
How do I put a stop to this? “No, I—”
“Oh, Ruby is not Eitan’s type,” Pen interrupts. “But one of Josh’s high school friends is this really cute nerd who’s an engineer named Ant who—”
Calliope knocks her headphones off her ears. “Can you focus on getting us there in one piece, please?”
“Little miss sensitive,” Pen mutters.
I turn my head, leaning my forehead against the cool glass of the window. Pen and Clara keep tittering at each other, and I try to remember a time when I enjoyed being a part of their conversations.