Chapter 2
S omehow, I arrived at my apartment building, nauseous and adrift, incapable of remembering a single turn I made to get myself there.
I wouldn’t tell Josh about being laid off.
Not until I had a plan of action. Not until I could stop my head from pounding and I could manage a coherent thought again.
Josh would probably feel sorry for me and that’s the last thing I needed.
He was much more concerned about feelings than I was—it was one of very few points of contention between us.
He always wanted me to “open up.” About what?
I’d ask him. As if indulging every feeling you have is going to get you anywhere in life.
I didn’t like self-pity or navel-gazing.
Life sucks. You get on with it. What was there to discuss?
Two years ago, I was at a networking event and met Josh Randall, a marketing director at Google.
He was dynamic, interesting, and, most importantly, stable.
Dating him was like being in the low tide of a lazy river.
Admittedly, there were no sparks, but I never worried if he would shatter my heart into a million pieces, and at the end of the day, that was what really mattered.
My mom’s favorite saying growing up was “embrace the chaos” and, for me, the resident control freak, you can imagine how much anxiety that motto inspired. Because my mom very much embraced the chaos. In fact, she instigated most of it.
One time during my junior year of high school, I was despondent to have received a B+ on an exam for one of my AP classes that would definitely lower my GPA, which would also hurt my chances at going to an Ivy League college.
When I told my mom about it, she was blasé and said, “Charlie baby, school is but a tool for conformity. Just relax and go with the flow.” Go with the flow? I said back to her, incredulous.
Realizing for the hundredth time that my mom would be of no help to me in my life and the only path to success would be to do the opposite of whatever she was doing with hers, I sought out my AP teacher and begged for a retake on the test, studied while my mom had a group of musicians over late into the night, and then aced it.
When I walked into the foyer of my apartment, I resolved to get back on track and find a new job immediately .
I kicked off my shoes, uncorked a bottle of white wine, and poured myself a generous glass. After changing into comfortable clothes, I washed off the little makeup I had on my face, then sat down at my laptop, topping off my wine as I passed by the kitchen.
My résumé was ready, because I kept an updated one on my computer, just in case. Having a task was dulling out the buzzing in my head. It’ll be okay , I told myself . If I can just keep busy until I find a new job, I’ll be fine.
Just as I was getting into the zone of making a tidy to-do list for my job hunting, I heard Josh’s key in the door.
When I looked up, he was dressed in a nice light blue shirt and tan slacks, holding a bouquet of colorful flowers in a large glass vase in front of his face.
His eyes widened when he saw me and his face lit up. “Oh. Wow, you’re home early. That’s great! Happy birthday!” He handed me the flowers once I stood up.
“Thank you,” I said, setting the flowers on the kitchen counter. He pulled me in for a hug and kissed me on the cheek.
“How much time do you need to be ready?” he asked, turning away from me and pouring himself a glass of water.
“Ready for what?”
“I’m taking you to dinner,” he said flatly. “I thought that’s why you’re home early. For your birthday.”
“I said I didn’t want to go to dinner,” I told him. “I’m not really in the mood.”
“You’re never in the mood,” he muttered. “Charlie, it’s your birthday. The world has finally opened back up. Please, can we just go out and do something different for once?”
“I have the chicken, rice, and broccoli in the fridge,” I said. “We can just have that.”
“But we have that almost every night.”
“Josh,” I said, setting down my glass of wine. “I don’t want to do anything for my birthday. I told you. Just change into your sweats. I’ll start warming up dinner.” I busied myself pulling out the glass containers from the fridge.
When I turned back around with the containers in hand, Josh was still watching me. He looked extraordinarily tired.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he whispered.
“Do what?” I asked.
“This,” he said, gesturing to the space between us. “I can’t, Charlie. I just can’t.”
The whole world seemed to stop at once, alarm bells blaring in my head.
“What are you saying right now?” I asked.
“I—” He paused and dropped his eyes to his hands and wrung them together.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I thought I could turn us around, but nothing is going to change.
You don’t even want to go to dinner for your birthday, Charlie.
I don’t know any other solution except.
..” He took a long breath in. “We need to break up.”
“You’re breaking up with me because I don’t want to go to dinner? For my own birthday? On my birthday?”
