Chapter 44 An Experiment in Testing Simone’s Famously Short Patience #2
“Of course not. You have to be in love to get your heart broken.” I threw back the last of my drink and choked on a raspberry. Simone pounded my back, and tears fell down my cheeks.
“What if you’d just choked to death on a cocktail raspberry, and the last thing you said to me was a lie?”
I turned and laughed at her through the watery tears, whipping my face with my sleeve. “Yeah. Okay . . . maybe.”
She sucked in a breath, eyes going wide.
“How do I know? What are the . . . you know . . . symptoms? I tried to look it up online, but all I found was a bunch of stupid, gushy, unscientific nonsense and quizzes from Seventeen magazine.”
“Please tell me you did the Seventeen quiz.”
“All right. I regret this. I’m going home now, and I officially hate you.”
She laughed. “Fuck, Maya, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I was in love with anyone. You know, other than Uhtred in The Last Kingdom. Do you cry at love songs?”
I pouted and turned to look at her. “‘When You’re Gone’ by the Cranberries came on while I was cooking yesterday, and I was such a mess that I had to turn the stove off and lock myself in a room with three Kinder Buenos.”
She tilted her head. “Like three individual sticks or three packages?”
My pout deepened. “Packages.”
“So . . . six. Six Kinder Buenos.”
“Is that bad?”
“Real bad.”
(See fig. 7).
Simone went on without mercy. “How many times have you watched Leap Year this month?”
“Ten? Twelve?”
“Okaaaaay. So the prognosis is not good. Time to stop lying to yourself.”
“Love?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit! What? This feels . . . this feels horrible! Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“What! Why would anyone want this? It’s just awful! All the time! This is worse than that time I got a yeast infection, BV, and a UTI all at the same time!”
“Who knew that was even medically possible? We should do a show about that!”
“Shut up and tell me how to fix it, Simone!”
“Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, right? You go on like a billion dates a year.”
“No, it was not bound to happen! Not me, remember? I can only get emotional about fictional men.”
“Well, Tadhg sounds like he’s like a shadow daddy on the outside and a cinnamon bun on the inside. No wonder he finally broke you.”
“Ugggh. Will it go away?”
“Maybe. Do you want it to?”
“Who knows! I don’t freakin’ know what I want! I’m so muddled up, I hardly even feel like the same damn person anymore. I feel trapped. Like my skin is too fucking tight. Like I can’t just go on with my life as it was and pretend this never happened.”
“I don’t think you can, sweetie.”
Simone didn’t often use terms of endearment other than “asshole” and “hobag,” so I knew this was bad.
“So, what? I just live like this? Forever?”
“Well. Do you want to see him again?”
“Only every day for the rest of my goddamn life.”
Her eyes widened. “Okay, Maya, that’s definitely not nothing.”
“But where does that get me? Nowhere. I can’t do anything with that!”
“Why don’t we just . . . you know, explore that a little . . . for hypotheticals.”
“That sounds stupid. Go on.”
“Okay, let’s say you could get a hold of him, and you realized you were, in fact, endowed with a beating human heart and in love, and let’s just say that Tadhg loves you too—”
“Sims, I was a complete bitch to him.”
“I know you were. But this is hypothetical. So let’s just say, as a thought experiment, hypothetically, that he still has feelings for you. Could you make it work? Would there be any way to give it a shot?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Could he move here? Hypothetically?”
“Hypothetically, no. I don’t think so. A, he can only stay like three months on an ESTA, and B, he wants a farm with sheep and to be close to all of his nine thousand brothers and sisters. I just . . . I couldn’t ask him that.”
“I know what you’re going to say, but for the sake of good science, we have to explore all options without bias. So what if . . . you went there instead? Hypothetically. You said you loved it there. You could always just . . . you know. Try it out?”
“And throw my whole life away for a man?”
“Maya. Don’t be so dramatic. You do know we don’t need to record in a studio, right?”
“I know.”
“So you could record there, couldn’t you?”
“And what the hell would I record? Would I just keep going on dates, Simone? What about that, huh?”
“Well . . .” Her voice softened a bit. “It was never going to last forever. We knew that. And it doesn’t mean you have to stop doing podcasts. But, you know, maybe we could pivot. Workshop some new ideas.”
“Well, that’s insane!”
“No, it’s not. I’m just saying to keep your mind open, you dickwad,” she said tenderly. “Not everything is so black and white. This isn’t impossible. You could find a way to make this work. If you really wanted to. Hypothetically.”
“Even if that wasn’t complete and total horse crap and terrible advice, which it is, he won’t answer my calls. How am I supposed to talk to him? It doesn’t even ring, Sims. It’s like he changed his freaking number.”
“Okay, what about emails?”
“Why would I have his email address?”
“How do I know? Well, what about Jackie? Could he help?”
I scrunched up my face. “Maybe? But then Tadhg would just think Jackie was meddling in his life again. And what could I say? ‘Hi, Jackie. Your conniving little tricks worked, and now I think I might be in love with your son, but I don’t know the first thing about love or what to do with it, and I live halfway across the world, so I can’t even ask him out for a date to find out if it even really is love or if it’s just perimenopause, and in the meantime I think Tadhg changed his whole damn phone number because I was a complete bitch to him.
Can you fix it for me? With more of your conniving tricks? Tadhg would really love that. Thanks!’”
Simone shrugged and sipped her drink. “Okay, so maybe it’s not great. What else you got?”
“Bupkis! I don’t know. Ugggh! Can I just build a time machine and go back in time for a do-over?”
“Sure. We could probably find one on Facebook Marketplace.”
I laughed a little and crammed the rest of my slice of cake into my mouth in one giant bite.
We watched the short Hallmark movie that I’d brought, A Recipe for Seduction, which was literally a—no joke—Colonel Sanders love story with Mario Lopez playing a young colonel, and we laughed until our sides hurt.
And then we watched French Kiss, one of our all-time-favorite comfort rom-coms, and I cried a little bit into my popcorn.
Then I changed into Simone’s pajamas and we crawled into her bed, full, exhausted, and a little drunk.
“Sims?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you asleep?”
“Not with your wine breath in my face.”
“It’s sake. Tell me what to do, Sim. Please.”
“Well.” She was quiet for a while, and I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep.
“I think the only thing you can do is wait for him to get in touch with you, when he’s ready, and if he does, if you still feel like you might be in love, and if he feels the same, then you have a very earnest, grown-up conversation about what that looks like and what your options are. ”
“Yeah. That sounds really mature and reasonable.”
“I’m glad you agree.”
“Ooooorrrr . . . what if we do, like . . . an experiment? A do-over?”
“An experiment?”
“To test it. To see . . . you know . . . if this really is love. If it’s strong enough to change our lives for.”
“Maya, not everything is a science experiment.”
“Yeah, but it can be!”
“This is so stupid. How would it even work?”
“We’d need more time together. Long enough to test the hypothesis. But not just like normal, wishy-washy dating but, like, full exposure. Thirty days. Thirty days to fall madly in love or walk away forever.”
“No, Maya. I hate that. Don’t do that.”
“I’ll call Jackie in the morning to scheme. Thanks for the help! I already have some ideas.”
“No! That’s so dumb!”
“’Night! You’re the greatest! Happy birthday!”
“Ugggghhh!”