Chapter 32 Now #2
He leans toward me across the table and lowers his voice.
“What’s so romantic about not having a say in who you love?
” I narrow my eyes, wondering where he’s going with this and if I’m sober enough for the journey.
For me there’s always been a distinct precipice right before I’m drunk and the world goes fuzzy.
A moment when everything feels heightened and crisp.
A clear sky before the fog settles in. “About having it decided for you? Choosing to love someone, despite knowing that there are a million other people out there you could potentially connect with … knowing that there are a million other ways to be happy, or a million other ways to have your heart broken, but committing to that one person anyway. I think that’s as romantic as it gets. ”
“I feel like I’ve heard this on a podcast,” I say, deliberately ruining the mood.
“Piss off,” he says, but in a playful way.
“In all seriousness, I hear you with this lining of thinking. But also? You could just, like, not open yourself up to heartbreak in the first place. That actually seems like the safest option of all, am I wrong?”
“Who ever said we were talking about safety?”
We weren’t, I think. But apparently I’m thinking about it.
Krish is still eyeing me when my phone buzzes on the table between us. He politely takes a sip of his beer and glances toward the bar while I check it.
My stomach flips when I read Sebastian’s name in the bubble on my screen. I swipe to open the message.
Heard you’re in London. No need to respond. Mom had some good news this week. I’m heading back to Santa Barbara for a while. Just wanted you to know.
I cycle through a jumble of emotions as I read over the text three more times. Excitement that he reached out. Relief that Bubba is doing better. Disappointment that he’s taking the first chance to skip town. Validation that I’d been right.
I consider not responding, but my fingers have a mind of their own, crafting a message that’s sensitive to Bubba but indifferent to her messenger.
I’m glad to hear about your mom. Please keep me updated on how she’s doing, and let her know I’ll be here for her if she needs anything.
“Everything all right?” Maren asks.
I look up, startled to find her in Krish’s place. Over her shoulder, I see that he’s taken her spot with his friends at the other table. My rudeness must have scared him off. Great.
I shake my head. Hand her my phone instead of explaining.
“Jesus, Nikolaou,” she murmurs. I just nod slowly. Then she says, “He likes you.”
I shoot her a look. But then I realize she’s talking about Krish.
“Well, easy for him to say. He barely knows me.”
“Some would argue that’s kind of the point.”
The guys call to us from the bar, where they’re ordering one last round.
As I sip the water I’d requested instead of another glass of wine, catching Krish’s eyes across our circle every now and then, I decide that maybe Maren is right.
There’s something to be said for liking someone in the moment and just running with that. Maybe for once I could under-think it.
I planned to slip into the guest room without waking Maren—and I would have succeeded if I hadn’t stubbed my toe as I was rounding the corner into the hallway.
“Fuck,” I hiss under my breath.
I jump back to avoid the pillow that sails through Maren’s open bedroom door and into the hallway.
“How dare you try to sneak past me!” Maren whisper-scolds. “Full report. Stat.”
I tiptoe into her room with my shoulders slumped, like a teenager caught climbing back inside through a window.
Maren is sitting up in her bed, the wispy strands of her blow-dried bob sticking to her cheeks as she glares at me with a mix of admiration and suspicion.
She eyes my slightly askew clothing and points to her dresser.
Obediently, I open the middle drawer and pull out a soft pajama set, like I used to back in middle and high school when I’d decide to sleep over Maren’s at the last minute.
No matter that this time my own pajamas are in the next room, tradition stands.
Maren falls back on her pillow while I change, then holds up her duvet so I can slide in next to her.
“So,” she says, raising a brow. We lie side by side, our faces half hidden by our pillow halos.
“So.”
“So am I going to have to beg you for details?”
I sigh, thinking about how Maren and I used to spin a single look from a boy one of us liked into an hours-long postgame analysis. Why is it that now, when so much more is happening, there doesn’t seem to be as much to say?
“He’s hot,” I say finally. “And funny. And actually a very nice guy.” I shrug.
“I think it’d be easy for me to be with him.
Or … not him, exactly, considering the whole he lives in London and is a doctor with no personal life thing.
