Back After This

Chapter Eighteen The First Experience of Bad Timing

Chapter Eighteen

The First Experience of Bad Timing

It was Friday. Less than a week before Christmas. Our sixth episode had gone out that morning, and now, at the halfway point, we’d take two weeks off for the holidays. Not from working, not entirely. But in keeping with the magical math of landing the finale on Valentine’s Day, we wouldn’t have another new installment out until the second Friday in January, which felt downright decadent. Everybody was set to take some time off, even me. Even Eliza, who was spending the first week of January on Maui.

And it had been two days since Will. I was not going to text him. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to text me. I hadn’t told anyone yet, not anyone, that this had happened. It would have been unfair to tell Julie, because it would have complicated her job when it didn’t need to. Besides, a week before Christmas, her priority was her family and not my sex life. I hadn’t told Molly, because I had a feeling she would say something about the general inadvisability of my actions that I wasn’t prepared to hear.

But mostly I didn’t know what he was thinking. It seemed like we liked each other, but it was all in the context of absolutely nothing ever being able to happen since I was stunt dating and he was leaving. If I texted, was it going to seem like I wasn’t okay with that, when I was? If he texted, was I going to feel like he wasn’t okay with that, when I needed him to be?

Training people in audio was something I had done a lot, and it had never gotten anywhere near this complicated. And then my phone gave a ding, and it was happening.

Do you want to come over later?

He had broken the seal. I had taken the day to work at home given the overtime I’d been putting in, so I was reading a solid domestic thriller on my couch when I heard the notification, and perhaps that explains why I jumped about a foot.

Did I want to come over later? Admittedly, I very much wanted to come over later. But at the same time, wasn’t it only going to get weirder? Was Eliza going to look me in the eye at some point and realize that I had spent time in a pleasant tangle of limbs with someone who was not on her list? Wasn’t this the point at which going further would risk making things, for all the modernity of my thinking, a little complicated? Hadn’t I, in fact, leapfrogged naked over that point? Once was once, but twice was…well, it was twice. It was a bad idea, or at least a tricky idea, and all it would do was introduce all kinds of strange dynamics into a situation that had already led to my going on dates with a tax cheat and a married guy.

Naturally, I wrote back: Sure! What time?

I did not finish my book, but I did complete an entire round of personal grooming. Honestly, when a guy shows up at your door in the rain, he’s going to get what he gets. But since he’d invited me over and I’d said yes, it seemed like perhaps it was a good time to haul out the eyebrow tweezers and the nice underwear.

But because Will was himself, the evening turned out to be rather lower-key than I was expecting, in a way that relaxed me right from my shoulders down to my ankles. While he was making me a hot chocolate in the kitchen, I stood in his living room and stared at a framed picture of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I leaned closer and saw that near the top of the steps, you could see a woman with her back to the statue who looked to have just spilled her bag. She was bent down collecting books, shoes, file folders.

He appeared with the mug and handed it to me. “My favorite of the memorials, I think.”

“This is great. I love the lady down here who’s completely uninterested in this giant of history because she dropped her purse. Busy people in a nutshell.”

“Yeah. I printed this one because people sometimes expect the memorials to look like a postcard, and sometimes they do, obviously. But sometimes it’s just another messy place people drop their stuff. I’m old-fashioned, though. I’ll tell you, a lot of people who do photography, they would just zap her out of existence.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. People do photo editing where they take, I don’t know, Machu Picchu or the Empire State Building, one of these places that’s full of tourists all the time, and they’ll go in there in their editing program and just zap-zap-zap, take out all the people. It looks terrible, but they have ways to do it. Take out the kids in strollers, take out the people grabbing selfies, take out the guy in the baseball hat who’s looking at a map, whatever. I always think it’s sad. Erase the people? Make it look like an imaginary moment you spent with nobody?”

I nodded. “We have the same thing. Some people want as many of their interviews in studio as they can,” I said. “They just want that dead, dead silence, right? Because then you can add stuff from there, you can add music and sound and ambi from wherever you want, and you can put everything exactly where you want it.”

“Right, right.”

“My favorite interview I ever produced was with this guy who raised goats in Wisconsin. They brought back the tape they got at the farm. And you know, obviously you expect a little bit of animal noise in a farm setting, right? It’s color, it’s great. But they’re talking to this farmer, and he’s explaining how hard it is to keep a small business going. It’s really wrenching; he’s had a hard road, this guy. And over and over again, while he’s talking, you hear this goat he’s got next to him who sounds exactly like a witch laughing in a cartoon. You know what I’m talking about? ‘ A-a-a-a-a-a. ’?”

