Chapter 29
chapter
twenty-nine
I forgot what heartache felt like. Grant was a slow death, dulled in some ways by the intense ordeal of the preceding eight months. Eitan was sudden and painful. Like getting a taste of the sun, and then being banished to the bottom of the ocean, leagues below where light ends.
I’ve texted him once. A short one, twenty minutes after our disastrous implosion, asking him to keep Pen’s and my agreement to himself.
He didn’t respond.
The days are long, time passing by like an incessant itch. Trying to pay attention to work calls feels like doing homework during the apocalypse. Who are we kidding? Pretty sure the world is ending. What’s the point?
On Saturday, a week before the wedding, I try to cheer myself up by going back to that boutique on Armitage and trying on that dress.
I was wrong; it does look amazing on me, small chest and all. The fabric hugs my hips and the plunging neckline shows the tips of two rosy pink scars.
It’s all the more painful knowing the one person I want to admire me in it, won’t.
I buy it anyway. It’s as good a revenge dress as any.
I walk back to my apartment as slowly as possible; I’ve got nowhere else to be. For a burning hot second, I almost had everything. I’ve been pinching myself into a shape that fits my old life, and now the walls are closing in.
The lone upside of this week? The one spark that’s stopped me from full-tilt spiraling? Pen emailed me yesterday. Send me your query package so I can share it with Alice before you meet her.
No salutation, no signature. But at least Pen is holding up her end of the bargain. It only cost me the best person I’ve ever met to guarantee it.
Fifty-two minutes later, I emailed her my query letter, manuscript, and synopsis. Thank you so much! I signed it.
Pen didn’t reply, but the email was delivered. That will have to be good enough.
On Thursday, it’s past ten o’clock, and I’m laying down in bed, wide awake.
The apartment is dark, my face lit only by the faint blue glow of my phone screen, doing my best impersonation of a ghost. I should be getting a good night’s sleep before the wedding weekend begins tomorrow, but this whole week has been made of shoulds.
I should be eating my strict regimen of oatmeal, salmon, and salad, not bags of popcorn followed by Froot Loops.
I should schedule my biopsy.
I should have answered my phone the one time Eitan called.
Trust me, I wanted to. But his words clanged inside my head. Maybe we should take a step back, over and over, in chorus with, It’s for the best, in Grant’s dumb, pre-teen voice.
My hand drifts up to my armpit, and I feel the lump. It’s tiny. A puffy lymph node. Probably nothing. I negotiate with myself that, with a warm intro, I could be signed onto Alice’s client list in a matter of weeks. And, who knows? By then, the lump could be gone.
If it’s not, I will get a biopsy. Once things are more settled. Once I’ve gotten what I want.
I watch Instagram stories and see Calliope out at a bar, cocktail sweating in her hand. I curl to the side and bring the phone closer to my face. Perhaps if I bring it close enough, I can telepathically merge with someone who’s out, living their life, and experience it vicariously.
I tap to the next one, realizing my mistake a millisecond too late, and see a wide angle selfie of Eitan with Josh and an entire gaggle of groomsmen, holding out their beer bottles.
Eitan’s, I know without checking, is a nonalcoholic IPA.
@JGoldie96’s last night as a bachelor! the caption says in bubble letters.
There’s a second photo posted on his story; just for the sake of masochism, I tap into it.
It’s a photo of Deep, raven hair long and shiny beneath the bar lights, holding up a dart.
Celeb guest shot! the caption reads. @RollingInTheD33p is tagged.
I hate him. IhatehimIhatehimIhatehim. I never want to see him again. I want to hate him enough for two lifetimes.
Eitan is out, having fun, not looking at all like his heart was just ripped out and stomped on. Thrown beneath an oncoming train. He’s probably moved on already. Onto the next. Just as I always feared.
I close my eyes. A more rational voice—with a soft husk—tells me that he wouldn’t do that. That even though we aren’t together, what we had meant something to him. A few deep breaths later, I open my eyes and try hard to avoid thinking about whose voice that sounded like.
More Instagram stories cycle through, a brainless highlight reel of all the best moments of the world around me.
“What’s up, guys!” Cal Decker’s voice blasts out at full volume, jump scaring me and almost making my phone sail across the apartment. “Did you hear? At midnight tonight, you’ll be able to see the Northern Lights in Racine. It’s a once-in-a-decade night, and you’re not going to want to miss it!”
