Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
I shout hello as I kick off my shoes at the front door, and when no reply is forthcoming, head straight upstairs to my room. I stop short on the threshold. I blink, then blink again. It is completely, utterly, empty. Everything is gone.
I hear my mother’s footsteps approach. I whirl on her. “Mom, what the hell?”
It’s clear she is feeling very pleased with herself.
“I told you, sweetie,” she says, her tone saintly. “We’re doing up your bedroom.”
“Where did all the furniture go?”
“We had to move it for the painter coming.”
OK, yes. She did mention the painter coming, now that I think about it. But this is extreme, surely. Waiting until I’ve left the house to return my bedroom to its factory settings is hardly subtle behavior. Where did she hide everything?
I have a brief vision of my parents scrambling to clear all the furniture and nearly giggle. I wonder how long she’s been waiting in the wings for me to come home and see this.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?”
She taps a finger against her chin, considers the options.
“Back in your own apartment? Just an idea,” she says airily, like she’s tossing out a crazy suggestion on the spot.
I glance at her sideways. She raises an eyebrow.
“Or,” I say, calling her bluff, “I could just stay at Shannon’s? Problem solved.”
“Your sister won’t help you. She thinks you need to go back to New York and apologize to this boyfriend I’m only just hearing about.”
Shannon! Traitor. She must have called Mom the second I pulled out of her driveway to tell her I was on the way home.
I want to argue about it, but you know what? Maybe they’re right. Hiding out in Canada isn’t doing anything. Connor’s not coming after me. If I want to fix this, I’m going to have to go to him. What am I waiting for?
“Let me look up the flight times,” I sigh. “Maybe I can go this afternoon.”
“Would you look at that, I have them right here,” she says, unfolding a sheet of paper she’s torn from her notepad. Four flight times are neatly listed. 11:45 is circled in red.
“Wow, you really have thought of everything,” I muse, staring down at the paper. “11:45 might be too soon, though, even if I can get a ticket. I need to pack my suitcase.”
“I’ve taken care of everything,” she says grandly. “And don’t worry about your suitcase. Your father already put it in the car.”
At this I do laugh. “Oh my god, Mom. You’re insane.”
“An insanely good mother,” she quips, then leans over the banister and shouts downstairs. “CARL—”
His voice drifts up from the basement. She informs him in shrill tones that we’ll be leaving in ten minutes.
I don’t even bother with outrage, just go with it. Now that it’s decided I’m leaving, I want to get going as soon as possible. I feel an almost desperate urgency to get back and make things right.
My parents both accompany me on the drive to the airport. Dad is pleased; we’ve timed the journey perfectly, missing rush hour and gliding down the highway at record speed.
Mom holds court from the passenger seat, reading out her favorite inspirational nothings from her Quote A Day desk calendar. She’s saved about thirty of them in an envelope she keeps in her purse for exactly this kind of pep talk, and flicks through them one by one.
Since she doesn’t know the nature of my relationship crisis, and I refuse to share any more details with her, she’s riffing on a range of uplifting themes, covering all her bases.
“Nothing is impossible,” she says grandly. “The word itself says I’M possible. Isn’t that nice?”
“That’s very nice.” Dad nods. “Something to think about, sweetheart.”
“And this one from February: ‘If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start walking another one.’ ” She pauses to look over her shoulder. “Now what do you think of that?”
“Yeah, wow,” I say absently. I’m already texting Shannon.
ANNIE: I can’t BELIEVE you tattled on me to mom!!!
SHANNON: What are you going to do, duel me?
ANNIE: She’s reading from the Quote A Day!
SHANNON: Here’s a good one…A picture is worth a thousand words, so don’t forget your secret weapon (your tits)
ANNIE: Wow, what month is that from?
SHANNON: It’s the quote from today
SHANNON: Good luck. Say hi to your boyfriend for me xo
—
I think about Connor the entire flight. How nice he is, and how fun, and how smart. How he hasn’t even taught me how to play chess yet.