“Right, sure.”

“It sounds like, ‘This season, we could barely afford my wife’s medication, a-a-a-a-a-a, we might have to sell my granny’s ring, a-a-a-a-a-a. ’ I’ve never heard such goaty goats in my entire life.” He laughed. “Anyway, the editor I was working with at the time thought the tape was unusable. He was so pissed at the field producers, he said they had screwed it all up. He said they’d have to get the farmer on the phone to get some of these quotes in a way they could use, because the goat was just so distracting that it took away from the seriousness of the point he was making. And I told him he was crazy, I said the goat was the best part of the story. It reminded people that this guy’s whole world was these goats. They were with him all the time, he was relying on them to feed his family, and that’s what he’d been doing for ages. Long story short, the goat stayed. Everybody loved it, and that’s why everyone at work should listen to me.”

“I lost a freelance assignment taking publicity pictures of an amusement park because I didn’t want to take out a kid picking his nose.”

“You were being an artist.”

“In that case, I was being stubborn. I was very opinionated, and I gave that a lot of space back then. It’s easier that way. I think I’d rather have to train myself to be more flexible than train myself not to just do whatever anybody asks me to do.”

“That makes a lot of sense.”

“Do you want to eat?”

I did want to eat. I was starving. I had not wanted to say anything. But I’m quite sure the eagerness of my nod said everything my growling stomach wished it could. He went and started taking things out of the fridge, and then he stopped, and he turned to me, and he said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

I walked over to him and put my arms around his neck and kissed him, like I had done it a lot, like I was used to it. If I were, it probably would have escalated less quickly, and I wouldn’t have quite so rapidly had one hand up under his shirt, and he wouldn’t have been pulling my butt up against him quite as urgently. He broke off and pulled a few inches back from my face.

“What are you making?” I asked.

“A chicken thing,” he said. “It’s only going to take about fifteen minutes.” He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed back from me a few inches. “I should have made a frozen lasagna, we’d have had like an hour.”

—

I had a way of waking up in the middle of the night. I’d do one of the daily puzzles I liked, and I’d often just bore myself back to sleep thinking about something that didn’t matter to me at all—what breakfast cereal I liked best, or where to buy socks.

But when I woke up in the middle of the night in Will’s full-sized bed, in his tiny room in his tiny apartment, I kept thinking about the show. I kept thinking about what to do about being with Will—not with Will, but with Will—and what to do about Michael #2, and about Julie and Toby and Fitness West.

Eliza had already told me—hell, she’d told the whole internet—that this was a terrible idea, so telling her about it seemed to be out, as an option. And Will didn’t need to hear about Michael #2 or consult on the matter of our planned third date. Even acknowledging I had a problem seemed to be making too much of it, since what were the odds that a guy who was just waiting for his lease to be up wanted to hang around the city because he’d hooked up with me twice?

At some point, he moved a little, and then I heard him whisper, “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Contemplating.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Maybe.”

He reached across me to the nightstand on my side, and he picked up a little remote I could barely see in the streetlight that leaked through the blinds. Suddenly, the ceiling lit up with little pinprick stars that stretched down the walls and poured onto the bed. They scattered across the blanket as he resettled himself next to me.

“You have a projector in here?” I whispered.

“No,” he said. “It’s magic.” He kissed my cheek, my ear, my collarbone, then he fell asleep with his head sharing my pillow.

—

The next morning, I woke up to my favorite sound in the world, better than angels or an orchestra: a coffee grinder. I opened my eyes and I was alone in Will’s bed, and the clock on the nightstand said it was 9:45. I rarely slept so late. When I touched my cheek, I knew it was pink from his day or so of scruff. I was wearing only his Fleet Foxes shirt, having left everything of my own in a pile at the foot of the bed.

I pulled on my leggings and went out into the kitchen, where he was putting ground coffee into the drip machine. “I woke you up,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

I finished a yawn. “Are you kidding? I get out of bed and make my own coffee every single day. Somebody else doing it makes me feel like Princess Grace.” I leaned up and kissed him quick, since I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet.