“I’m breaking up with you because this isn’t a life , Charlie.”
My mind was whirling the same way it had in Francine’s office only a few hours earlier.
“But, we were going to buy a house, get married one day. We had a plan .”
“A plan?” he asked, wincing. “Charlie, do you even love me?”
“What do you mean? I thought we were on the same page.”
“About what?”
“That we’re not about passion or big love, but about two adults building a life together,” I said.
My world was tilting on its axis, going haywire.
“Charlie, I never agreed to that,” he said. “I don’t want to live the same day over and over and call it a life.”
“But, that’s what you do, Josh,” I shot back sharply. “It’s called growing up .”
“But, Charlie, I want to live . I don’t want to just exist.”
“Oh, come on. What does that even mean?”
“Why are you working so hard? Why am I? For what?”
“I... don’t know.” I felt like I was having déjà vu. First Francine, now Josh. Where did all the workaholics go?
“Don’t you think we should know?” Josh asked.
This was wild, considering how ambitious and driven Josh Randall was when I first met him.
He was so work-obsessed I had to schedule our dates with his assistant.
All we’d ever talked about was work. He was as singular-minded as me.
Who was this new person? And when had he changed?
And, more importantly, why hadn’t I noticed?
“I guess...” I began. “That’s what they tell you to do. Go to college. Get the good job. Get married. Get a house. Live happily ever after?”
“But are you? Are you happy? Is this our happily-ever-after? This? An hour at the end of the day for personal time and then working all weekend to catch up for the week? Really? Because the way I’m seeing it, we’re going to keep doing that until we wake up and we’ve lost our whole life. What is the point?”
“Josh,” I said, wanting this conversation to end immediately. It felt like I was pitched on the side of a cliff, and he was about to push me over it. “It’s just what they tell you to do. It’s what everyone does!”
“Do you ever feel like...” Josh started, his eyebrows stitched together “... like the pandemic changed you? Like you’re trying to go back to your 2019 life and your 2019 ways of doing things and you just.
.. can’t? Your 2019 self is gone forever.
That life is a distant dream. Everything is different now.
Like maybe you’re meant to do something else or be someone else entirely?
Like you don’t even know who you are anymore? ”
My heartbeat picked up. The plan had been to get through lockdown by any means necessary and the minute it was done, put it behind me. I’d done that and moved on.
“I think you have too much time on your hands,” I said. “You’re overthinking it.”
“I don’t think I am, Charlie,” he said back, voice low. “I actually think I’ve been massively under thinking it.”
“Again. What does that even mean ?”
“I don’t know what it means. It just feels like I’ve been sleepwalking, trying to get from one thing to the next. Graduate high school. Graduate college. Get the good job. Get the next, the next, the next, that I’ve never stopped and thought about what I actually want and what might make me happy.”
I robotically pulled the containers from the microwave, stirred them, put them back, and tried to absorb what Josh was saying.
“Is being happy the ultimate goal, though?” I asked.
Josh took a sharp inhale and when I turned to him, he looked stunned. “Are you serious? Of course being happy is the goal. That is the only goal.”
“Oh,” I said, fidgeting with the stem of my wineglass. “You’ve done everything right, Josh. All those things you’ve done and checked off, that should make you happy.”
“But, you’re not listening to me, Charlie. I’m not happy. They haven’t made me happy.”
“Then you need to do more. Gun for a promotion. Don’t stay stagnant. We’ll get a house. Keep moving up.” And I’ll get a new, better job. That’ll fix everything.
He sighed, long and low.
“I don’t think that’s the answer,” Josh said.
“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to bring this up with you, but you never stop.
I can only talk to you in the brief moments you have in between tasks.
We never go on vacation. Remember we had that week before the offices were reopening and I wanted to take us somewhere?
Anywhere you wanted to go. I know you don’t like the beach, so I thought, okay, let’s go to London, Italy, Paris, wherever.
We can do something different. But you refused, Charlie.
This isn’t a life. I appreciate that you like working hard, but it has to be for something. ”
“Well, I’m sorry that I don’t like traveling as much as everyone else,” I snapped.
Josh stepped back like he was absorbing a blow.