I keep returning to the last thing he said to me. So this is what you think of me. I’d been wondering. Out of every mistake I made, that’s the worst. That he could believe I think he’s anything other than perfect chills me to the bone.
I text him when I land, asking to talk after work. I tell him I can meet him at the office. I keep it light. I watch the message go from sent to delivered.
And then a big fat nothing.
I guess that answers the question about whether or not he’s still mad at me.
But so what? Shannon was mad at me for years. I can survive it. I can wait it out. If it takes Connor two years to get over this, then I only have one year and fifty-one weeks to go.
I’m distracted while dragging my bag behind me up the stairs, mostly staring at my phone screen in case Connor decides to show some proof of life.
When I turn the key in the door, an unexpected sight greets me: it’s Carrie, wearing a T-shirt (and only that), her arm frozen midway through eating a raspberry.
I can hear the shower running down the hall.
We stare at each other, neither of us moving. Then slowly, I tilt my chin down and check the time on my phone. As if I should note it. In case I’m later called to make a statement about why she’s here in the middle of the workday and not at her job.
I raise my eyes back to her. She clears her throat.
“I guess this would be a good time to tell you we’re fucking?”
The inflection of her voice is so high that I burst out laughing. She laughs too, expelling the breath that she’d been holding.
Questions fly through my mind like a high-speed ticker tape. I don’t even know where to begin.
“When did this happen? How did this happen? What IS happening?”
Her eyes dart toward the closed bathroom door. She looks guilty, like she’s been caught red-handed.
“OK. Remember the night of the rave?”
“You had sex at the rave?!”
“Quiet,” she orders, grabbing my arm and dragging me into my bedroom. She turns after she shuts the door. “Obviously we didn’t have sex at the rave.”
“But something happened,” I say suspiciously, remembering wandering round and round looking for them both, and that they were nowhere to be found.
“Er—yes.”
“I knew it. That’s why you took your bra off. You were advertising the merchandise!”
Carrie’s cheeks flame violently—all the confirmation I need.
“It wasn’t planned,” she says carefully. “But she’s been…pursuing me…for a while now.”
I wonder how long this has been brewing between them before I noticed, and if Sam ever wanted to ask me about Carrie, or Carrie wanted to ask me about Sam. I’m surely the leading expert on them both.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She flaps her arms in the universal signal for I don’t know. “At first, I wasn’t really sure what was happening. I could never tell if she was really flirting with me or being mean.”
“Probably both,” I say.
“Definitely both. But then she got more…focused, I guess. Like, brushing up behind me at the gallery and stuff. This is really embarrassing to say out loud.”
“It isn’t,” I insist. “Keep going.”
“I was really confused. I have never been with a woman before, or even considered it, or anything. But I was drawn to her, I guess,” she tells me. “I felt like a snow globe all shaken up.”
“Aww.”
“That night after you went to bed, she—I mean, we…”
Carrie is self-conscious in a way I’ve never seen her before. Her eyes dart between me and the floor, pinging back and forth.
“Were together. I got it. Then what happened?”
She shoots me a grateful look. “Then you went out all day with Connor and we…got together again. I thought that was that, but it’s just…kept going. I don’t even really know what we’re doing. Or what this means,” she says, her distress rising. “Am I gay now?”
“OK, one thing at a time here,” I say, squeezing her arm. “How about for now you just focus on you and Sam.”
“Yeah,” she says, her shoulders dropping back into resting position. “OK. You’re right. I’m just freaking the fuck out a little bit.”
“Not surprising, Sam is intense,” I tease. “But I think sexual awakenings are supposed to be fun, you know. In general. You could just enjoy it?”
She gives me a mischievous grin. “It is pretty exciting. I feel sexy, and dangerous. Like now that I’ve had sex with a woman, what other unexpected thing can I do?”
It strikes me that in all the years I’ve known Carrie and had a front row seat to her dating adventures, I’ve never really seen her anything other than completely composed. She rarely gets excited about the guys she’s seeing, and almost always maintains the upper hand. This is new for her.