“In case you ever need it,” he said, opening a cabinet door, “coffee is up here. Filters, sugar, and there’s milk in the fridge.” He opened the next cabinet over. “Mugs here.” He pushed the button on the coffee maker. “I’m sure you’re familiar with this classic piece of machinery.”

“I am, I am.” I leaned against the counter. “Now we just wait.”

“It’s the longest wait of the day,” he said. Then he looked hard at me. “Do you take a cup while it’s brewing or wait until it’s done?”

I always took a cup while it was brewing. Always. I let it go until my bagel popped up out of the toaster, and then I yanked the pot out and filled one of my many bookstore mugs. But I narrowed my eyes back at him. “What do you do?”

“Wait till it’s done,” he said. I nodded noncommittally. “ You don’t wait till it’s done? ”

“How about half done?” I said. “I’m obviously not going to take the first part that comes out, I’m not an animal.” I was sometimes an animal, but he didn’t need to know that. When it was finally done, we poured big mugs full, and we sat in his living room, and I did the crossword on my phone while Will edited some wedding pictures. Then I grabbed a shower while he took Buddy for a walk. By the time he got back, I was dressed and working on a second cup of coffee.

There was a knock on his door just as he was feeding Buddy, and we frowned simultaneously. “Who’s knocking at 10:30 in the morning on a Saturday?” He went to the door, and I watched from the kitchen. When he opened it, a woman with dark, shoulder-length hair stood there with a paper bag in her arms. “Oh,” he said. And then he said it differently: “Ohhhhh. Hi.”

This wasn’t really happening, right? My very innocent, very low-key hookup being interrupted by a woman showing up and obviously catching him off-guard? Not even I could manage to engineer this kind of train wreck.

She looked past him and saw me standing in the kitchen. “Is it possible,” she said, “that you forgot about brunch?”

“I forgot about brunch,” he said. He turned around and mouthed, my sister. And when he said it, I recognized her from a picture on his wall. She looked different without sunglasses.

“How many times have I told you that you need a calendar? I don’t know why you can remember exactly whose wedding you’re taking pictures of and when, but when I make plans with you, it leaks out of your ears instantly.”

“I got distracted,” he said, and I could read his smile, even looking at the back of his head.

“Well, I’m here now, and I brought food, so are you going to let me in?”

He stepped to the side. She came in and smiled at me, without putting down the bag. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Maggie. I’m Will’s sister.”

“I’m Cecily. I’m his—friend.” She came into the kitchen and set the bag down, and then she shook my hand. “I should go,” I said over her shoulder to Will.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I never get to meet any of my brother’s friends. You have to stay and have food with us. I have some amazing pastries in here, if the line at the bakery is anything to go by. I didn’t know what he was going to want, so I have plenty, believe me.”

I looked at Will, and I was surprised to see him swallowing a laugh. “You should stay,” he said. I widened my eyes. “Stay. Seriously.”

Maggie put her hand on my arm. “Cecily? Don’t worry about it, the awkward part is over. Now it’s just eating.”

And so that’s how I found myself having pastries and coffee with Will and his sister a few days before Christmas, after what would have been our second date if these were dates, which they were not.

I don’t know exactly what I expected Maggie to be like. Maybe like Molly, maybe like Will. She wasn’t like either one. She asked me what I did for a living, and I mumbled something about media, and then I started stuffing food in my face so I didn’t have to talk.

As we ate, Will and Maggie talked about their dad, who needed knee surgery he was putting off, and about Will’s best friend from high school, who had suddenly gotten very into triathlons. There was an ease to the two of them, a lack of urgency in spite of their shared high energy. He wanted to know all about her wife, her kids, whether she thought she would stay in teaching as the pressures grew and the pay shrank, and whether she thought they’d ever talk their own parents into visiting them rather than the other way around. She quizzed him about how his business was going, and he told her about shoots he was doing, marketing he was trying, and some work he was particularly proud of. He produced a big iPad to show her some favorite shots. She asked for a copy of a photo he took at the National Zoo of a yawning bear, saying she’d do a big print of it for her son’s room. (“He’s in a serious megafauna phase,” she said. “Mostly hippos and rhinos, but a bear is fine.”)

They’d arranged this get-together because Maggie was headed to her in-laws’ house in Texas for Christmas, and she wanted to see Will before she left. They talked all around why he wasn’t going to L.A. to see their parents. Or, she prodded, why he hadn’t at least invited them to come to D.C. “I don’t even know if I want them to,” he finally said. “It’s not like they’re going to feel better about how I’m doing if they see my tiny apartment and the place where I wait tables.”