But someone like him. I think I could be happy with someone like Krish. ”
Maren smirks. “Well, that’s quite a wholesome conclusion to make from a one-night stand. Very on-brand for you.”
I give her a shove.
After the last round at the wine bar, I’d surprised both myself and Maren by agreeing to go back to Krish’s flat.
Despite her earlier encouragement, when faced with the reality of my disappearing into the night with a stranger in a foreign country, my best friend’s face pinched with worry.
But once I’d assured her that I’d stopped drinking more than an hour earlier, confirmed she had my location on Find My Friends and reminded her that I was a twenty-nine-year-old woman who did not want to insult the universe by rejecting its generous offer of a very handsome, well-educated rebound with a British accent, she agreed to let me go.
Krish’s flat was spare and tidy—more like a hotel room than a home, which made sense given what I’d learned about his lifestyle during our conversation at the wine bar.
He worked long shifts at the hospital, and he spent most of his free hours sleeping.
Maren and I had crossed paths with the guys on a night when their schedules had all aligned—something that he said was becoming more and more rare these days.
He’d led me to the kitchen and held up two beverage options—a decanter of whiskey and a pitcher of water.
He laughed as I eagerly pointed to the latter.
After I downed the water that he poured for me, we had a brief but steamy kitchen make-out.
Then we relocated to the living room and had a less-brief but equally steamy couch make-out, which turned into brief but fairly enjoyable sex. Then I called an Uber.
I recount all of this to Maren, who listens with rapt attention at first but gradually loses steam, her white-blond eyelashes fluttering with a sleepy heaviness. I yawn. Maybe we aren’t running out of things to say, just energy to say them.
As I drift toward sleep, the cinema of my mind settles on a screening not of Krish’s flat, but the ride back to Maren’s.
I’d spent the better part of it rereading Sebastian’s text message.
The evening had felt monumental: proof that Sebastian wasn’t the only man on earth worth my attention, and that I could enjoy being with someone without my heart catching fire.
And yet there I was, still thinking about Sebastian.
I’d told myself not to get carried away and had done just that.
All these years later and I still haven’t learned my lesson.
I tell myself that I will now, though. When I get home things will be different. I’ll be different.
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Sebastian,” Maren says, her eyes closed. My best friend, the mind reader.
“Go ahead. Say, ‘I told you so.’”
Her eyes snap open. “I would never.”
I squeeze her hand. “I know that. But seriously, I want you to know I’m okay,” I say, realizing it’s mostly true. “I’m sad, but I’m not crushed. It wasn’t meant to be.”
“Good.” She sounds relieved. “And with a few more handsome distractions like tonight? You won’t be sad for long.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Honestly? The whole Sebastian thing has made me realize I have bigger problems than my love life.” My smile falters. “I feel stuck.”
Maren scans my face, lips pursed in thought. “You’re not stuck, Leens.”
I raise a brow, skeptical.
“Being stuck means you can’t move on. It’s out of your control,” she says. “What you are is more … stagnant.”
“That sounds much better,” I say dubiously.
She rolls her eyes, but in a good-natured way. “I think you just need to shake things up a little. Think about the things you don’t like about your life that are in your control, and make a conscious choice to change them.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not,” she concedes. “Leaving the comfort of what you know—it’s hard. Remember my first year out here? I was so homesick I almost quit.”
I do remember. Maren is so happy and settled now that I sometimes forget how much she struggled in the beginning. It’s the reason I instituted our standing weekly FaceTimes and kept our WhatsApp chat active with voice memos and memes. I wanted Maren to always feel like she had a tether to home.
“How did you convince yourself it was worth sticking out?” I ask.
She considers this. “I guess I told myself that the discomfort wouldn’t last forever. That one day I’d wake up and realize this big, scary thing I’d been doing had just become my normal, everyday life.”
“I’m really proud of you, Mar.”
She scrunches up her face, like the teary-eye emoji. Then we’re quiet for a little, our words hanging in the air. I’m in and out of sleep when she speaks again.
“Also?” she says softly. “I reminded myself that I wasn’t actually alone. You, my parents, my grandparents—I had this whole support system rooting for me. It’s easier to take a leap when you have people to catch you.”
It’s the last thing I hear before I let my eyelids flutter shut for good.