“I thought for sure you knew,” Carrie admits. “You’ve been so obsessed with my love life recently.”
I think back over the last couple of months, how wrong I was about everything. She’s never going to let me live this down. But one confession deserves another.
“I’ve…been trying to set you up with Ben.”
She bursts out laughing.
“I get it—you’re dating a computer nerd, so we all should too, is that it?”
“Something like that,” I mumble.
She hesitates. “You’re not mad that I didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head. “I mean, if anything, this works out better for me than anyone. But fair warning, if you two go down in flames and she kicks me out of the apartment, you’re taking me in.”
“That’s fair. If me and Sam get serious, it’ll be me kicking you out.”
I pull Carrie into a hug. “Bitch,” I say into her shoulder.
“Love you too.” She squeezes back.
It’s unexpected, but I can see it. Sam is not who I’d have pictured Carrie with, but something about it just makes sense. I send up a silent wish for this to somehow just work between them, for theirs to be that against-the-odds love story that bolts from the blue.
—
It might actually be me who’s the most bashful when the three of us reconvene in the living room. It feels like I’ve just caught my parents kissing. We’ve hung out like this a million times before, but there’s a new vibe now, and we’re all settling into it.
Sam is surprised, then indignant, when she emerges from the shower and sees that I’ve come home. Her hair is wrapped up in a towel, her skin all pink, no sign of the sharp eyeliner that’s part of her uniform when she’s dressed to go out for the day.
She looks the way I felt after that night at Connor’s—shiny, and happy, and like the world is a brand-new place and she’s visiting it for the first time. It’s so rare to see Sam without her armor. The fact that she was comfortable enough to reveal herself tells me all I need to know.
“So,” Sam says a few minutes later, re-emerging from her room looking like a goth therapist. “Are we ready to discuss the fact Carrie fired you?”
I look up. Her entire face is a dare.
Fine.
“You suck for that,” I say, turning toward Carrie.
She’s racing to apologize before I’ve even finished the sentence.
“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.
It was such a mess, honestly. Brad wanted to fire you personally, he was so, so pissed off, and Connor was trying to salvage it, I think, and said it had to be done by HR because of company policy, and they were both in my office arguing about it forever and there was no way I could warn you without him seeing, and then I finally got rid of Brad but he said Connor had to stay and I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible before he showed back up with security. ”
God. That is a mess.
“OK,” I sigh.
“Don’t be mad,” she begs, throwing her arms around my shoulders.
“I’m not anymore,” I promise. I don’t have the energy to be. “That does sound shitty.”
“It was,” she says, still squeezing me.
“Good. Next,” Sam says. “What’s going on with Conrad?”
“Connor, Sam, Jesus,” Carrie whines, pulling away from me. “Every time.”
“Whatever,” she says. Connor’s name is of no interest to her. “What’s happening there?”
“Currently? Nothing. I haven’t heard from him,” I tell them.
Carrie’s face speaks volumes. “At all?”
“Not since I got fired. He ignored my last message.”
I watch as Carrie and Sam both quietly work to put a positive spin on this, but they’re both grasping at straws.
“Maybe he’s really sick,” Carrie suggests. “I haven’t seen him in a few days.”
“Or maybe I ruined everything and he doesn’t want to talk to me?”
“I don’t know,” she says uncertainly. “He was really upset about firing you. He honestly seemed devastated.”
“Read me the text,” Sam orders. “What’s the last thing you said to him?”
I pull out my phone and read it to her. She makes a face.
“I wouldn’t reply to that either.”
“Sam.”
“What? It’s true. And if he doesn’t want to talk to you, why give him warning? Just go now. Make him talk to you.”
“Oh yeah, like you made me talk to you?” Carrie says, raising an eyebrow at her.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Sam fires back.
I am forgotten while some shared memory passes between them. The way they’re looking at each other is lascivious.
But maybe Sam has a point. Why leave it to chance? I know exactly where he’ll be right now.
I glance at my phone, then stand, an idea forming.
“Carrie,” I tell her. “I need to borrow your keycard.”