“What are you talking about?” she said. “They would love this place. Dad would go nuts, you know how much he loves seeing your stuff.”

“I don’t think it’s exactly what they’ve always had in mind for me,” he said.

“So what?” She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “Grandpa Fred wanted Mom to be a nurse, and Mom goes to the emergency room so often that one of the doctors came to her birthday party.” She turned to me. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but our mother figured out a way to be the opposite of a nurse.”

Will murmured noncommittally, “The lease is up in three months. They can visit wherever I go next.”

“I still can’t believe she didn’t help.” Clearly not one for telling only part of a story, Maggie turned back to me. “When Will’s ex moved out, she wouldn’t pay a penny of the rest of the lease, because she wasn’t on it, which only happened because he’s the one who went and found the apartment. He’s too nice to do anything about it, so he wound up stuck with the whole thing. She’s a nightmare.”

“Mags? Cecily doesn’t need to know this.”

“Maybe not, but I need to say it. Besides, I’m sure she has her own nightmares. And I bet her family hates them.” She raised an eyebrow. “Right?”

“I’m pretty sure my sister would still punch my ex in the throat if she saw him on the street,” I said. “So yes.” I looked at Will. “What? I agree with your sister.”

Maggie smiled triumphantly. “And how long has it been since you broke up?”

“Four years.”

“Four years! I have so much time left to be pissed off.”

“Where do you think you’ll go?” I asked him, reminding myself not to sound concerned.

“Maybe New York, maybe Boston. Someplace I can figure out my life.”

“?‘Figure out my life,’ ‘figure out my life,’?” his sister muttered. “You’ve been saying that for ten years, man. Get to figuring.”

I ignored her, because it seemed like family stuff. “But those aren’t places you’ve lived before?”

“No. West Coast, mostly. I’ve lived in Seattle, Portland, Denver, Minneapolis.”

“What did you do in all those places?” I asked. Maggie looked over at me, and I looked at her a little sheepishly. “We’re not old friends.” She laughed.

“Different things,” he said. “School, after that a couple of jobs before I met Meredith, just short-term stuff.”

I was so accustomed to listening to conversations between other people that it always took me a minute to snap out of it when I’d been sitting back for a while, so when Maggie turned and said, “So tell me more about you, Cecily,” I blinked like I was waking up from a nap.

“Well,” I said, “I edit podcasts. I have a sister, too, she lives in Silver Spring, she’s married. My parents are in New Jersey, they’re retired. They’re kind of…all over the place. My mother was in Sedona last time I heard. My dad is probably at, I don’t know, basketball camp or something.”

“How did you get into podcasts?”

“Internship after college, at a radio station in New York. Moved down here with a boyfriend, as a matter of fact.” I looked up from my croissant. “I mean, like I said, we broke up years ago. Now I work at this podcast company, I do lots of different things.”

“What are you working on right now?”

It had been weird enough explaining the show to Will. It seemed impossible to explain it to his sister under these circumstances. But he wasn’t rescuing me, so I carried on. “Right now, I’m hosting a show where I get sent on a lot of blind dates.”

She froze with a piece of a blueberry muffin in her hand. “Is that how this happened? You went on a blind date for a podcast?”

“No,” Will said. “We met the old-fashioned way. She fed peanut butter to my dog.”

“I see.” Maggie ate a bite thoughtfully. “So this is not part of that. This is just…”

“It’s unrelated,” Will said. “Change the subject, please.”

She glared at him. “Rude. But fine. When you’re not doing this, what else do you work on?”

“I help out sometimes on a recap podcast about Halls of Power. ”

“Oh my God, I love Halls of Power, ” she said. “I am obsessed with that show. So is Will.”

He looked hard at her. “I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with it. I keep up with it.”

“Believe me,” I said, “I don’t judge. I sometimes work on an advice show, just…whatever my boss needs. Here and there.”

“Well, that all sounds really, really interesting,” she said. “You might be too good for my brother.”

“Like I said,” Will told her as he pulled the end off a croissant, “we’re just friends, so don’t tell Mom and Dad anything they’re going to ask me about later. We’re friends.”

I looked back at him and nodded. “Friends.” It was the same thing I would have said. It was what we had agreed on. Why did it sound terrible?

“I would never say anything to them,” she said. “Never. I think I’m offended.”