My heart speeds up. For once, I’m not thinking about Eitan, the wedding, or my book. All I can think about is Louise and her bucket list item.
This is something I can do.
I fling off the covers and grab the first pair of pants I see. I hesitate, not sure if I should show up at Louise’s unannounced or call her landline and risk waking her up. Landline, I figure. If this is a horrible idea, at least she can tell me before I leave the house.
My thumb hovers for a moment over her contact number. It’s pointless, she had said, I won’t be able to travel anytime soon. It was one of the few moments I saw her spirit smothered.
I swallow my hesitation and dial. The line rings four times before a receiver clicks.
“Hello?” Alma’s sleepy, confused voice answers.
“Alma—it’s Ruby.”
“Hello, Ruby?” they say with equal disorientation.
“Hi. Um, I know it’s late and this is rather strange—”
“It’s ten thirty,” Alma interrupts me, checking the time for herself.
“Yes, but the Northern Lights are going to be visible in Racine in an hour and a half—”
“Wait,” Alma interrupts (perhaps they can just let me finish my sentence), “The Northern Lights?” Her voice changes, registering the same thing I did.
“The Northern Lights,” I confirm.
“I’ll see if Louise is up. Can you meet us at Louise’s house?”
Excitement whips inside me for the first time in a week. “I can be there in thirty.”
Louise is awake and dressed in a green kaftan and a fur coat by the time my taxi gets to Winnetka. She’s in a wheelchair instead of her walker, but she clucks her tongue at my surprise.
“This is better than the walker, Gem,” she says matter-of-factly. “This is the Mercedes-Benz of assisted transportation.”
Alma wheels her to her actual Benz, but Louise grabs my wrist. “Thank you for this.”
“Of course.” This is as much for me, as for you, I want to say. But that could raise questions I’m not too keen on answering. Alma and I scurry between the carriage house (Louise corrects you if you call it a garage) and the car, loading folding chairs and blankets and flashlights.
Louise wants to listen to her and Alfie’s favorite album on the way, so we listen to Rumors, front to back.
“The way God intended,” Louise says firmly.
At this point, the Universe is just taking the piss.
“Dreams” blasts through the car, and every second of it, I fight not to lose myself in the memory of dancing with Eitan.
Stevie Nix was right, as usual, about players.
We find a cornfield outside of Racine proper, on the edge of a gas station parking lot, with miles of clear night sky overhead. Alma puts the car in park, and I jump out, folding chair in hand.
“I’m getting a slushie,” Alma informs us, giving me a nod before turning toward the gas station.
I take Louise’s wheelchair out of the trunk and set it next to the car, pulling it open and helping Louise situate herself.
She’s moving slower, but she still gets there.
A cool October breeze hits, and it reminds me to put one of the blankets over Louise’s legs.
I zip my fleece up to my chin and open my chair next to Louise’s.
“Scenic spot.” There’s a few other cars with similar ideas as us, but overall, it’s a relatively unpopulated area.
The stars are ten times brighter here than in the city, the moon completely out of sight. The sky is tinged with green, the first confirmation that we actually will be able to see the Northern Lights.
“Do you know why Chicago is flat?” Louise asks, eyes on the stars.
“It’s always been flat…?”
“Not always.” Louise tuts. “The glaciers that formed the Great Lakes flattened this whole area. It used to be hills and bluffs, like the western edge of the state. It’s easy to forget what it looked like before.
So simple to live life believing that nature isn’t as fickle as we are.
Lake Michigan is only twelve thousand years old. Chump change, in rock years.”
I lean toward her. “How do you—”
“I studied geology, you know. My mother wanted me to study literature. Or art history. Something suitable for a wife.” Louise laughs, one of her throaty guffaws.
The sound warms me as much as the blanket I’m sitting beneath.
“I told her, ‘I’ll impress my future husband with how much I know about rocks.’”
I snort.
“But enough about me. My life is boring. Yours is the one we should be talking about.”
“My life is also boring.”
“What about that young man?” Louise asks, sensing Eitan’s presence in my mind. “Tell me what’s happening there.”
My skin heats, remembering the sensation of Eitan’s hands, vivid as if he were beneath me in this folding chair, wrapping them around me.
Maybe we should take a step back.
I blow out a raspberry. “Nothing.” Her glare is skeptical. “Really.”
“Boys like him don’t come around all that often.”
Celeb guest shot! I roll my eyes. “You mean fraternity brothers? They’re a dime a dozen.”
“You’re deflecting,” Louise says flatly.